Tutor and Teacher Educational Resources

Last week we talked about the pros and cons of competition in schools. If you do decide to implement competitive activities in your classroom, try to pick competitions that include everyone, and keep all of your students engaged. These types of activities can be labelled as ‘healthy competitions.’ Here are 6 examples of healthy school competition ideas you can try out in your classroom:

1. Have students compete in teams

When defining “healthy competition,” we need to highlight the importance of encouraging teamwork. Obviously, team-based school competition is very valuable because it engages kids through an exciting learning environment, while encouraging cooperation. Working toward a common goal as a team could help decrease self-consciousness and anxiety, which is often found in competition settings (and one of the ‘cons’ noted in our aforementioned article about competitions in schools).

An example of team-based competition could be dividing your class in half for a game of Social Studies trivia, or into groups of four to create the catchiest rhyme for a Science unit summary.

2. Give all the students a chance to win

When designing a healthy school competition, it is a good idea to make sure everyone has a significant chance of actually winning the game.

For example, you don’t want a kid getting kicked out of a game if they get the very first question wrong, or miss a shot at the beginning of a hockey game. By including everyone throughout the competition, they are more likely to stay engaged (and excited to participate).

3. Introduce rewards, based on effort

Not every competition has to be standardized across the board. Try having kids enter a competition that is personalized for their individual strengths, as suggested by Edquarter.

This could include students picking their favourite subject, or a specific goal they want to work on. Their progress in the competition can be measured according to the amount of effort they have put into their work. You can be creative and tailor this general idea to the needs of your class, as long as the main idea is to encourage kids to try their best.

4. Have students focus on personal academic goals

If you do want to have students participate in an academic competition, Classroom suggests you should “encourage students to beat their own previous individual scores.” This is a great idea, because instead of stressing over competing against another student for the better grade, students will be competing against no one other than themselves. This way, they can only get better and better!

5. Test out competition based on chance, rather than ability

Math games are a great way to implement this healthy competition idea. For example, grade 3 students learning multiplication can pair up with two dice each. Each round, the two students roll their dice at the same time. Each student multiplies the numbers on their dice together, and whoever has the higher product gets a point. This way, they are still practicing multiplication in a fun game setting without the competition being focused on each student’s speed or math ability. Instead, it is left up to chance. This is a great activity if you have a class of students with a variety of math skills, or if you are a parent looking to play a math game with your child.

Feel free to modify any of these healthy school competition ideas to suit the needs of your classroom or tutoring group. And if you haven’t already checked it out, here’s our last article on the pros and cons of competition in schools.

See related posts on our blog:

How to teach conflict resolution to kids

7 brain games for kids

Should children join a spelling bee contest in Canada? (Part 1: the pros)

Should children join a spelling bee contest in Canada? (Part 2: the cons)

How can we teach social competence to teens?

We’ll bet that when Disney came out with the movie, The Queen of Katwe (or if you read the book earlier), kids everywhere must have been inspired to pick up the board game of chess as a hobby. And it’s always great to teach kids a topic they’re interested in.

Surely, learning chess has a lot to teach about strategy, life and mental exercise. But there’s another timeless game that’s just as old as chess, with more to give. Ever thought of teaching backgammon math lessons to your pupils?

Below are math ideas you can teach kids by playing backgammon.

Teach the math of dice by playing backgammon

This can be as simple as learning how to add up two numbers. But it can also show how a limited set of numbers can create many possibilities of combinations.

This resource teaches backgammon dice statistics, moves, and odds in great detail.

So, with two dice, you have 36 possibilities of numbers. And that leads us to teaching math probability…

Use backgammon rolls to teach math probabilities

As the above resource states,

Understanding the true probabilities of dice rolls can greatly improve your tactical play, by letting you accurately assess the risk of leaving blots, and the chances of hitting and covering points. It also helps you to play strategically, by telling you how to distribute your pieces around the board in order to make the largest number of potential dice rolls work well for you. Probabilities are the secret of why good players seem to get more ‘lucky’ rolls than beginners.”

You see, math is not useless!

When you roll two dice instead of one when playing backgammon, your mathematical probability changes. As this article also explains so well, calculating probability in backgammon can show kids a strategy for determining possible outcomes. In fact, it’s a great simple way to start teaching math probabilities, or to introduce the application of fractions. They can use this information to make decisions about where to move their checkers on the board, in order to win.

Kids can practice doing math calculations in their head with backgammon

With backgammon, players aren’t allowed to use tools to make calculations – not even a pencil and paper. But as this player mentions in his ode to backgammon math, “odds and percentages” are oh so necessary to becoming a great player. But it’s not as hard as people may at first believe. He notes:

The more you do the math, the easier it becomes.  It’s like any other learned skill.  At first I got frustrated counting pips, and now I can do it much faster and easier…especially after learning some shortcuts…

“I hated calculating match equities, and to do it right used to take me well over 10 minutes some times.  Now, I can pretty much figure out most match equities in a few seconds.”

Along with doing calculations in the head, backgammon players also learn memorization skills. As the above author explains, the more you know about how backgammon math works, the easier you can make general estimates on the fly. This is also a math skill, and a life skill for kids to learn. Once they learn principles, they can learn to apply those principles in multiple situations. Isn’t that what math tests are all about?

Backgammon math lessons get more complex as you advance your game

We’ve covered only a few of the math skills used in backgammon. However, backgammon math is so interesting and applicable to math theory, computer scientists have even studied it! And, as this article delves into it, you can see there is more to it, which can turn into advanced math lessons for your students. In life, this game can teach that while ‘luck’ can explain some things, strategy can be applied to improve your odds.

See related posts on our education blog:

• Focused math lesson — Teach students statistics using baseball
• Focused math lesson: Teaching kids math with cars
• Focused math lesson — using bowling to teach math to students
• Focused lesson — teach kids math and meteorology with barometers

See other articles in this series:

• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (1): understanding the fundamentals of media
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (2): the elements of a news story
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (3): learning to write news copy (part 1)
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (3): learning to write news copy (part 2)
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (4): learning to research and identify sources of information
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (5): learning to critique the media and spot ‘fake news’
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (6): tips and resources for fact checking
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (7): covering magazines and feature stories

Continuing on with our sequence on how to teach kids to start a newspaper, we’ll cover some production and publishing aspects of the industry. Once students have gone through the other lessons on starting a newspaper, they can begin putting it all together into a publishable format that looks just like a real newspaper!

Teaching kids print production with technological tools for design and layout may crossover into high school projects like the yearbook club or class. By teaching desktop publishing techniques, kids who may not be involved in the school newspaper or yearbook can still get exposed to the process.

When starting a student newspaper, design and layout training with desktop publishing can:

• Give students the chance to understand how speedily newspapers are be produced, which may explain the brevity of their coverage, and the time pressure journalists come under, in the real world of media.
• Build computer software skills that students can use in their future employment.
• Give students an eye for the perfection in graphic design skills, such as alignment, consistency, scale, typography and the impact that sizing elements on a page can have.
• Teach students how to follow conventional norms and ‘rules,’ and understand why these can save time in the workplace. For example, they can learn style guides, templates, font formatting and known efficiencies already used in the print media industry. Perhaps a discussion on cost effectiveness and print budgeting can also be explored with your class when taking on a project like this.
• Engage students in the creative process of layout and design in print media. For example, making decisions about photos and ads to place on a page, as well as other visual cues to help guide a reader according to the design intention.

Resources you’ll need for teaching kids desktop publishing or print media design

You will need access to school computers, and purchased software licenses to create a newspaper the ‘modern’ way. If these are not available, you could use the ‘cut and paste’ method (literally). And, yes, you could also go the fully digital route, by creating a classroom blog or newspaper website. However, since website publishing engages different learned skills, this would start us on another topic, for a future article!

Assuming you can access the computers and software, most likely, your class will be learning how to create a newspaper design and layout using Adobe InDesign. They can also use QuarkXpress, which was the older standard used in publishing.

For some parts of the process, you may need Photoshop, and a PDF creator, if not included in your existing page design software. If the students plan on creating a newspaper logo, Adobe Illustrator may also be required.

The Adobe Education Exchange website

Adobe has an entire website section dedicated to teaching tutorials on each of its products, including InDesign. Find the InDesign tutorials, and filter the age groups or lesson types here:

https://edex.adobe.com/search/global/?category=teach&product=indesign

Here is a resource that lists all Adobe education programs:

https://edex.adobe.com/programs (some of these are meant for adults, while others are for students. Either way, you may find useful teaching resources on this page).

Your school may need to purchase syllabus lessons on the site (depending on contributor licenses), or register for an account.

Here are lessons or ideas to get you started when teaching kids how to start a newspaper:

• Learn Adobe InDesign CC – a course to learn InDesign for publishing, without prerequisite knowledge needed.
• Adobe InDesign Tutorial 1 (Creating a Article) – a ‘first approach’ lesson to help students get the hang of using InDesign for newspaper purposes. It also answers questions about InDesign’s purpose.
• Grid System in Graphic Design – an important lesson needed for any newspaper or magazine project!
• Publishing with InDesign – a lesson for publishing a newspaper into different formats.
• Inspired Magazine – an idea of a project to try at your school, where students run the ‘show’ of their magazine!
• Grade 4 and 5: Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign – a great syllabus on the very basics of InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop designed for Grades 4 and 5.

And of course there are plenty more you could search for on the site!

As a teacher, you can also participate in discussions with other collaborators on lessons. For example, here is one teacher trying to get feedback on how to teach high school students about InDesign:

https://edex.adobe.com/discussion/5f226f6f55/

Other teaching resources around the web for teaching newspaper print production

Of course, the web is full of ideas and tutorials to help teachers when it comes to design and layout training for print publishing. We’ll list some we found here:

• Back to School Special: 30 Simple Adobe InDesign Tutorials
• An Introduction to Newspaper Design
• Desktop Publishing Projects for High School Students

Have fun while learning about desktop publishing for a student newspaper!

As you can see, the process of designing a layout for a newspaper can be a fun and creative project for kids. It certainly is one of the most visual aspects of teaching how to start a newspaper (apart from photojournalism, perhaps).

The above resources can get you started, and perhaps this can turn into a collaborative effort with a graphic design teacher in the school!

Vocabulary development is an important part of learning. It can open up an understanding of the world that would otherwise be ‘closed’ to our students. Not only that, the more complex vocabulary a student can accumulate, the more they’ll be able to develop reading comprehension. But in today’s world of abbreviated text messages, our students may be lacking in vocabulary acquisition.

So today, we’ll be covering some ideas on how to encourage vocabulary development in young minds.

Method 1: Teach word origins to encourage vocabulary development

The reason word origins may be a good way to encourage vocabulary learning is because they can provide context and meaning to the words. The stories can be remembered more easily than words alone as mere ‘data.’

Word origins can also be fun, since they may sound funny without their backstory. They can also teach some history. And they can show kids how language develops. They may be using the dictionary as an authority on words. But word origin stories can show them that dictionaries are actually a reflection of how societies use language.

And, it can show them that all the slang they use today is rapidly developing the English language thanks to the Internet. In fact, it only took one 16-year-old to randomly use the phrase “on fleek,” which then became part of pop culture language. And this article explains the story of a courtroom that needed interpretation of many new words the boom of the Internet has created. So, imagine what English may sound like in 100, 200, 500 years?

Therefore, this lesson can also expand into etymology. Read more about language etymology, and get a list of word origins here.

Here is a resource on the origins of terms:

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-origins

Method 2: Teach kids word morphology to develop vocabulary

Related to our topic above about teaching word origins, you can also teach word morphology. This is when an old word takes on a new form. Or, when you add affixes or suffixes to a word to help it better relate to the context in which you are speaking. How do you turn a word into its past tense form? It’s plural form? Morphology, according to this article,

“Morphology is a critical element of successful vocabulary development and accurate decoding.  …Subsequently, weakness in decoding and vocabulary skills is noted as a potent inhibitor to fully comprehending text.”

That sounds like something to pay attention to!

Here is a video on the meaning of morphology with some examples.

What is one word morphology example causing the world to raise an eyebrow? How about Donald Trump’s use of, “bigly”? According to this article, it’s actually a word!

Can your students identify other word-morphing happening in current events? Can they come up with their own? This can be a fun exercise to get kids using words, and being aware of their so-called ‘correct’ usage (which remember, is only dependent on how we all adapt to those morphologies!)

Method 3: Encourage kids to tell their own stories, so they use vocabulary in more sentences

Whether in written or spoken form, kids telling their own stories can help them use vocabulary, which in turn can help that vocabulary ‘stick.’ If they are telling a story verbally, such as a bedtime story, and they use a word, you can mention synonyms. Like the example in this article, if the child uses the word “buy,” you can introduce the word “purchase.”

This article also explains more reasons to encourage kids to tell their own stories:

4 Benefits of kids telling their own stories

Method 4: Use kids’ novel interests to develop vocabulary

Who says kids have to learn vocabulary ‘by the book’? They can pick up new words in many places, including their current obsessions. This can be part of teaching words as ‘related groups,’ according to this article. Anyone with a kid may notice that they go through ‘phases’ of novel interests. This month it may be insects. Next month it may be Star Wars. The month after it could be dinosaurs or cars.

You can use these opportunities to explore vocabulary with kids at home. Or as teachers, ask kids to do language arts assignments that are based on topics they choose. This can enhance their motivation for the work.

Take our article on the Maker education movement, for instance. If a kid is into electronics and ‘making’ things, they can start their vocabulary learning to name the objects they are working with. Often, those words can have meaning in different contexts later on. There can be crossover of language into different subjects or for different needs.

So let’s take the word “microprocessor.” What does “micro” mean? Remember word morphology above? Ok, so then, what is the opposite of “micro”? It’s “macro”!

Kids may learn to “tinker” with objects in a Maker education space. But then they’ll later be able to use that word when referencing something like “tinkering” with a recipe in the kitchen. And so on.

To conclude: vocabulary learning can be engaging and fun

There’s no need to rely on memorization and spelling bee contests alone for vocabulary enhancement. Use the 4 tips above to help kids get a hold of vocabulary they will enjoy learning. This will help with interactive methods as well, since the students can talk about their words while using them.

See other articles in this series:

• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (1): understanding the fundamentals of media
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (2): the elements of a news story
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (3): learning to write news copy (part 1)
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (3): learning to write news copy (part 2)
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (4): learning to research and identify sources of information
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (5): learning to critique the media and spot ‘fake news’
• Teaching kids how to start a newspaper (6): tips and resources for fact checking

In our past articles on this series, we’ve been covering the subject of teaching kids how to start a newspaper. Our focus has mainly been on the ‘hard news’ style of print publishing. We’ve covered a lot about producing – and thus recognizing – quality news. However, there is a side to journalism that does bring out a different style of writing and coverage. This comes in magazines and ‘features’ (more in-depth areas of newspapers).

There is just as much merit in saying that good journalism expands into magazine-style publications, as it does newspapers. This is because there is certainly an audience that likes to read periodicals, but isn’t always looking for breaking news. Plus, magazines and ‘feature sections’ of newspapers attract revenue in the same way for publishing companies.

And, to be honest, the kids in your class are probably more familiar with magazines than they are with hard news. So this lesson may be fun for them, since they’ll be able to apply its lessons to their own interest-based reading material.

So in this article, we’re going to teach kids about magazines and feature articles. Let’s get started!

Teach kids the differences between a newspaper, a magazine and a feature story

The first step, of course, is to know what a magazine and a feature story are, in comparison to a newspaper. We gave some tips on writing news copy in earlier lessons, but those tips may not always apply to magazine or feature writing. This is because the audience, style, timeliness and length are going to be different.

Magazines and feature articles are longer, and more in depth. Feature articles are what usually show up in magazines, though they can be found in newspapers as well. They have more creative freedom and aren’t as bound by the restrictions of ‘getting to the point fast.’ They can take their time, so to speak, to tell a story fully.

They also have broader inclusions of acceptable topics. The elements that make a news story are stringent, whereas the elements that make a magazine or feature story could still include those relevant factors, while also highlighting a new angle, with a more focused approach.

In writing news copy, we learned that ‘writing tight’ is key. This is to make room for advertisements. While making room for advertisements is still important in magazine publishing, it doesn’t always mean a lesser word count per article. Thus, the writing can include things like adjectives, if it adds to the enjoyment of reading the story. The aim here is more for ‘digest’ and ‘leisure’ reading, rather than finding out the news as fast as possible.

This article we found explains that there are 4 main elements that make a magazine different from a newspaper. To use their words, they are:

• Audience
• Content
• Distribution
• Design and layout

And this article goes into depth about how a journalist’s job is different when it comes to newspaper and magazines.

This PDF we found online highlights the types of feature articles, as well as great vocabulary to know when producing a feature or magazine article. It can also be used as a full lesson plan for teaching kids how to write a feature article.

This article explains with utmost clarity that feature stories are not just ‘softer’ stories. It also explains that the main difference has to do with writing style.

Use practice lessons to teach kids about magazines and features

Practice makes perfect! While you are teaching kids about how to start a newspaper, you can also teach them a new facet of journalistic writing: feature articles and magazine production.

Thankfully, there are some great resources ready-to-go for your lesson planning on this topic.

There is the PDF we linked to above, and these:

Magazine Production – Lesson (by Media Smarts)

Feature Writing Lesson Plans (by schooljournalism.org)

You can stick to one you like, or combine them, with your own additions and input, to teach magazines and feature article writing to your students.

Magazine and feature articles can be a fun way to teach kids about writing styles

As we brought up in our articles about writing news copy, there are different forms of writing styles. Kids in school may have been taught essay, book report or story writing in their English classes. But in the wider world that they’ll operate in after they graduate, they’ll soon realize the world doesn’t always write in those formats. But reading and being able to articulate in different styles can go a long way when putting ‘communication skills’ on a resume.

As mentioned above, kids are probably reading magazines already, or could certainly find a magazine on their interests. This may be a fun way to pretend to be a fashion writer, national geographic explorer or a Maker magazine contributor (see our article about Maker education to learn why kids may enjoy this topic).

In short, use their interests to start lessons on magazines and feature articles. In the end, they’ll be better equipped to communicate to new audiences, and to alter their writing style with a specific purpose in mind.