We hope you enjoyed a wonderful holiday season with family and friends, and we wish you a very Happy New Year.
In 2023, the BriteMinds team is committed to enhancing students’ self-esteem, confidence, and academic happiness while also collaborating with parents. We plan to continue building strategic and critical thinking skills, Executive Functioning and practical life skills that are guaranteed to help students succeed. The BriteMinds team is sensitive to our students’ needs to ease academic stress. We are open to discussing any changes, adjustments, and improvements to a student’s learning plan that will best enhance their experience at BriteMinds.
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Looking Back on 2022
What We've Learned from You!
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BriteMinds instructors reflected on the past year’s work and learned that our administrative services have been an instrumental pillar of our teaching system. An example of our administrative support is our daily learning grid, which summarizes the assignments students completed at BriteMinds, work that is left to complete at home, current grades, missing or late assignments, and more information about the students’ progress. This comprehensive daily report keeps parents updated about their child's learning.
Our teaching system at BriteMinds enhances academic performance, prevents unnecessary stress that can impact the parent-child relationship, and reduces the tension caused by unexpected ‘bad news.’ We plan to continue incorporating these useful services into our students’ lesson plans, to benefit both students and their parents. It has been a joy to see our students showing pride in their report cards. Thank you for collaborating with us to support your child’s needs and for allowing us to do the work we love. We look forward to meaningful and creative experiences in 2023.
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Fostering Early Learning Skills: Pre-K to 3rd Grade
It's Never Too Young to Start Learning!
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At BriteMinds, we acknowledge the importance of early education and fostering early learning skills. Our curriculum for young learners, preschool to third grade, is designed to develop a strong foundation for their future education. This foundation for good learning habits includes important concepts such as how to listen and observe, how to slow down and develop curiosity, and how to approach ‘unknown,’ yet-to-be-learned concepts with patience.
At BriteMinds, children enjoy learning through our various resources: a diverse collection of books, a wide range of fun, brain-stimulating games, and other engaging, educational activities meant to contribute to their development. At BriteMinds, children not only benefit from the peaceful, relaxed environment, but they also get to interact and develop a positive, healthy relationship with their instructor.
With our assistance, children learn to be observant, patient, and flexible-minded, which are qualities necessary for a well-balanced development. BriteMinds’ curious young learners develop a positive approach to the learning process as our undivided attention to each student has a remarkably validating emotional impact.
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Note-Taking Tips: the Cornell Method |
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Note taking is an important skill students must develop to succeed throughout middle school and high school. Teachers will often require students to take notes during a lecture or while reading a textbook, and students will need to reference those notes when studying for a test or doing homework.
One of the most popular note-taking methods, developed by Professor Walter Pauk, is known as the Cornell Method.
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Cornell notes are commonly used by high school and college students to capture the main idea of a lesson. This method involves taking a paper and dividing it into three parts: cues, notes, and summary. In the ‘Cues’ section, students write down any questions they might have during or after the lesson, and it serves as a reminder of what they need to study. In the ‘Notes’ section, students write down the facts and information mentioned throughout the lesson. In the ‘Summary’ section, students summarize what they learned after the lesson, while their memory is still fresh. Cornell notes help to keep the brain active and flexible, working in different areas simultaneously. Through this method, students can apply, summarize, and evaluate what they are learning.
At BriteMinds, we recognize the importance of note taking and how it enhances memory, retention, and a student’s ability to learn. We strongly encourage students to utilize the Cornell Method to capture the most important notes and enhance their understanding of the material.
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Study Skills and Learning Tips for ADHD:
Enhancing Auditory Skills
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ADHD may cause children to feel overwhelmed and stressed, leading to disorganization, frustration, and procrastination. BriteMinds’ learning interventions help students make order from chaos. One method to improve study skills for students with ADHD is by using audio recordings to enhance auditory learning skills. Listening to their own audio recordings may help students remember and practice vocabulary words or other parts of a lesson. Students can record themselves saying vocabulary words out loud and play back the recording later to listen and memorize the words. This strategy is also helpful for developing audio processing skills. |
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Blokus: A Brain-Building Game
We Make Learning FUN!
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Blokus is a fun, Tetris-like game designed to build spatial reasoning skills, visual perception, and strategic thinking. Essentially, there is a board of squares and 21 pieces of each color (red, blue, green, and yellow). Each piece is a different shape, ranging from one square to five squares. The objective of the game is to fit as many of your pieces on the board as possible, and pieces of the same color must touch each other (but only at the corners). The game ends when players can no longer put down a piece. Then, whoever has the highest number of points wins (each square is one point).
BriteMinds makes learning fun by ! Blokus is a great brain-building game for several reasons. Rotating the shapes to see where they fit helps develop spatial reasoning skills, which is essentially the understanding of shapes and how they relate to one another. For younger children, Blokus develops fine motor skills and visual perception. Children also learn to use strategic thinking to fit as many pieces on the board as possible (e.g., starting with the biggest pieces first), and learn basic game etiquette such as patience, dealing with disappointments, resisting cheating, and anticipating the actions/moves of others. Make sure to try out this educational game at BriteMinds and with family and friends!
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