Bonnie,

I found you through Youtube and am intrigued by the 10 Minutes to Better Study Skills!

My home-schooled daughter is 16 and dual-enrolling in our local community college and currently in her first class.

She is struggling with note-taking!  She also took the SAT in June and scored poorly in the reading portion, especially the “passage” reading. I’m beginning to make the connection with these two problems… there seems to be a struggle, for her, in pulling out keys points in a written document, or passage, and in an oral lecture.

She tends to want to write down too much from a lecture and gets overwhelmed when given a passage to read with questions to answer, especially when timed. For writing assignments, she is gifted in vocabulary usage, spelling and grammar, but the process of writing becomes a long, drawn-out process.

She wants to “hover” over a slew of ideas but struggles to land the plane.  When she does land the plane, it will take hours.

Will your book and the forms therein help us?

Karen McGold

Karen,

There is a direct connection with the ability to pull out the main idea and important details and note-taking. You want to be sure the notes you take are meaningful and when you don’t know how to quickly pull out that information from either reading a passage or listening to a lecture, you are ‘sunk’.

That is one of the specific reasons I designed the graphic organizers in Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills in the manner that I did. These forms not only help you with note-taking, they also become a ‘study-guide’ for you when you are reviewing the material or answering the questions at the end of a section or chapter. They can also be used to learn how to take notes while listening to a lecture or presentation.

The graphic organizer fill-in-the-blank forms are designed specifically with your daughter in mind.

Another product that will also help her is our game the Comprehension Zone because it teaches you specifically how to pull out the main idea, details, and sequence what you read or listen to in a game format. It can be played for both reading or listening comprehension. Playing with the skill, practicing the skill through play, and then utilizing the Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills will go a long way in teaching her those missing skills.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET
http://bonnieterrylearning.com

Should you do your own summer learning program?

Fact: More than half of the achievement gap present in 9th grade between lower- and higher-income children can be explained by summer learning loss.

Make Learning Stick with learning games and reading fluency training over the summer. There are many things you can do at home to bridge that summer learning gap.

1. Reading Fluency using Five Minutes to Better Reading Skills…and Yes…it only takes 5 minutes to do. Sally Shawitz, author of Overcoming Dyslexia states, “I urge parents to make fluency training their number one priority.”
2. Take a weekly trip …to the zoo, a local park, the pool, the river, a local factory…and afterwards as a family write down what you did and what your favorite part was…using the fill-in-the-blank forms from Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills and create a booklet to keep for all of your weekly trips.
3. Do some nature activities such as listening to outdoor sounds, nature rubbings, shape hike, incher hikes … again use the fill-in-the-blank forms from Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills to describe what you found or did.
4. Activities to do at home like making puppets and putting on a puppet show. Bake cookies together, have a backwards day where you eat dinner in the morning and breakfast in the evening, do add-on-stories. Again write down your favorite things or worse things about the activity.
5. Have a Game Night or a Game Day…choose learning games…they are fun as well as work on skills. Some great ones are The Sentence Zone (play & learn sentence building and grammar while having fun) , The Comprehension Zone (play & learn reading comprehension and listening comprehension), or the Math Zone (play & math calculation practice).
6. Read books together…and write a review or report on it, or have a review night where you all act as book reviewers of the book you read.

Check out the books, games, and guides here:

Reading

Writing

Math

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

 “We’ve already done some of the exercises you told us about. My kids thought they were fun! I just wish we had found you before we had spent thousands of dollars.” Kathy G

 “I like that I can use this for all of my kids, not just my struggling one. I like that. That’s a big plus.” Linda E.

 “I was able to join the call via the web conference and from what I heard, it was very exciting! Then I had tech problems. Any chance of being able to listen again?” Elise C.

 “I sooo appreciate your making it doable via computer.” Tricia L

 “Thank you so much for the information!” Rachel B

 “I didn’t know there were so many easy ways I could help my son.” Susan B

For those of you that were unable to attend, I have twisted Susan’s arm and we are doing it again this Saturday. This is another chance for you to join in to the FREE private training call.

How to Help Your Child Improve Their Reading, Writing, & Math Skills in 20 Minutes a Day

Sat. March 13th 11am PST, noon MST, 1pm CST, and 2pm EST.

Register here:

http://www.homeworkwars.com/privatetrainingcall/

Upon registration, you will receive the call in information and a Handbook on How to Help Your Child Improve Their Skills.                                                                                                                                                                                      

You can either call in or attend via the web.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

The following activities work well with all kids, whether they have dyslexia, LD, ADHD, are falling through the cracks, or are gifted. I have done the activities successfully with all of them!

I have two favorite things to do to not only help my kids, but to stay motivated doing it too. The first thing is to have more frequent game nights, playing educational games – learning games like The Sentence Zone, The Comprehension Zone, or The Math Zone. When you play games with your kids, they build skills while having fun and get a lot of modeling from you too. At the same time you get to have quality family time, so it is a double win situation.

The other activity I like to do is to have an evening where I might turn the heat up a degree or two, and everyone gets dressed in ‘summer’ clothes, and we have a ‘picnic’ on the floor of the living room. Afterwards, we might tell stories to each other – what I call ‘add-on stories.’ In these stories one person starts off and then the next person adds on to the story. We keep going round and round and the story gets longer and longer. The only thing is, the kids have to pay attention and so do you, so what you add on makes sense to the story. This builds listening comprehension and memory as well as a really good time.

Hope this is helpful!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Hi Bonnie,

I’d like to place an order for a product of yours, but I have not been able to locate any age or grade range for any of the items.  Can you tell me for whom the Comprehension Zone is appropriate?

Thanks,
Susan Taber

I recently found you on the web and just watching your vids, I’m VERY interested. To wit: I’m homeschooling my 16 year old nephew who has been diagnosed ADHD and dyslexic. With the phonics reading materials I’ve found on the net and at my local library, I can only find elementary school age relative materials. Money is tight or I’d simply order EVERYTHING you offer.

Any suggestions?

Thank you for your time, and more importantly your efforts to bring REAL EDUCATION to this nation!

Sincerely,

Rich Brewer

Hi Rich,

Sorry for the delay in responding. I was out of town visiting my mom in Chicago.

I know what you mean about phonics reading materials being geared to elementary students. In fact, most are geared to kindergarten through 3rd grade. That is why I designed mine for all ages. I’ve always worked with students from kindergarten through adult ages. I figured that my younger students would feel like they were doing older kids stuff and my older students wouldn’t feel like they had to do little kid stuff.

You can always start small and gradually build what you are using. The first things I would get are the Making Spelling Sense, Making Spelling Sense II, and Five Minutes to Better Reading Skills. The Making Spelling Sense teaches all of the phonics, word attack skills, auditory processing, and word structure. The Five Minutes to Better Reading works on reading fluency and accuracy as well as visual and auditory processing skills.

The Spelling Pack saves you $4.00; the Five Minutes to Better Reading Set saves you $9.00

When you purchase all of them as the Reading Pack – which includes the Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills + the Comprehension Zone you get a $20.00 discount, plus you then have the comprehension piece in place. You also get a copy of my new e-book: Understanding LD and Dyslexia as a bonus with the Reading Pack.

Hope this is helpful.

I’m glad to see you signed up for the free teaching and homework tips from my blog. BTW: You can subscribe to the videos on You Tube too.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

http://bonnieterrylearning.com

This review is difficult for me to write because this product had such a dramatic and positive effect for one of our children.  It has been an answer to prayer, a break-through for our child who has struggled with auditory comprehension for years.  I am grateful for the opportunity to use this product that we would not have otherwise had access to,  thankful for God’s sovereignty that our family was chosen for this review and that the vendor determined to send us this particular product (as part of the TOS Bloggers Program).

So as you read this review realize that I’m not unbiased, know that I’m indebted to this product for helping my child in a way that I had failed to help him on my own and take from it what you will.

Bonnie Terry Learning focuses on products for the struggling learner.  The goal is to enable you to be better equipped to develop strong reading, writing and math skills in your child with dyslexia, ADD, Autism or other general learning difficulties.  Even gifted children can struggle in some of these areas and Bonnie Terry aims at smoothing out those bumps in the road of education.  They try to help you “think outside the box” to address your child’s difficulties from an angle, direction or perspective that you may not have considered, a direction that may be the difference between success or struggle for your child.  Bonnie Terry offers a variety of games and products to improve reading, writing, math and study skills for children 7 years and older.

Bonnie Terry Learning sent our family The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap ($67).  Rocket Rap is geared for 1st  grade through adult to help develop and strengthen reading or listening comprehension.  The game comes with 3 sets of cards written at different reading/listening levels (2nd-3rd grade, 4th-6th grade and 7th-12th grade).  Each set of cards can be used in several different ways.  Children can find the factual information, the main point or work on sequencing.  Children are able to read the cards themselves or may listen as you read to them in order to work on either reading or listening comprehension.  This versatility makes it easy to play the game with children at multiple reading/listening levels at the same time.  The cards are self-correcting and include hints to help your child succeed and even allow for using a helper in the scoring.

The Rocket Rap game consists of a high-quality, over-sized vinyl game mat, 3 sets of cards, four playing pieces and a die.  Play progresses by the child reading or listening to the paragraph on the card.  Then they complete their task depending on their level.  Beginners name two facts from the card, intermediates relay the main point of the paragraph AND two facts and advanced students use several cards at a time and put them in the proper chronological order.  Each time the child completes their task they get to roll the die and move.  If they need to use one of the helpers you take one point off of their roll.

All of our children from 1st grade up were able to play together, which as you know is an important feature for our family.  Our older children (10, 11 and 13) were able to easily complete the comprehension activities on all levels of cards, but enjoyed working on the sequencing.  Our 9 year old was happy to play with the 7th-12th grade cards.   The game was interesting enough to the kids that they wanted to play multiple times, even when some of the novelty had worn off.

Pros:

* multi-level play

* nice, high quality game

* lots of fun facts about people and planets included on the cards

* improves focus on the task at hand

* gives older children an opportunity to read out loud

* ability to focus on several different aspects of comprehension

Cons:

* price

* there should be more cards (in my opinion)

* not a fast-paced, edge of your seat type of game, but our children all enjoyed playing it, so what can I say?

What Rocket Rap did for our child:

The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap had amazing results for one of our children.   We have been working with him on comprehension for years.  I often have him draw pictures of what I’m reading, we act things out and we read just a few phrases at a time and ask him questions whenever we are dealing with auditory learning.  He simply struggles in this area.  I was interested to see how he would do with Rocket Rap.

I began with the easiest level.  I read the card to him and he was to tell me 2 facts from the card.  When it was time for him to answer all I got was a blank stare.  When prompted with the helpers, he was still unable to answer.  I was honestly shocked that he could not do this.  The cards we were using only have 3-5 sentences, are chock full of facts and he couldn’t pick out one.  I ended up modifying the game for him, rather than have him tell me two facts per card to earn one roll of the die, I gave him one roll of the die for each fact he could pick out and we used lots of helpers.  He was still unable to finish the game.

We began playing Rocket Rap more often.  The improvement was rapid and dramatic!  By the end of the next game he was able to play without my previous modifications and currently it is easy enough for him to pick out facts while listening that he likes to try reading the card himself.

For the first time in his life our child will raise his hand when Mark asks questions during family worship and he will know the answer.  He will come up to us after church and spontaneously tell us something that he learned from the sermon.  He is so amazingly proud of himself and I’m amazingly thankful.

Final thoughts:

As I mentioned this is a tough review.  For 8 of our children this game would be a fun, helpful activity that is not worth $67, but for one child, for these results, I would happily pay double.  We’ve tried things similar to this in the past, we’ve been focused on this problem for years, but Rocket Rap has been the first activity that has been successful.

If you have a child who struggles with reading or listening comprehension, I certainly think that Bonnie Terry’s The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap is worth a look.  If any of you decide to go this route, I’d love to hear what you think.  Have our results been typical?

You may read more reviews of Rocket Rap and other Bonnie Terry Learning products at The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew blog.  You may read more of my homeschool curriculum reviews on my review page.

Bonnie Terry Learning sent The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap to our family free of charge (part of the TOS Bloggers Program) to enable me to write this review.  All opinions expressed are my own and I am not otherwise reimbursed for any reviews here on Raising Olives.

How many times have your kids re-read the same pages in their textbook, searching for the answers? Your kids may have even flung their book down or at you in frustration? That may be because no one actually ever taught them the skill of reading for meaning, and a result, reading assignments are hard for them.

Teaching the skills of reading for meaning, teaching reading comprehension skills, doesn’t have to be daunting. In fact, what if you could play a game as a family and in the playing your kids could actually learn how to read for meaning? That is what the kids in this family are doing. Watch the video of this family playing The Comprehension Zone. They are learning how to find the main idea of what they read. They can also play to find details of what they read or sequence what they read while they play.

Hope this has been helpful!

Be sure to leave a comment below and a question to your right!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

The Bonnie Terry Reading Pack – is this pack recommended for me? I am 39 years old and I have serious problems with reading comprehension.  I would appreciate your help with books or tip because most of them are for kids.

Many Thanks,

Sarita Navarro

I have a quick video here where I tell how using the Five Minutes to Better Reading Skills component of the Reading Pack made a huge difference in a 55 year old’s life. I also used the other components with him, but he was really able to see his progress concretely with the Five Minutes to Better Reading Skills component of the learning pack.  One of the things I was very conscious of when I created/wrote all of my books, games, and guides was to not make them ‘cutesy’ – only for young students. The books, games, and guides are for all ages.  Here is the video.

It is important to understand the underlying cause of dyslexia because you do address the underlying causes of dyslexia in different ways.

Additionally, you may want to check out the following video where I talk about dyslexia related reading comprehension problems.

Reading Comprehension Problems? Learn the 3 Causes You will find out more about fluency problems, vocabulary problems, and reading for meaning.

And, here are a few more articles on comprehension:

Three articles for you:
Trouble Understanding What You Read? Part One
Trouble Understanding What You Read? Part Two: The Game Solution
Easy Ways to Improve Reading Comprehension & Actually Utilize What You Read

Hope this is helpful!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

The call is filling up fast – Reserve your spot now. I have had so many calls from parents recently, wondering how to help their child over the summer. They realize summer is a great time to give their child a boost, but they also want to be sure they have an enjoyable summer. So, I decided to have a webinar where I will present information on summer activities to help your child’s reading, writing, and math skills improve as well as being rich in experiences and family time. You will be able to ask me questions too. Attendees will also receive a surprise FREE gift.

So, I’m hosting a FREE Live Webinar on Wed June 17th at 4pm. 

Searching for Summer Activities to Improve Your Child’s Skills and Still Have Fun

FREE Live Webinar on Wednesday June 17th at 4PM Pacific

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/331403458

LD Specialist and Board Certified Educational Therapist Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., is answering your questions about summer activities to help your child improve his skills. The webinar will be recorded; if you can’t attend, you’ll be able to listen later. Plus special surprise bonuses just for registering!

Guest Presenter Mary Leppert, Author and Publisher of The Link Homeschool Newspaper will also be on the call sharing her insight on summer activities including low cost music related activities she exposed her son Lennon Leppert too. He is now an accomplished musician.

Register now!

Learn About:

1. Low cost activities to improve your child’s skills

2. Improve your child’s reading in 5 minutes a day

3. Activities to do at home, in the yard, or on your block

4. Field trips to take

I’m here to tell you, there is a lot you can do to help your child improve their skills. Whether you are homeschooling, tutoring your child at home, or sending your child to a tutor; whether your child is dyslexic, has an identified learning disability, is falling through the cracks at school, you have the POWER to make this summer your best one yet, one that is filled with rich experiences and family time as well as skill building.

You really do have the ABILITY to change your child’s entire future by helping them improve their reading, writing, spelling, and math skills. There are many ways to do this without a lot of money up front. The fruits of what you do this summer will last forever!

Now it’s your chance to ask me, former girl scout and cub scout leader, director of numerous day camps, Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET your questions on how to help your kids improve their skills over the summer. 

Register NOW.

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/331403458

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET…

Bonnie has been teaching for over 35 years and has created numerous books, games, and guides to help students reach their full potential. She specializes in helping parents and teachers identify and address learning problems. Bonnie is a nationally known expert and contributing author to numerous educational journals and magazines including: The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, Homeschooling Parent, Parent’s Monthly, and The LINK Newspaper, RAW (Real Authentic Women), CEC Today, Education Update, and LDA-CA. Bonnie, mom to 3, was a girl scout leader for 10 years, a cub scout leader and assistant cub master for 8 years.

Mary Leppert, Author and Publisher of The Link Homeschool Newspaper…

Mary is the founder and publisher of the largest all-inclusive homeschool publications in North America: The Link Homeschool Newspaper (1995) and The Link Homeschool Newspaper Online (1999). Ms. Leppert is the author of The Homeschooling Almanac, and The Homeschooling Book of Lists. Since 1997, Mary has also produced The Link “kid comfortable” Homeschool Conferences. Mary Leppert is often sought as an expert in the field of homeschooling by virtue of her all-inclusive approach and knowledge, gleaned from homeschooling her now-grown son and 10 years of publishing The Link.

The webinar will be recorded, but you MUST register to access the recording if you can’t attend live. Plus special surprise bonuses just for registering!

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/331403458

Please forward this to anyone you think might be interested in it.

Thanks! There is limited space & I’ll be doing a massive mailing this weekend, so you’ll want to reserve your space early.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET