Education – Long Island Chick http://longislandchick.com Life on Long Island with a Family Tue, 13 Sep 2016 16:47:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.24 Better Than Flash Cards – Quizlet to Help Your Child Study http://longislandchick.com/better-than-flash-cards-quizlet-help-your-child-study/ http://longislandchick.com/better-than-flash-cards-quizlet-help-your-child-study/#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:20:13 +0000 http://longislandchick.com/?p=8003 Remember breaking out that stack of index cards and writing your question on one side and the answer on the other? Reviewing them over and over again – how boring was that and do you really think it is effective? With the amount of knowledge kids are expected to amass these days in school, the old flash card system is truly outdated.  This is especially true if your child has trimester exams or yearly comprehensives which require memorization of  entire trimester or yearly work!

My favorite tool of choice for general studying is Quizlet. Quizlet is a free (there is a paid plus version that most people won’t need), internet application where you start with flash cards made by you or you can choose from millions of flash cards sets created by others.  But that’s just the beginning – once you’ve got flashcards, you can use several study modes including multiple choice tests and study games. You can add images and listen to audio, and even study on the go with one of dozens of Quizlet-compatible mobile apps. We downloaded FlashCards Sync for the iPhone to my son’s phone so he can review on the bus in the morning.  I like that it has a smart study feature – as long as you are honest and check off whether or not you knew the answer, the application will filter out the answers you knew and keep bringing back the problems that gave you trouble.

With Quizlet, you can also create study groups and allow members to contribute flash cards to the group.  This is an excellent resource to study for those trimester and comprehensive examinations. What I do, is take flash card sets we already made, add quiz and test questions/answers to them and create a trimester exam study set.

Hope you give it a try and find Quizlet as wonderful resource as we do!

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Apparently I’m NOT Smarter than a Fifth Grader! http://longislandchick.com/apparently-im-not-smarter-than-fifth-grader/ http://longislandchick.com/apparently-im-not-smarter-than-fifth-grader/#respond Wed, 20 Oct 2010 01:19:12 +0000 http://www.kathleenscanlon.com/?p=361 Not that I didn’t know an answer to a fifth grade question..but that I took my fifth-grader’s answer as gospel instead of trusting my own knowledge. Strangely enough, both my 3rd grader and my fifth grader are learning map skills in social studies at the same time.  They both had tests last week and we were studying together.  Longitude and latitude were two terms they were both expected to know.  When I turned to Ryan (3rd grader) and explained that longitude went north-south, Matt interrupted and said I was wrong.  I blinked for a moment, sure that longitude lines went north-south and he said no, that it was an imaginary line that went around the earth and that latitude went up and down.  Matt was so sure I figured well maybe I was wrong, I must have forgotten (not that I have ever had anyone ask me the latitude and longitude of any location) and he had to be right and thought nothing of it.  We made outlines, electronic study cards on the iPads and they took their respective tests.

Well, both tests came back yesterday and both, of course, got longitude and latitude wrong.  I was flabbergasted!!!  I got really upset with myself – since when do I take the word of a 10 year old?! I have a total of 15 years more education than Matt which includes not only a Bachelor’s but a Doctorate as well, and I let a fifth grader tell me I was wrong and never second-guessed him.  And then I smiled to myself – I always tell my kids to have the courage of their convictions – to have faith in what they believe and apparently Matty embraced it fully.  Shame on me!

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