In addition to reading books to your preschooler, it seems that you can improve his or her chances of doing well in math if you make sure that your young one plays with puzzles.  A study by University of Chicago researchers has found that “puzzle play was found to be a significant predictor of spatial skill after controlling for differences in parents’ income, education and the overall amount of parent language input.”

The study found that if children play with puzzles between 26 and 46 months old, they have better spatial skills than those who do not.  The participants in this study were all assessed when they were 54 months (4 ½ years old).  Spatial skills, according to psychologist Susan Levine, include being able to rotate and translate shapes.  Researchers found that boys performed better on these assessments, but both sexes who had played with puzzles as preschoolers did better than others.

Related articles

• Puzzle Play Improves Math Skills (scienceblog.com)
• First Study To Examine Puzzle Play In A Naturalistic Setting Reveals Surprising Results About Girls And Boys (medicalnewstoday.com)

Gordon asserts that past research made related findings.  The following are examples:

• People with African American-sounding names – less likely to be called back for a job interview
• Children with popular names – less likely to get into trouble with the law
• Girls with more feminine names – less likely to pursue math and science
• Boys with names that are also common among girls – more likely to suspended

This research, however, presents a new aspect for parents to consider–“the name pronunciation effect.”   According to Alter, “Independently of all those other features of the name, the mere ease of pronunciation is enough to drive outcomes.  There’s sort of a warm glow associated with things that are easy to process.”

Related articles

• People with easy to pronounce names win friends and favour (tricitypsychology.com)
• People with easy-to-pronounce names are favored at work and in personal life (eurekalert.org)
• Why having a name that’s easy to pronounce could propel you up the career ladder (dailymail.co.uk)

So, what do wealthy parents do, specifically, to improve their children’s academic performance?    According to the Times report,

“One reason for the growing gap in achievement, researchers say, could be that wealthy parents invest more time and money than ever before in their children (in weekend sports, ballet, music lessons, math tutors, and in overall involvement in their children’s schools), while lower-income families, which are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent, are increasingly stretched for time and resources.  This has been particularly true as more parents try to position their children for college, which has become ever more essential for success in today’s economy.”

The income gap is just one factor in the achievement gap, according to a University of Chicago economist, James J. Heckman, “parenting matters as much as, if not more than, income in forming a child’s cognitive ability and personality, particularly in the years before children start school.”  Another study shows that, on average, high-income children start school with about 400 hours more than poor children in literacy activities (“places other than their homes, their day care centers, or schools—anywhere from museums to shopping malls).”

These researchers believe that when the economy recovers, these problems will continue because wealthier parents tend to be better educated, so they know how to create a family culture that fosters better academic performance for their children than their low-income counterparts.

The Developing Reading Education with Arts Methods, or DREAM program, “trains third- and fourth-grade teachers to integrate the arts into their lessons and sends artists into the classroom to provide weekly coaching.”  The infusion of the arts includes everything from singing to puppetry.

Following recommendations from its K-12 Science Task Force, State Street’s teachers began implementing them, “including its strong emphasis on teaching writing” as a way to improve the “inquiry” part of the state-mandated NECAP science testing.   The NECAP is a thinking test, not a knowledge test, so even though it took two years to pay off significantly, teachers helped students with inquiry by helping them to think and reason better.

Using writing to teach them to think is a natural fit because “writing is always the product of thinking.  Writing forces a kid to organize her thoughts to be expressive and communicate clearly.”  No longer did the school leave writing instruction to the English teacher; science teachers used writing to show how well they understood science.

Writing instruction included various strategies.  Students learned to respond to the NECAP’s vocabulary so that students learned terms like “infer,” “predict,” or “explain.”  Teachers helped them begin by providing sentence starters that started with connectors such as “However,” “In conclusion,” “Whereas,” and “Therefore.”  Students were required to prove their thinking in their writing.

The results of this effort are impressive: by the fall of 2011, State Street’s fourth graders attained 80% proficiency, the 8^th highest in the state.  Their school serves Westerly, the 8^th lowest-income in the state.

Parents should know that some early signs of dyslexia “might include difficulty with rhyming, mispronouncing words or confusing similar-sounding words.”  April Benasich, director of the Carter Center for Neurocognitive Research at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and who did not participate in this study, hopes that this study will inspire parents to get their children assessed at an early age by their pediatricians.

Related articles

• Brain scans spot early signs of dyslexia (thehimalayantimes.com)
• Dyslexia in Babies (fastfoodmom.wordpress.com)
• Spotting dyslexia before a child starts school (esciencenews.com)
• New research spots dyslexia in preschool children – Examiner (examiner.com)
• Spotting dyslexia before a child starts school (sciencedaily.com)

Among other benefits, she outlined the following:

• The socialization that comes from the formation of friendships among daycare parents
• Low-income mothers benefit the most because of the informal support networks that are formed (decreased depression and better financial status)

See Sethi’s article for more ways that using daycare helps mothers:  http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_childcare_boosts_social_capital/

The video suggested research-based practices for teachers and  “outside help”:

Teachers should deliver a balanced core literacy program that includes all of the following:

• Phonics Instruction
• Comprehension Work
• Small Group Work
• Individualization
• Regular Monitoring of Student Progress
• Flexible Grouping to Address Deficiencies

“Outside Help” includes parents, volunteers, and aides who need to be aware of  the following:

• Must Be Trained in How to Help Students
• Should Provide Interventions That Are Aligned with Classroom Instruction
• Should Emphasize Phonics
• Have Students Re-Read Engaging Books (not introduce new books)
• Maintain Records to Help Monitor Student Progress
• Provide Adequate Time for Interventions

See the Best Practice’s link to access the Companion Teacher Planning Guide and other pertinent materials.

His advice to parents is to begin reading something age appropriate to the child at 2 months and to read to the child every day.  As the parent reads to the child, s/he should encourage the child to look at the pictures and to participate by engaging the child in conversations that will cause the child to make predictions, recall facts, etc.

He recommends the following books for African-American children by black authors:

• A Million Fish … More or Less by Patricia C. McKissack (author) and Dena Schutzer (illustrator)
• Baby Says by John Steptoe
• Black Cat by Christopher Myers
• Bright Eyes, Brown Skin by Cheryl Willis Hudson and Bernette G. Ford (authors) and George Ford (illustrator)
• Brown Angels: An Album of Pictures and Verse by Walter Dean Myers
• Dancing in the Wings by Debbie Allen (author) and Kadir Nelson (illustrator)
• Girl of Mine by Jabari Asim (author) and LeUyen Pham (illustrator)
• He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands by Kadir Nelson
• Let’s Count, Baby by Cheryl Willis Hudson (author) and George Ford (illustrator)
• Please, Puppy, Please by Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee (authors) and Kadir Nelson (illustrator)

Related articles

• Walter Dean Myers, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature 2012-2013 (survivingtothriving.wordpress.com)
• Another Reason to Encourage Your Son to Read (uzimacommunityblog.wordpress.com)

Researchers in this study found the following:

• Students who had the worst ranked teachers were stuck below grade level.
• Seniority-based layoffs often meant that schools had more ineffective senior teachers in low performing schools.  When budget cuts had to be made, more lower-paid teachers had to be let go while the higher paid yet ineffective senior teachers remained.

The study researchers recommend the following:

• Better professional development for teachers
• Evaluation methods and incentives that help retain top teachers in high-poverty schools
• Reform to state laws that mandate seniority-based layoffs
• Increased oversight to ensure that top teachers are spread equitably among schools