Parents Education League of Los Angeles » Education News

Paying your Kids for Good Grades?

Hip Web Design — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 05:24:28 +0000

What’s an ‘A’ Worth?

“There’s one big danger of paying your children for A’s: They’ll see the value in schoolwork only when there’s a cash payout.”

While opening the wallet when Jennie brings home good grades is not every families’ tactic, there are some pros and cons to the practice. Read excerpt or click for full WSJ article by Ruth Mantell.

Facts of Life

Almost half of parents pay kids at least $1 for getting an A, according to a July poll conducted for the American Institute of CPAs, a New York-based professional association. Among those who pay, the average reward for an A is more than $16.

“Paying for grades is one way to prepare them for adult life,” says Mark DiGiovanni, a certified financial planner in Grayson, Ga.

“One of the big facts of adult life is that you do get paid for performing well,” he says. “So this is a way of showing young people that when you do something well, you can get financially rewarded for it. And when you do something poorly, you don’t.”

But sometimes it gets complicated. One danger is that students will see the value in schoolwork only when there’s a cash payout. “The downside of using money as a motivator is that it discourages true learning and changes the purpose for learning,” says Neal Van Zutphen, a certified financial planner in Mesa, Ariz.

That’s not just a philosophical issue; it has practical implications. Some students will quit trying to learn once they’ve earned a reward for reaching a specific goal, experts say. So the student who gets an A without too much effort might coast the rest of the way, never reaching his or her full potential.

Sleeping & Learning Connection

Hip Web Design — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 05:03:13 +0000

Sleeping Like a Baby, Learning at Warp Speed

“We don’t help kids learn by extending homework late into the night.”

PEL Parents take note… this latest article in the Wall Street Journal by Alison Gropnik brings to light the results of 2006 research on babies and a paper published just this month on 8-11 years olds and adults. Read on and then put those kids to bed!

Excerpt regarding 8-11 years olds:

Just this month, a paper by Ines Wilhelm at the University of Tübingen and colleagues showed that older children also learn in their sleep. In fact, they learn better than grown-ups. They showed 8-to-11-year-olds and adults a grid of eight lights that lit up over and over in a particular sequence. Half the participants saw the lights before bedtime, half saw them in the morning. After 10 to 12 hours, the experimenters asked the participants to describe the sequence. The children and adults who had stayed awake got about half the transitions right, and the adults who had slept were only a little better. But the children who had slept were almost perfect—they learned substantially better than either group of adults.

There was another twist. While the participants slept, they wore an electronic cap to measure brain activity. The children had much more “slow-wave sleep” than the adults—that’s an especially deep, dreamless kind of sleep. And both children and adults who had more slow-wave sleep learned better.

Children may sleep so much because they have so much to learn (though toddlers may find that scant consolation for the dreaded bedtime). It’s paradoxical to try to get children to learn by making them wake up early to get to school and then stay up late to finish their homework.

Tragedy & What to Say to Our Kids

Hip Web Design — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 06:39:25 +0000

There is no easy way to handle our grief and dismay with today’s horrific events. Many parents expressed the desire to hold their children tight when they returned from school this afternoon. Beyond that, we are posting a link to help you guide your conversations. Please keep in mind, that ... Keep Reading »

The Brain Trainers

Hip Web Design — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 08:15:30 +0000

Can we “learn” to be smarter? According to the latest article by Dan Hurley, a neuroscience reporter writing a book on new research into intelligence, it may be possible.

“Tutoring aims to help students master a subject. This prep aims to make them smarter”

The Year of the MOOC?

Hip Web Design — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 07:38:52 +0000

Please go to the front of the class if you can define “MOOC”.

If not, read on! Massive Open Online Courses are the educational happening of the moment.

The evolving form knits together education, entertainment (think gaming) and social networking. Unlike its antecedent, open courseware — usually written materials or videotapes of lectures that make you feel as if you’re spying on a class from the back of the room — the MOOC is a full course made with you in mind.

In addition, check out http://www.onlineschools.org/inside-online-schools/ for Dr. Diane Hamilton’s blog about College-level online courses throughout the U.S.

How Should Teaching Change in the Age of Siri?

Hip Web Design — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 02:31:36 +0000

We thought this article had some great points to address the instantaneous answers available to students today and how we can teach around that.

“Taking digital tools and mobile technologies into account, it’s obvious that multiple-choice and true-false questions are not going to cut it anymore. Instead, educators have to design questions that force students into drawing conclusions and using the proof process that many of them haven’t encountered yet.”

“One method of practicing problem-solving is giving students both the question and the answer and asking them to explain how to solve the problem — how you harvest the information from the problem and show the steps in the solution.”

Scientific Inquiry Among the Preschool Set

Hip Web Design — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 05:04:10 +0000

“If we want to have great scientists, letting preschoolers explore, play and do pretend play exercises the capacities for doing science. Not so much the flash cards and the Baby Einstein videos.”

Looking to make a thoughtful preschool selection? Check out one of the PEL preschool fairs.

Next one is October 28th! Click here to RSVP for the Valley Preschool Fair

Long Live Paper

Hip Web Design — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 06:10:12 +0000

Do you think textbooks are obsolete?

In their place would come a variety of digital-learning technologies, like e-readers and multimedia Web sites. I see new schools making this switch. My daughters currently head out the door with backpacks loaded heavy and I have found myself paying excess baggage fees to accomodate ambitious travel reading plans. As much as I cherish books, I am tempted by the e-reader. Let us know your thoughts about this op-ed!

Grit, Luck and Money

Hip Web Design — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 05:49:15 +0000

Preparing Kids for College and Getting Them Through

What determines success in college and beyond? Good grades? Hard work? Persistence? Recently there has been much published regarding following the path of least resistance versus trying and failing. American RadioWorks’ Emily Hanford explores the issue in this Documentary Podcast.

In addition, you may want to check out Paul Tough’s recent book (September 4, 2012); How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. Paul researches why some children succeed and others fail and more importantly, what can we all do to help steer more kids towards success.

Got Engineers, America?

Hip Web Design — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 05:34:17 +0000

Have Your Kids Study Lego Bricks in School! Applied education at its best! This interview with technology teacher Cathy Webb, describes advantages of using legos in curriculum to teach kids to creatively problem-solve, to break outside of the box of Lego bricks and look for the objects around them and build ... Keep Reading »