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7Dec
When Midterms Strike, These Tips Will Come To Your Rescue

With midterms looming on the horizon, and words like “cramming”, “staying up”, “last-minute panic”, and the like, replacing every other trendy word that dominated the first half of your semester, this time of the year is a trying period for the under-prepared as well as the over-prepared student. Looking on the bright side, it is never too late to obtain good grades by following these simple and smart tips that will aid in making midterms a pleasant experience.
Time Management: This is probably one of the most cliche, yet the most underrated study tip that can completely transcend your studying tempo. Prioritize, avoid procrastinations and distractions, and feel responsible towards the time schedule that you have chalked out for your midterm prep period.
Study Groups: You can experiment joining a study group of like-minded individuals who believe in discussing, reviewing, or brainstorming complicated topics. It might make your studying experience more interesting and motivate you to strengthen your concepts. You might just take a liking to one of your not-so-favorite subject.
Your Own Words: Rewrite the notes from your class or your textbooks in your own words, making it easier to understand and remember. Studies reveal that it’s easier for students to remember their own handwriting during the actual exam then the textbook print.
Looking Back: It’s always a good idea go over the old tests and home work assignments. Teachers often pull midterm questions from previous tests and assignments. If you can manage to get hold of midterm exam question papers from the previous years, that’s even better. It will help you to get familiar with the pattern of the paper and make you feel at ease before the main exam. Focus on questions you got wrong or homework assignments you had difficulties with and make sure understand the answers.
Ask for Help: If you are stumped with a particular topic or an important concept, ask for help. Consult your professor or your seniors, look into free online tutoring, or ask a friend who might be able to help you. The advent of Internet in our day to day life has made it a lot easier to find free algebra help or online help with math problems. It’s important to be proactive when you are stuck on something and take action by requesting for help.
Take Breaks: Make sure you take short breaks after long hours of studying. A break that does not involve anything study or college related is bound to rejuvenate the overworked brain cells and bounce you to back to a refreshing mood before you start the next lap of studying.
Drink A Lot of Water: This one’s a sure-shot winner especially if you are the kind who likes to burn the midnight oil. Dehydration is bound to make you sleepy, so keeping your body hydrated will ensure that you are feeling fresh even if you’re studying in the wee hours of the morning.
Snack: It’s natural to develop an appetite when you’re utilizing a lot of your mental capacity. Keep your blood sugar level up by eating a healthy snack like cereal bars or fruits after every two hours. This will help you to have a consistently stable energy level that is required for longer hours of studying.
Have Fun With It!: This might sound a little out of place. But it works! If you take the studying and your midterm prep in a positive spirit, you will most definitely feel less stressful, thus making it easier for you to meet your study goals and achieve your deadlines before your exams.
All the Best!…
1Oct
Homestay – The BEST Way to Improve Your English!

We have been a HOMESTAY family for almost 20 years now. Our children – now adults – have grown up with having Homestay guests being a part of our family from the time they were just starting school. We have learned much from having these many and varied guests over the years, and hope that they feel the same!
At the beginning, we took our very first Homestay student because it seemed like a fun thing to do for a couple of weeks. Our kids were 6 and 4 years old, and our student was 14 and from Japan. Her English was what I would call ‘survival English’ – obviously a million times better than our Japanese, which was non-existent. Looking back, I think we learned as much that first time as she did. We learned that apparently at that time (1993) children were not taught the ‘evils of smoking’ in school as they are here. I vividly remember waking up in the middle of the night smelling cigarette smoke. When I confronted her, she knew she shouldn’t have been smoking, but did not seem to understand how upset and concerned I was. We learned about gifts and Heather especially learned her first couple of Japanese words. We did – overall – enjoy the experience, and knew we wanted to do it again!
We moved, and in a new city were very close to the university. Over the next few years we had a large number of Homestay guests from a variety of programs. We had college students, university students, and high school students. We had Homestay students for a weekend and we had ones who stayed with us for two years. Sometimes we just had one student, and sometimes we had four at one time. Looking back on those 9 years in particular, we learned a lot, and our children definitely learned a lot. And – we hope our students also learned positive things from the time they spent with us. During those years our Homestay Guests were from Germany, South Korea, Australia, Japan, Mexico, Venezuela, and China. We also accumulated many Homestay Student Gifts! For a couple of years I also worked as a Homestay Coordinator for a private Homestay organization. That was both fun and challenging.
Another move – this time to be closer to my mom. Initially the house wasn’t ready for students, but after some renos we had two more bedrooms for Homestay students. Because we had no transit service, it was a natural to have Homestay Students from our local high school. Our kids were in high school at that time, and it was definitely a morning rush to get 3 or 4 kids ready and all on the school bus. We had a brother/sister pair from South Korea, and a boy from Thailand, and a boy from Mexico – all for the full school year. We also had a boy from Germany and a boy from Brazil for single semesters. During that time we also had Homestay guests from WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) and HelpExchange – basically free room and board for help around the house/property. Those were adults, travelling around the world – from China, Korea, England, Ireland, Germany, Brazil, Italy – and more!
And – guess what – another move! Almost two years ago we moved into town from our acreage, and now live within walking distance of shopping and a bus stop. This opens up opportunities to have Homestay guests who would not otherwise have been interested in staying with us. Since being here we’ve had several guests through’ HelpExchange, several short-term Japanese teen students, and two full-time International high-school students. We currently have a 17 year old girl from China, and last year had a boy from South Korea.
In the past couple of years we’ve also started doing HOMESTAY TUTORING – sort of like Bed & Breakfast combined with English as a Second Language training. We’ve had a couple of families stay with us, and last summer we had a middle-aged teacher from Switzerland with us for 2+ weeks.
It is the truth that by being a Homestay family you bring the world to your home. We do enjoy having the teenage Homestay students, but I think overall our favourites are now our HOMESTAY TUTORING guests. Most of them have fairly good English, and really do want to learn. They also know a lot about their own country and culture, and are eager to share that with us. We’ve had some great conversations, and some great times showing them special places here on Vancouver Island.
Would I recommend being a Homestay family to others? Most definitely YES!…
31Aug
Online Teaching Jobs – Marshalling Your Credentials

Whether you’re looking for employment with an agency or institution or whether you’re setting up in your own business taking on online teaching jobs, experience counts. When you’re compiling your CV for an employer or to attract prospective students and when you’re evaluating your skill set for your own professional development, there are some key things to remember.
It should be obvious that you’ll need to demonstrate your teaching credentials. It’s common sense, really. It will include all your qualifications and all relevant experience, both paid and unpaid. Testimonials from satisfied students are a great bonus, if you have them. Wherever possible, potential employers or students should be able to verify your credentials.
However, although online teacher jobs are about teaching, they’re also about working online. It’s easy to underestimate the importance of this fact. Over the last decade, online learning has taken off. The best online teachers and tutors not only understand what the developments in the field are, they know how to use them to the advantage of learners.
In online teaching jobs today, you should have an appreciation of several dimensions of the work. On the one hand, you should be familiar with at least some of the key studies that have been done to evaluate the pros and cons of online learning v. conventional classroom teaching.
On the other, you should have a grasp of today’s educational technologies and their potential in your online teacher jobs. Of course this also means that you should also have competency in computing and the internet, so don’t forget to add that to your list of skills.
Depending on your subject and the kind of online work you’re aiming for, different skill levels are required. Delivering homework help via videocall may not require highly developed IT skills, but for other online teacher jobs your computer expertise may be more thoroughly tested. If the online teaching jobs you’re looking for are with established institutions, they may have IT departments to assist, but you may still be called upon to run a webinar or to devise online resources for your students.
The good news is that as online teacher jobs have entered the educational mainstream, so the educational establishments have responded. If you’re really serious about making a career in online teaching jobs, then qualifications in the online dimension of online learning could serve you well.
A rudimentary internet search will reveal a host of resources for teachers wanting to make the most of the internet in their online teacher jobs. There are courses you can take for free, and there are institutions offering courses that you can gain formal accreditation for.
If you want to have the edge when applying for online teaching jobs or recruiting students, it will help to be able to show that your competence is in delivering teaching online as well as being a good communicator with great subject knowledge. When compiling your CV or advertising for students, letting people know that you have a grip on all three of these aspects of online teaching is something to work on.…
4Aug
The Importance Of Academic Assistance To Students

Educational assistance is important for students especially those that have weak academic background. There are professional tutors who offer academic assistance to students of all ages. Tutoring is important in the life of students to help the student in strengthening the short comings in the academic performance. Tutoring is available for general subjects or specific subjects which a student has problem in understanding.
Tutoring is meant to unlock and expand a students full potential academically. It offers the student individual time that might not be possible when there are many other students in class. It deals with the individual weaknesses and difficulty that a student experiences in trying to pursue education and career. The lessons and assistance given to students is aimed at making them better learners in a personalized environment. It also enhances and instills confidence in students through focusing on the areas which are difficult to the learner and therefore helping the student to become a better student with excellent academic performance.
There are different types of educational assistance that students can choose from. There are on eon one, email, phone, and online among others. You can use a combination of either of these methods. Technological improvement has made it easy to get the assistance you need from anywhere. It is advisable to try out more than one type and see what works best for you. There are other improved ways to measure a student’s progress in the process of getting academic coaching from the tutors. Some of these include competitions, exams, chat forums and personal contributions. It is important to take your time and research for the best tutors available in Toronto to enable you get one that suits your academic needs and the needs of the young students.…
27Jun
Benefits of a Maths Tutor Over Online Tutoring

Many believe that tutoring is only needed and essential for those children who are struggling and needing help with their homework and to improve the grades. The fact is tutoring is beneficial for children in a number of positions. For those who are already well advanced, tutoring can be advantageous in preparing the child for the next year, future topics in the syllabus and thus getting a head start. Increasingly however tutoring is being employed for those pupils who are planning on sitting entrance level exams in order to be accepted to higher and more elite schools and education facilities.
It is unquestionable that the advent of the internet has brought added interactivity in learning and education for pupils and people of all ages and abilities. The internet also has a comprehensive knowledge base that would rival many public libraries, although the authority of some if not most of these educational and knowledge based resources can be questionable. For example, Wikipedia a number of years ago did not have the proper and right levels of control and security over its editors and contributors and thus the information it published. Now of course it is a different story and is probably the pinnacle reference point for all knowledge.
Online tutoring will usually follow a set, standard and progressive learning procedure that will ultimately start at more foundation and beginner’s level and subjects leading right up to more challenging and higher levels. This automated tutorial will not be able to understand when a child needs extra help and assistance on certain subjects and nor will it be able to change the way it tries to explain something. These online tutorials usually follow a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
Personal maths tutors will have the experience and expertise of tailoring and personalising the learning material for each child. As each child learns at different paces and picks up and learns information at different ways, qualified maths tutors can not only understand this but work with it maximising the impact of any education and any future learning with each individual child. Furthermore the reinforcement of a person; a tutor instead of a ‘Well Done’ graphic is always responded to more encouragingly by the pupil. Learning through teaching has been practiced for hundreds if not thousands of years, so it is no surprise in the effectiveness of tutoring and employing Maths tutor. Online tutoring does not fit every child and is not always as effective, but the use of online educational resources such as BBC GCSE Bitesize is a great supplement to full time education and a Maths tutor.…
11Jun
Personal Tutoring Versus Hiring a Web Tutor

Students of all ages, from elementary level to college and university can at times call for the help of a tutor. There are several tutoring possibilities accessible, such as personal having a private tutor, personal with a huge firm and on-line tutoring. All of these have their benefits and disadvantages, but the bottom line to contemplate is which choice best suits your child’s wants and those of your family.
Personal Tutoring – Private
Private tutors might be discovered from a number of resources. You child’s school might have a directory of tutors obtainable in particular subjects. When you have a nearby university or college, they might have a tutoring program that’s run for high school students. Yet another excellent resource for finding a local tutor would be to check for on the web listings. There are lots of internet sites and blogs nowadays that have info about tutoring and have lists of local tutors, with their skill levels and comments from previous clients, allowing you to assess the tutor’s weaknesses and strengths. Private tutors will typically come to your property or meet the student in a public place for example the local library. A private tutor is there to aid your child on site with his/her questions and homework. A personal private tutor is usually the perfect alternative simply because they’re a lot more readily offered and the tutoring sessions are face-to-face.
Personal Tutoring – Big Firm
There are many businesses that provide storefront tutoring in most significant cities in North America. While the good quality of what they supply may be on par having a private personal tutor, they’re corporations and in the organization of making income. That becoming said, they do have access to numerous resources and may well be more able to provide individualized studying plans for the student in require of distinct teaching methods, i.e., the entire language technique of studying to read as opposed to phonetic studying. The costs they charge may be greater than a private tutor and their schedules might be much less flexible. But you, as the parent, have to weigh the pros and cons. It all depends on the wants of your child.
Personal Tutoring – On the internet
On the internet tutoring involves interacting having a tutor from a remote location making use of chat. Even though these chat sessions are live so the student can get their questions answered instantly, there may be an issue with language simply because numerous of these on-line tutoring firms outsource to foreign countries. If the student has to spend extra time attempting to get the tutor to understand what they need or want an answer for, it’s not advantageous to the student. Also, because the on-line tutoring services normally charge by the minute, it can get very high-priced when there’s a language barrier. Questions that must be answered are challenging enough without having dealing with a language issue. The on the internet tutor is also not teaching your child the material; they’re simply answering questions. An on-line tutor can’t sit together with your child and in fact physically show them various alternatives to solve a difficulty. In a great deal of circumstances, there’s far more than one approach to come to the proper answer or the student might require extensive explanation, so having a person with the child, in person, has its definite benefits.
As you are able to see, you’ll find benefits and disadvantages in all situations, so as a father or mother, you’ll want to decide which approach finest suits your child. The homework excuses that your child keeps creating may well merely be caused by them not understanding the material and needing a tutor. Obtaining a tutor will enable your child to get far better grades and feel excellent inside the long run.…
3Mar
Is Preschool Really Worth It?

Pre-school never gets its’ credit. When you’re a child you take pre-school for granted. As adults we’re so far removed from the days of adolescence that we have very few, if any, memories of nursery school. It’s possible that the only people among us who appreciate the great work being done at the preschools around the world is your local pre-kindergarten west jordan ut. In this brief article we will discuss the importance of preschool and answer the question “is preschool worth it?”.

The Pre-K Days

Although many of us typically associate preschool with daycare they are not the same thing. Preschool is essential the a child’s development. Preschool helps children deal with social situations in the absence of their parents, it helps them familiarize themselves with a classroom structure and helps assist cognitive development, among other things.

Time to Overcome Separation Anxiety

Did you cry during your first day of school? Its ok, a lot of people did. Separation anxiety is a perfectly normal feeling for a child to experience. A child’s mind is hardwired to panic when it notices it can no longer locate it’s parents for an extended period of time. The first few experiences your child has without you are crucial to over-coming this anxiety. Preschool can be used to ease this reaction and most nursery schools are ready to respond to this type of situation in an experienced, patient manner.

Becoming Socialized

The idea of your child being exposed to other children is one of the most exciting as well as nerve racking experiences of being a parent. Kids play rough and they’re frank with their observations. Although this can be concerning for parents it is crucial to allow your child to interact freely with other kids. These years of social development are among the most important according to researchers.

And Then a Student

Finally, there wouldn’t be pre-k without kindergarten. One of the primary purposes of nursery school is to get children ready for the classroom structure and basic rules that they will become very familiar with in years to come. This provides children with a bit more confidence as well as experience as they transition into becoming students. Getting a good first start at school can be life changing, anything we can do as parents to make a our child’s early years a little easier could have lasting results towards optimizing their academic success.

And So On…

So here we are, we’re finally giving preschool the credit it deserves. Just to recap, preschool helps children to socialize, relax while in the absence of their parents and of course, it helps them in their transition to becoming students. So is preschool worth it? Yes. If you were on the fence about whether or not to send your child to pre-k I hope that this short article served as a reminder to it’s benefits. If you work for a preschool or daycare center I hope this article reminded you that you are appreciated.

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