School is Easy Tutoring

Tutoring Agency

Tutor and Teacher Educational Resources

In this section of our education blog, we give tips for tutors and teachers on how to teach subjects, keep kids passionate, and more. Subscribe to our newsletter (on the left or below on mobile) to get bi-monthly updates in your inbox!

Focused math lesson — using bowling to teach math to students

Published: Last Updated Date:

Focused math lesson

We’re going to build on an idea we discussed about math and baseball a few weeks ago on this blog, which was to use passion as fuel for learning. As we’ve mentioned before, lessons can be more effective when they are paired with a fun activity. So today, we’ll explore the idea of using bowling to teach math to students.

It’s easy to think of bowling as a strictly recreational activity. But bowling teaches students arithmetic, geometry and many other mathematical principles.

How to teach students arithmetic using bowling

Bowling relies on math to keep track of the scores during a game. All you need to do is look at a scorecard and this will become apparent. Probably the most basic method of using bowling to teach students math is showing students the score system. Filling out a scorecard requires sharp arithmetic, particularly addition and subtraction. There are a number of intricacies to tallying up points — or pins, as bowlers like to call them — which require a bit of study.

If you look at a scorecard, you’ll see 10 frames. Each frame denotes one round. If you don’t get a strike or spare, you get two opportunities to knock down the pins during each frame, or round. Every pin is worth one point.

Teach students arithmetic using bowling
Photo Credit: chispita_666

When you hit all of the pins in your first roll, that’s called a strike. Strikes are scored as a 10, which is the maximum number of pins that can be knocked down. This is written as an X on the score sheet. If you get a strike, you still get two chances to knock down 10 pins. So at most, you can get 30 points per round, because 10+10+10 = 30.

If it takes you two rolls to hit all 10 pins down, that’s called a spare, and it’s written on the card as a ‘/’. You will still get a third roll. The best score you can get while with a spare is 20, because the first two rolls will be 10, plus an additional 10 on your third roll.

If you don’t get a strike or a spare, then you only get two rolls during your frame, or round. Simply add up the pins that you knocked down. For example, 3 pins during the first roll plus 3 during the roll afterwards is 6 for the round.

Relate bowling to a ‘real’ math lesson
Photo Credit: Valerie Reneé

Using bowling to teach math to students can be fun!

Now it’s time to head over to the bowling alley! Ask your students to play a game, and make sure everyone gets a chance to keep score. Every time a student rolls the ball, ask the kids how many pins were knocked down. Ask them to use addition and subtraction to come up with the score for each frame. Quiz them on how strikes or spares can change the score. Ask them what a ‘perfect’ game scores like (answer: it’s (10+10+10) x 10 = 300). Make it a group learning activity!

Relate bowling to a ‘real’ math lesson

The next step is to show kids how their new bowling-scoring skills relate to math assignments. If children get stuck on an arithmetic problem, show them that doing addition and subtraction is no different from scoring a game of bowling!

Many teachers may be pleasantly surprised to notice their students’ adding and subtracting skills improve!

See related posts on our education blog:

Ideas on teaching religious tolerance to kids

Published: Last Updated Date:

Teaching religious tolerance to kids

Religion remains a hot topic of debate. And with news headlines constantly attributing acts of terror to extremist religious groups, it can be easy for some of us to become afraid or even hostile towards people of some religions. The Westboro Baptist Church and the Islamic State, or ISIS, are two examples. Some who see the controversial things the Westboro Baptist Church says may think Christians are divisive and angry. Some people may get the same impressions about Islam by watching footage of ISIS. So in this article, we’ll explore the idea of teaching religious tolerance to kids.

To be clear, teaching religious tolerance to kids is a very complicated matter — it can’t be completely addressed in one blog post. But we’d like to give some suggestions that may help get a productive discussion started.

Understanding why we stereotype other people is important when teaching religious tolerance to kids

Stereotyping other people happens all the time, regardless of whether we like it or not, and regardless of whether we are talking about religions or not. This can be an unfortunate part of our world, but it’s important to remember people who hold stereotypical views against others aren’t necessarily bad.

Psychology Today says stereotyping is often inevitable. According to the theory of evolution — and we tolerate that there are other theories counter to this — it is a natural human instinct that helped us survive for thousands of years. When our ancestors were still living in caves, it probably helped to categorize things based on limited interactions. For example, it’s probable not all sabre-toothed tigers liked human meat, but if a caveman saw one tiger eat a person, it was likely a smart decision to avoid petting all tigers in the future!

This was a great quality to have in the past, but in today’s world, it can be a problem. This is an important point to note when teaching religious tolerance to kids.

The theory of evolution suggests that stereotyping didn’t hinder us much in ancient times because we usually lived in small groups of people who had similar physical features and beliefs (e.g. families, tribes). But in the present day, we are encountering a huge amount of people from around the world who have different values and appearances. Furthermore, it’s usually rare for our interactions to be life-and-death scenarios.

It might be a good idea to explain this to your kids. It could be productive to tell your children stereotyping isn’t evil but that it is an ancient survival mechanism. This realization will help students realize all of us have to guard against stereotypical beliefs about people, and that we should show tolerance — not hate — even to those who are misguided by prejudicial beliefs about religions.

Ask your children what (if any) stereotypical views they may have about religions

Talk to your kids about negative religious stereotypes. Ask them if watching the news, TV or movies make them feel scared, anxious or even angry towards people who practice a religion. Keep in mind you may have to rephrase this question in many different ways. For example, ‘are you afraid of X religious group’ may not get an answer. But asking children if they are afraid of people who wear X clothing may help your kids start a discussion. When teaching religious tolerance to kids, rephrasing questions can be crucial to having a productive conversation.

Compare your kids’ experience with media portrayals of religions

The final step to teaching religious tolerance to kids is getting them to compare their experiences with what they see and hear in the media. Ask your children if they know anyone who practises a religion that is represented negatively in the news. Are these acquaintances or friends as bad as TV might make them out to be? And if your kids have had negative experiences with people who practice a certain religion, ask them if that means all people of that religion are bad.

Keep asking thoughtful questions. Be attentive and ‘read in between the lines’ of what your kids are saying. Intelligent discussion is often a great way to teach religious tolerance to kids!

Focused math lesson — Teach students statistics using baseball

Published: Last Updated Date:

Teach students statistics using baseball

As teachers and parents, we have to find ways to present old lessons to kids in new ways. That’s what helps keeps students interested and engaged in learning. Education can be greatly enhanced if you can find a way to present a concept using something a student can be interested in. Sports often happen to be a point of interest for many kids! So today we’re going to examine how you can teach students statistics using baseball.

How are baseball and statistics related?

Baseball, like many other sports, keeps track of player and team performances using statistical measures. We’ll briefly go over a few below and later give suggestions on how you can teach students statistics using baseball.

Batting average — This is calculated by dividing the number of hits by the total number of bats.

The formula is: hits/bats.

W-L (Win-Loss) percentage: This is pretty self-explanatory. It’s the percentage of games a player or team has won.

The formula is: Number of games won/ Number of games played.

Earned Run Average (ERA) — This number measures how good a pitcher is. An ‘earned run’ means the batter made it to home base because of their skill — not because of a fielding error or a passed ball. ‘Fielding errors’ are essentially mistakes made by people playing in the field. ‘Passed balls’ describes a mistake made by the catcher at home plate.

The formula is: (Earned Runs/Innings Pitched) x 9.

We multiply by nine because a baseball game lasts nine innings. This last step is important, because if you don’t multiply it by nine, you’re getting the amount of earned runs per inning, not per game.

Harnessing passion can help us teach students statistics using baseball

So now that we’ve gone over a few rudimentary statistical measures used in baseball, it’s time to apply them to a math lesson. The best way to introduce this is by getting students to pick a player or team they like. Ask them how they would calculate the statistics. Then give them the proper formulas and explain the reasoning behind them.

The great thing about this approach is that it can immediately engage a student’s interest. When you use an interest they are passionate about — in this case baseball — as a motivator, children often learn faster.

So they’ve figured out stats for their favourite teams — now what?

This is the exciting part. Present them with some math questions. For example, ask them to calculate a simple percentage based on a grade they received. For example, if they got 9/10 questions right on a test, ask them what the percent is.

Some of them will probably say they don’t know how to do it. But then you can smile and tell them they actually do! Tell them calculating a W-L percentage is the exact same thing!

Same goes for the other formulas. Give them problems that mirror the reasoning you find in the baseball stats. Both you and the students might be pleasantly surprised to see patterns in baseball stats emerging in math problems!

See related posts on our education blog:

How to teach students about the solar system

Published: Last Updated Date:

Teaching students about the solar system

Learning about the solar system is an important part of every child’s education. Planetary science or planetology, which is the study of planets, is one of the fastest growing areas of scientific research. In this lesson, we’ll discuss how you can teach students about the solar system.

Why is it important to teach kids about the solar system?

Knowledge about the solar system is more important than ever. It helps us appreciate the Earth. It gives us incentives to preserve and respect our natural resources.

And it helps us answer some of biggest questions of our day and age.

NASA says studying the solar system may help us understand important issues, such as how global warming will affect the Earth or how life originated on our planet.

Go to the movies!

Probably one of the easiest ways to get your children interested in the solar system is by showing them films. It can be hard to make the solar system interesting in a conversation. But showing videos, documentaries or even Hollywood movies can make planetary science come alive. With regard to documentaries, we’d recommend trying out National Geographic’s Journey to the Edge of the Universe.

But if a documentary is a little too much for your student to process, perhaps start off with science fiction movies. Yes, even watching Hollywood films can serve as an educational experience. But you need to make sure you hold a discussion with your kids afterwards to straighten out the facts.

One way you can teach students about the solar system is by having them watch a movie like Interstellar. Then ask them to spot what parts of the movie are scientifically accurate and what parts aren’t as they watch. Turn it into a game!

Of course, be on the watch for mature content and, if necessary, skip through parts of the movie you think might be disturbing to your child.

Make teaching the solar system visual!

A powerful way to show kids about the solar system is to create a model. One way you can do this is by cutting different-coloured planets out of construction paper and laying them out on the floor.

Put the sun in the centre and ask your children to place the planets in their right spots. Then talk about each planet. There are plenty of resources that can help with this.

Show students the planets and stars!

On a clear night, go to an area with little light pollution and try to find each of the planets. This approach often helps students learn about the solar system. Having children look at the planets in the sky helps makes the lessons tangible and real.

Spotting planets might be a little tricky at first, but with a little bit of practice, anyone can get it! Once your students learn how to spot planets, you can even start looking at constellations.

In addition to being a lot of fun, it can help students navigate. We’ve covered this topic before in our blog.

Make learning about the solar system fun!

Take the knowledge that you’ve taught your kids and turn it into a game! Family trivia nights about the solar system are a great way to start.

Another fun idea would be to play ‘I Spy” with your kids. Ask them to spot constellations and planets. See who can do it the fastest!

Use your imagination! There are many ways to make learning about the solar system fun!

Teaching students how to navigate without a GPS

Published: Last Updated Date:

Teaching students to navigate without a GPS

GPS, or global positioning systems, are a wonderful tool. But they’ve become a big crutch that many of us rely on. There will be times when this technology will be unavailable. Perhaps some of us will go on family camping trips in remote areas. And, as a more dramatic example, some of us may be caught in a natural disaster. With that being said, it would be wise to teach students how to navigate without a GPS. In this article, we’ll go over some of the ways we can help our children learn how to travel without a GPS.

Show students how to use a compass

This is a topic we’ve already discussed in this blog, so we won’t go into extensive detail about it. But the long and short of it is that compasses are essential to navigate. Kids should learn how to use them. And it’s also wise to show children how to create their own compasses. We’ve suggested using a bucket of water and a magnet in the above post.

North, south, east and west — teaching students how to navigate without a GPS

Orienting yourself on a map is the first step to teaching students how to navigate without a GPS. We’d suggest you start by showing your children landmarks. If you live in the Vancouver area, start by showing your children the mountains. It is the easiest and clearest northern point you can show them. And regardless of where your kids are in the city, it’s usually easy to spot Cypress, Seymour or Grouse Mountain. If you’re not in Vancouver, many cities or towns often have a landmark that can serve as an reference point. Show it to your children. And on a clear night, you can also show them the north star.

Explain to students how to use a paper map

Children who navigate with their phones might need practice using paper maps. Teach them the basics of the grid system many maps use. Also, show kids how to refer to destinations via major intersections. For example, if you’re in Vancouver, you can tell them how 41st and Dunbar is in the western part of the city. On the other hand, 41st and Joyce is in the eastern area. And if your children catch on quickly, show them how maps can be used to show other things. For example, an informative chart might show elevation, distance and population. Very detailed maps may include demographic information such as political ridings, GDP and much more.

The final test — teach children how to memorize directions

Sometimes parents get separated from their kids and have no way of contacting them. Go over this article with your kids. Once your children know how to navigate without a GPS, we’d recommend teaching your kids how to find their way to important meeting spots. You could start with the most obvious choice: your home. For example, if you usually take your children to the grocery store, you could show them how to get back to your house from there. Once you feel comfortable with their navigation skills, drop them off at the store and ask them to meet you at your house. Tell them to keep their phones on just in case anything happens. But ask them to try getting home without using their GPS. Obviously, make sure you are doing this in a safe area first.

Should kids still learn cursive writing?

Published: Last Updated Date:

kids still learn cursive writing

In this age of keyboards and screens, many people are wondering if kids should still learn cursive writing. As with most things, there are two sides to every story. The camp in favour of banishing cursive writing says it is an antiquated tool of little use in the digital era.

However, others who are for the skill say it can promote a better grasp of reading and writing. In this article we’ll examine some of the main arguments coming from both sides. So should kids still learn cursive writing? Let’s take a look.

Does learning cursive writing improve literacy?

Some research suggests cursive writing helps children read and write better. One study found children who learned cursive were better at spelling and reading than children who only learned how to write print. The researchers said this difference remained even though the groups were similar in most other ways. While the authors of the study weren’t sure what the cause was, they suggested cursive forces children to look at words as a whole. Cursive letters are literally joined together to make words but the printed alphabet is not.

Time magazine has also reported on its blog that cursive writing activates different parts of the brain where printed letters don’t. For example, the magazine says learning cursive improves children’s fine motor skills and generally helps students retain more information and generate more ideas.

But critics call into question some of the research suggesting cursive makes children smarter. For instance, handwriting troubleshooter Kate Gladstone wrote in the Stamford Advocate that most proponents of cursive misquote a study which found hand printed — not cursive — writing provided some developmental benefits over keyboarding.

Some people are questioning if children should learn cursive writing

Many people are wondering if kids should learn cursive writing in the digital age because services that used to depend on it appear to be phasing it out.

Take these two examples where cursive writing used to be the standard: signing cheques and signing forms.

In the former example, cursive was the norm. That’s because most money was transferred via a signed cheque. But cheques are becoming less common now. Many businesses use direct deposit to pay their employees, and that number is growing. Add to the fact debit and credit cards with pin codes or ‘tapping’ abilities have become more common and the argument becomes clearer. All you need to do is ask yourself when you last used a cheque to pay for something at a store or restaurant.

What about the cases where debit or credit don’t apply? Does the cheque still have a use?

Possibly, but given the growing availability of e-transfers, which allow you to deposit money directly and securely into another person’s account, it’s questionable if cheques will be needed at all in the near future.

What about filling forms? Shouldn’t cursive apply there? After all, we all need to sign our names on the dotted line, don’t we?

For now, that seems to be the case, but more and more organizations are using online forms. These forms can be signed with a digital signature rather than a stroke of pen, securing the document with cryptography. Some places such as the United States give these signatures the same legal weight as a traditional signature.

Given that cursive appears to be less applicable in daily life, some people are saying cursive is a waste of school time. Some say that time would be better spent on keyboarding and other computer-related skills, which are more relevant in today’s age.

For example Morgan Polikoff, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California, wrote in the New York Times preserving cursive would be akin to resurrecting the abacus and the slide rule.

Another fun fact — handwriting troubleshooter Kate Gladstone says in a 2012 teachers’ conference held by Zaner-Bloser, a company that publishes cursive writing textbooks, only 37 per cent of the educators surveyed at the event wrote in cursive. If even cursive writing teachers don’t use cursive, why should we?

The bottom line – benefits of writing in cursive are still hazy

It’s still unclear whether writing in cursive is useful for children. Conflicting research and opinions on the skill make it very difficult to determine whether this is a tradition worth preserving. However, most research appears to agree that students must learn some form of penmanship.

A reasonable middle-ground would be to teach children how to read cursive but not to force them to write in it. According to the Stamford Advocate column of Kate Gladstone that we mentioned earlier, teaching the skill takes only one 30 to 60 minute session in the span of the child’s lifetime, so it won’t be diverting time from other pressing activities. Keep in mind this applies only if the student has already learned the printed word. If the child expresses a desire to learn more, teach them cursive and give them a few activities to start them off. We’ve suggested some ideas on our blog such as journaling. But if they don’t feel a need to learn how to write in cursive, there is little to suggest much harm will come of it.