What is the ACT Aspire

What is the ACT Aspire In April of 2014, the ACT released its first ACT Aspire exam. In June, it discontinued its ACT Explore and Plan assessments. As with the ACT Explore and the ACT Plan, the Aspire aims to prepare high school students tosucceed on the ACTand to gain entrance to the college of their dreams - but what isthe ACT Aspire?For students who will first take the full ACT Aspire battery during the 2014-2015 school year, it will be different from the Explore and Plan in several key ways. How? Read below for four changes to note: 1. The ACT Aspire will utilize a computer format Just as the 2015 revision of the ACT will offer a computer-based version of the test, the ACT Aspire will be an electronic assessment. Though the Aspire will still be available on paper for an additional fee, it is intended to be delivered on a computer. This shift reflects the increasingly digital nature of our society, as well as the importance of computer literacy in higher education and the workforce. The electronic format will include graphics, as well as interactive elements (see below) that its creators believe may further engage students. This is some great information on the ACT computer based test. 2. The ACT Aspire will draw on multiple question types While the ACT Explore and the ACT Plan relied solely on selected response (multiple-choice) questions, the ACT Aspire will ask students to answer three problem types: constructed response, selected response, and technology-enhanced. Technology-enhanced questions will only appear on the computer version of the exam, but constructed response problems will be both frequent and important. With constructed responses, students must explain and justify their answer to a question, as well as compare, create, critique, etc.in short, they must demonstrate the critical thinking skills that the ACT and college more generally require.Taking ACT practice testscan help you prepare forthis. 3. The ACT Aspire will assess a students skill in writing Like the ACT Explore and ACT Plan, the ACT Aspire tests elementary, middle, and high school students in English, math, reading, and science. However, the ACT Aspire also measures students aptitude in writing. Students must complete a 30-minute exercise in which they compose an essay in response to a single promptmuch like the ACT. Students must also utilize a specific genre, such as analytical expository (grade ten) or reflective narrative (grade six). This portion of the Aspire assists schools in determining whether students are prepared for the writing demands of the next grade level. This is some great information on the ACT writing sections. 4. The ACT Aspire will provide more data about academic potential The ACT Aspire begins in third grade. Cumulatively, the ACT Explore (eighth and ninth grade) and the ACT Plan (tenth grade) readied students for the ACT and college over a three-year period. The Aspire, on the other hand, extends this timeframe to eight years. With its results in hand, guidance counselors, parents, and teachers may be better able to recognize gaps in students knowledge early in their academic careers. This may enable students to achieve greater success in elementary, middle, and high schooland ultimately, in college and beyond!

Get Online Physics Homework Help from Expert Online Tutors Right Away

Get Online Physics Homework Help from Expert Online Tutors Right Away 0SHARESShare Physics is a kind of science that gives you a deep knowledge of different forms of matter and energy, their properties and various interactions among them. Physics is an important part of science and academic subjects. Proper guidance is very essential to understand the whole concept and go ahead with it. Tutor Pace a dependable USA based online tutoring website offers services to students, who experience difficulty in handling their Assignment/Homework problems.  Online tutors are available 24*7 and hence students can plan their schedule as per their convenience. The virtual classroom, audio visual sessions with live tutors makes the sessions interactive, informative and hence interesting. Experienced tutors give one-on-one attention and consider it to be their responsibility to elude students with any problem. We pride ourselves in delivering quality of physics assignment help at a very reasonable cost. Tests are conducted to help students evaluate themselves. Parents can even keep themselves updated about their child’s progress. Online Physics tutoring service is right away to assist you anytime, anywhere. [starbox id=admin]

February - HEART NOTABLES - Heart Math Tutoring

February - HEART NOTABLES - Heart Math Tutoring February HEART NOTABLES February HEART NOTABLES February 28, 2014 Logistics There are no school holidays in March. Stay in touch with your HEART Coordinator if you have schedule changes so that we can ensure that you are not rescheduling for a testing day or field trip. Tutoring Tips Review Past Concepts â€" It’s time to check whether your student remembers what he/she learned in past concept notebooks. Your HEART Coordinator will provide you with a worksheet in early March to test whether your student needs extra practice with concepts from earlier this year. It will take 5 â€" 10 minutes for one (not both) of the student’s tutors. Preparing for Lessons As a reminder from beginning of year orientation, here are some options for preparing: o Use the take-home check out notebooks OR arrive early to tutoring and read the lessons in advance of picking up your student. o Skim the whole notebook when you get to a new concept level in order to have the big picture in mind. o The cover page of each concept book gives helpful tips and tells how your student will be assessed on the skill.  Pace of Lessons â€" In most cases (not all cases), students should be able to get through all Activities in a Lesson within one thirty minute session. If you and your student are consistently moving through less than 1 full Lesson per day, check with your HEART coordinator to see if the slow pace might be hindering your student’s retention.  Tips by Level o For students in Place Value and Multi-Digit Addition: Make sure students are using their Strategies to 20 to add single digits rather than reverting to counting! o For students almost finished with Combos to 10: Pick up “Number Arrangement Flash Cards” in the hanging files as an additional way to review all focus numbers at once. These are written into the next concept level (Strategies to 20) but are also good practice for recognizing parts of numbers for students still in Combos to 10.  Behavior Management: Specific Positive Reinforcement For the handful of students whose focus level and behavior is inconsistent, be sure to point out specific, observable things they are already doing well or that you want to see more of, whether small (sitting up straight, speaking clearly) or large (asking questions to learn more; trying again when they do not get the answer the first time). o Example 1: Not specific: “Great job on that question.” Specific: “I like how you used your pencil and paper to organize your thoughts o Example 2: Not specific: “Please focus.” Specific: “Let me see you sitting up in your chair, with your eyes on the activity for the next 3 problems.” (High five, quick break, or positive acknowledgement should come after the 3 problems, if the student complies with your request!) More Resources Follow articles and postings on HEART’s Facebook Page, Linked In Page, and Twitter account (@HEARTTutoring).

Sam F Economics tutor in London

Sam F Economics tutor in London Sam F works in the Tutorfair head office, getting as many  tutors as possible live on the site. He believes in tutoring so much he’s just gone live as an Economics tutor himself - which he’s pretty well qualified for, having written an Economics textbook! Why do you love tutoring? It’s very rewarding to see that a comparatively small intervention from me can lead to a much bigger outcome for the student. When students see the big picture of why they are learning a certain topic or module, and become motivated to find out answers for themselves - that’s fantastic, and something you rarely see outside of tutoring. Who inspired you in education? My Grandad. He loved learning and was always encouraging me find out more about the world. What else do you get up to besides tutoring? I spend my days working at Tutorfair and being part of the New Entrepreneurs Foundation. Outside interests are: travelling (when possible), cooking, running and writing on behavioural economics. Sam at the top of Caana (the tallest temple in Caracol, an ancient Mayan City in Belize, Central America) If you had a super power what would it be? Tough one… Flight probably - can’t think of a particular reason, but that was my initial reaction What advice would you give to a parent on how to find a tutor? Contact more than one tutor. There are loads of great private tutors in London, but you need to find the best tutor suited to your needs. Ask for a good amount of information from a few tutors and then make your decision based on what you find. If your child needs help with AS or A-level Economics, then why not book an Economics tutor to help boost their learning.

4 steps your school can take to boost its digital health

4 steps your school can take to boost its digital health Last time we went into depth about where your school stands on the digital curve! Remember? (If not…check out the post here and get up to speed.) You probably have a fair idea of where you are on the curve now. Below is an action plan of the steps you might want to take to improve your school’s digital health. 1. Do a digital health check Who needs to do this: Every school at every level.. That means *you*. How often: Technology constantly shifts, so I would recommend taking a long hard look at your digital health at least once every 6 months. How do schools do it? This really isn’t as scary as it sounds. It’s mostly just asking yourself questions about your school's online presence. Start by Googling… ‘teaching jobs in (insert your school’s country/location)’. Does your school appear in the results? What does? This is the very method employed by 80% of job seeking educators. If you aren’t one of the first results, you’re invisible to the vast majority of teachers - the 95% that look for their roles online first. Now visit your website, what do you think? The same with your social media presence. Look at every single piece of information you can find about your school online. Fact: the conversation is going on whether you’re part of it or not. If you heard your school being spoken about by an interested applicant on the street, would you want to hear their thoughts? Would you engage? My bet is that you wouldn’t ignore it. Let’s find ways to identify and facilitate these conversations where they’re happening - online. The next step is to be honest about your social. Are people interacting? If so, with what? If not, why not? This audit is all about thinking about what you are doing well, and what could do with a ‘digital boost’. Check out how your job postings and website appear on different devices, is it mobile-friendly? 50 % of mobile traffic today is.. And growing.. If your job advertisements aren’t optimized for mobile, they may as well be written on a chalkboard. Call a quick informal focus group with teachers that you feel fit the profile of your ‘ideal teacher’. What are their thoughts? How do they think your digital presence could be improved. Importantly - what do they *love* about the school that isn’t explained on your website/social channels? Which channels are lacking? *HINT- INSTAGRAM!* Compile all the results. Dump it all in a doc or a spreadsheet and look for correlations. What are the things everyone feels you need to improve? That’s a good place to start. Now compare them to our 3 archetypes: Laggard, Hanger-On, Digitally-Saavy? and be honest about where your school stands today. Think about what parts of your digital presence need improving and get to work! Start at the bottom of whatever bit of the curve you land on, and work forward. 2. Get out the measuring tape and free up some budget for digital Who needs this: Unless you’re doing everything right. *you*. How often: Once measurement is in place it should be regular, there are plenty of digital tools and there’s no need to wait until year’s end to see if your strategy is working. If you wait that long, it will already be too late. In education, budgets should be meticulously and carefully allocated. If you’re asking what the ROI of digital marketing is for your school? It’s whether or not your school will exist in 5 years. Digital technology evolves quickly. This lends itself to an agile, experimental mindset - which allows schools to make decisions quickly. So dabble - see what works - and do more of that. How schools do it: Start measuring and establish benchmarks - what are you spending on, external and internal? Be as accurate as possible with the figures, these are going to help you measure your successes going further, and what has been measured and understood can be replicated! Can you figure out what you spend hiring and retaining teachers? How much of that money do you think could be put to better use online? Now ? CUT ? something. Once you know what you’re spending on, it will be easier to see where you can make a change. It should be something that saves you time and money and reduces risk. *HINT*: I suggest traditional job fairs - because only 12% of candidates are searching for jobs at fairs. And quite frankly, of those 12% - how confident are you that they’re the best? But it might be something else. Measurement helps you step back and evaluate what’s actually working based on data. It’s the meat of the decision making done for you. Stop making decisions based on your instincts, Gandalf. Now, what are you going to do with that extra time, money - what low-risk options are there that will give you the best results? This is about giving yourself options so that you can invest back into your school's online presence. 3. Implement an employee advocacy strategy! What is it?The important question to ask yourself is how many of your applications come from referrals? If you know and this is in place, then you already have an advocacy strategy. Now what if you could increase the reach of your most vocal advocates? This is where social/web comes in... Who needs it: Schools that want to dramatically reduce their cost per hire and leverage their best asset - their employees - to find new like minded team members. How often: This is an initiative that perpetually succeeds.. It’s an ongoing effort. My challenge to you is to start this week. How schools do it: You’ve done your homework - you understand the problem but you’re overwhelmed about what to do with the knowledge. Well, an easy win for digital is an advocacy strategy. Some schools don’t know what to post online, but it’s pretty simple, ask your teachers! They are your advocates. What are they doing at your school? Why do they stay? What’s great about teaching there? Collect those stories and use them. Build your digital strategy around the teachers, get them to share content and become thought leaders for the school. You will be surprised how many people have a blogger buried deep inside just waiting for the opportunity to be given a platform. Think of yourself as ‘Chief Storyteller’ for your school. You need to protect and promote that story. Even something as simple as a Twitter account can humanize your presence - you need to be the best example of the school’s culture. 4. Grow your digital advantage - the icing on the top of your digital cake. Who needs it: All schools, but particularly those that are in the digital minority (i.e. ahead of the curve) This is the ‘empty-net goal’, the ‘walk-off’. For schools already doing well - this is how they stay one step ahead of laggard schools. How often: this isn’t a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’. Unfortunately there is no info-mercial. This is a new reality and potentially a real cultural evolution for your school. (Queue ear-to-ear smiles of your board, who will eat this up as a competitive advantage over other schools in your area) Right. How schools do it: Advertising on industry-relevant (think: education) job boards. While job searches have largely moved online, that doesn’t mean that all online channels are created equal. A clear majority (76%, in fact) of current job seekers prefer education specific job boards. Keeping their eye on how the job-search game has evolved. You heard it here first: Google entering the recruitment space this year is a game changer for tech-savvy school heads. It means that teachers will be able to find your job and school instantly and directly through Google. Of course, this only works if you know how to optimize your job postings and school website so you show up in the first place. Here’s a guide to get started. PS: A good workaround if you don’t have the time or money to invest in a team of tech whizzes - make sure you’re posting your vacancies on a recruiting platform that knows how to get your jobs pulled into Google search results. (*Cough* - teachaway.com) Joining online conversations around education. This is about getting your school’s name out there. Why not hop on some forums, sign up for online fairs or just answer people’s queries in a relevant Facebook group. There are a million ways to reach out to teachers, and if you don’t, some other school will. Proactive management of all social accounts. Don’t let these slide. It’s better to do one channel well than three channels poorly. Think about what channels work well for your school: Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, tend to be where most teachers are hanging out. Search engine optimization (SEO). This is probably the hardest step and we recommend piggybacking off a relevant site who already has a strong SEO presence teaching job opportunities in your city, country and region. Companies pour money into their SEO rankings and you could go blue in the face trying to keep up. Developing personal development strategies and online training to keep teachers moving forward. Your website needs to show that you care about your students. Maybe you can write a quick paragraph or showcase photos from a recent PD event. Using digital recruitment tools like online job fairs, listings and databases.This allows you to connect with candidates in the places they’re already job searching. Job posting on the internet is simply step one, you need to proactively go after them. So what that looks like is: Many teachers sign up for teacher databases so they can communicate directly with schools and have their profile front and center when schools are seeking new talent. If your school doesn’t have access to those databases, you will be missing out on a waiting list of great teachers. Teachers don’t have the time or the money to trudge halfway across the world to an in-person job fair. A lot of them sign up for alternative options that save them both time and money (online fairs is a convenient way of grabbing these teachers’ attention). The information is out there, it’s time to find it, utilize it and make sure your a school is part of the global online conversation. (Shameless plug time) I would love to get into details with anyone curious about their school’s digital health. I’m always up for a call if you want to book a time on my Calendly, or you can always drop a comment below. Whatever you choose to do, I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts… Originally published on LinkedIn.

So what are these leaderboard rankings anyway

So what are these leaderboard rankings anyway Its week 6 of the italki World Cup Language Challenge.  (Yes, Germany has won the Cup, but a more pressing and curious question remains: who will win the italki World Cup Challenge?). Or, as many of you may be quick to point out, what does winning the italki challenge really mean?  How do I read the leaderboard? Should I boo or cheer? (Cheer is the answer to the last one learning a language is good for you). Offical 2014 italki World Cup Language Challenge Leaderboard Short Answer: The Country ranking attempts to answer the question Participants from which country have taken the most classes during the World Cup Challenge (on average)?. The Language ranking attempts to answer the question Students of which language showed the most dedication to taking classes (on average)?. This latter one got a bit confusing because many of the participants are actively studying multiple languages. Long Answer: Basic Methodology. Trying to put together a ranking of groups of people as diverse as italki users is always a strange proposition very few fit well in easily-defined groups. Ultimately we have had to take some shortcuts to be able to process the data and present it in some sort of a consistent fashion. The top-10 rankings you see have been limited only to teams of 4 or more. By teams here we mean ways of grouping participants. Country teams. The obvious way was by country. Even here, however, we had to make a decision about what counts as ones country, as we have both countries of origin, as well as countries in which our users live. For the top ten by country we decided to allocate students into teams based on their profile listing of the country of origin, add up all their session hours, and divide by number of people on the team. The reason for us using an average was to find a way to rank these teams on an overall metric. So, for example, the average participant from Mexico has spent 19.09 hours taking lessons with an italki teacher. As you can quickly imagine this has flaws. The Angola team wound up beng just one student, who has completed over 50 hours of lessons since the beginning of the challenge. Trying to defray the statistical anomalies like this, but still give a shout-out to the dedicated lone representatives of their countries, we have dropped teams with less than three students. Why 3? Frankly, we needed a number that would not eliminate too many teams, but could still be seen as a team-effort. Yes, it is rather arbitrary. Target Language teams. The math on this just got a little weird. Many of our participants are taking multiple languages. Some are even taking languages which are not listed in our site (one of our more prolific users who has racked up numerous hours in Tagalog is actually learning Ilokano from his teacher- a language we do not have formally listed on the site yet). After loads of hand-wringing and fights with our spreadsheet programs, we have decided to use this metric in a simple and crude way: Your target language team is determined by what language you have studied most of in the period of World Cup Challenge. Then, all the hours that you have taken regardless of language get tallied up and divided by the number of other members of your team. Yup, its very crude. Cantonese and Shanghainese dialects got dropped entirely for example. That said, the reason we chose this approach is: although its easy to tabulate the number of hours in a specific language, it is much harder to figure out how to divide that number to find the average. Do we divide them by total number of participants of the challenge? That would be unfair to the small dedicated groups learning Catalan or pretty much every language but English. Do we divide them by number of people who have at all studied this language? That also yields meaningless results, as it doesnt represent the amount of effort many of our students have put into studying a total of 3 or 4 languages. Ultimately we decided that a participants primary language will be his or her team, and created this relatively abstract measure. What the ranking says is that, on average, people studying Spanish (as a primary language) have spent approximately 7.51 hours taking language classes. Final Thoughts. We do not want our participants to miss out on the glory, so we are planning to do a final ranking by number of hours of all the users who have completed the challenge target. These will be individual rankings, with a breakdown of number of hours learned in at least their top-two or top-three languages. Doing this breakdown every week, however, would be very distracting for our team, and would take away from many other activities that are necessary to keep the site running: community management, customer service, handling the publication of articles, and promoting italki resources to inspired language-learners all over the world. Most importantly, we feel that the real winners of the challenge, whether completers or not, will be those who can look at the before video and the after video, and see how much they have accomplished in understanding another language and culture in avery short span of time. By the way, when your before and after videos are ready, please send them to support@italki.com. Good luck everyone in the last few days of the challenge!

Positive link between literary activity and mental health - Tutor Hunt Blog

Positive link between literary activity and mental health Positive link between literary activity and mental health Positive link between literary activity and mental healthSchoolsNew research from the National Literacy Trust (NLT) charity has made a strong case for a positive link between literary activity and mental health. The report claims that those school pupils who enjoy reading, and engage in writing for pleasure, are three times as likely to have higher levels of mental wellbeing than their peers who find the activities a chore. Statistics in the report disclose that 39.4 per cent of the pupils who enjoyed reading and writing had high levels of mental health and wellbeing, compared to just 11.8 per cent of who died not enjoy the activity. The report makes the bold claim that those children who are less engaged in reading in writing will be more likely to struggle with mental health. More than 50,000 children were polled in the survey, with the results showing that 40.3 per cent of those children with higher than expected reading skills had above average levels of mental wellbeing; while just 13.1 percent of those children with lower than expected reading skills had comparable levels of wellbeing. Members of the National Literary Trust were quick to stress to vital importance of reading and writing in children`s lives: `Children and young people today face a multitude of pressures at school, at home and in their social lives.` Jonathan Douglas, the director of the NLT, went on to say that teachers and parents must do all they can to encourage children to develop good literary skills: `It is imperative that we do everything we can to enable our children to develop the resilience they need to cope with life`s challenges ? and our latest research shows that the joys of reading and writing can be hugely beneficial.` The report had some interesting, and disconcerting, information about how able children were at dealing with stress and anxiety in their lives. It found that more than a quarter didn`t know how to adequately deal with stress, and that more than one in five children were unhappy with their life. The importance of reading in a child`s cognitive development has been understood for decades. Stories help enrich and develop a child`s imagination - they give them the opportunity to imagine themselves in a multitude of different scenarios, testing and expanding their moral compass , while allowing them to emphasise with different characters in the story. The general secretary of school leaders` union NAHT Paul Whitman, who recently replaced Russell Hobby, recently commented on the report: `The importance of reading for pleasure is well understood. Schools devote time to this, to allow pupils to become lost in a good book, as the saying goes.` `But this time is in danger of getting lost now, too. Changes to the curriculum and higher stakes tests and exams mean that reading for pleasure can be squeezed out of the school day. `This disadvantages low income families the most, because school is a point of free access to books and often those children who would benefit the most from reading for pleasure don`t have that many books at home to choose from.` The report discloses that pupils in Greater London, the North East, and the West Midlands had the highest levels of mental wellbeing, compared to children in the South West and Yorkshire who had the lowest. I have not had an opportunity to read the report for myself at the time of writing - it seems to be too elusive for my acquisition. Of course reading and writing are important for a child`s development - it enriches their very thought processes, widens their vocabulary, and of course is thoroughly entertaining! I suspect the link between mental health and literacy activity will have to be researched more fully, before any definitive claims can be made. After all, some of the most famous writers are well known for being amongst the most morose of characters! 17 months ago0Add a Comment