2017 – 2018 Certified Learning Report

INDIVIDUAL EDUCATION AND SOI CERTIFIED LEARNING

Individual Instruction — personified by the image of a tutor working one-on-one with a student — is the gold standard in education. Tutoring is superior instruction because it allows students to work at their own pace while the tutor is constantly monitoring progress and is available whenever a student needs help or guidance.

This type of teaching is especially important in the formative years (kindergarten to grade three) when children first encounter the world of formal education, and are most susceptible to learning difficulties. Early failures, if unobserved or otherwise unaddressed, become fissures in the students’ foundations for learning. They are very difficult to repair and almost always compromise further educational development.

Unfortunately, individual instruction is not the

Taking the Next Step in Learning

At SOI Systems, we provide you with practical ways to help your students succeed. SOI is a system of assessments and training materials that develop intellectual abilities and learning functions.

We equip students with the necessary intellectual skills to learn subject matter, do analytical thinking, become more creative, and, most importantly, learn how to learn.

GIFTED & TALENTED

The robustness of the SOI tests helps incorporate students with gifts in areas not usually included in other assessments. figural, symbolic, evaluation, and creativity abilities are all

Practice Makes Progress!

“Would you choose to build a house on top of an unfinished foundation? Of course not. Why, then, do we rush students through education when they haven’t always grasped the basics?”

Mastery based learning is a concept we embrace at Shady Oak Learning. Sal Kahn, who created the now famous Kahn Academy, recently illustrated this in a Ted Talk. Kahn created a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other  subjects. I get excited when I see well-known experts validate what we know to be true with our students in our school.

SOI Certified Learning modules help us provide a mastery based approach to helping young children acquire foundational learning skills. Each child progresses at his or her own level.

As Mr. Kahn explains in his talk, teaching for mastery and not for a grade, helps students take ownership of their own learning. When we initially test students with the Structure of Intellect test, we know their strengths and weaknesses, and how to improve their ability to master content.

Mastery learning, a concept researched and introduced by Benjamin Bloom in the 1970s, has been widely researched and proven to be effective to help students reach a high level of achievement, when students are given the necessary time and appropriate learning conditions.

Last year we had a group of students in Pre-K who observed their fellow K-2nd grade students have success mastering the Certified Learning modules. They couldn’t wait to get started on their workbook and computer modules when school started this year!

Our motto is “Practice Makes Progress”, and incremental progress with feedback motivates students to achieve.

written by: Pam Jarvis

Pam is an SOI Practitioner and the founder and Director of Shady Oak Learning, a private K-6 elementary school in Fort Worth, Texas.

Seven Key Questions You Should Be Asking in Your Classroom

What makes a successful classroom? Or, more importantly, what makes successful students?

Is it a good teacher? The most organized classroom? The most exciting lessons?

While all of these things are important, we believe that the key to success is this: the student.

1. Is this student ready to learn?
2. How does the student learn best?
3. What areas does the student struggle in?
4. How quickly is the student progressing through the lessons?
5. Does the student have any learning gaps?
6. What can we do to help the student learn best?
7. Why is this student falling behind?

Do these things sound important to you? We promise you that they’re important to us!

That’s why we developed

SOI Certified Learning: Improving Primary Education

Before we get started on what SOI Certified Learning is, here are some of the main reasons that you should be using it in your school or classroom:

• schools and administrators experience positive results and higher test scores
• students learn to take control of their behavior
• affordable and easy to use

Still not convinced? Take a look at these testimonials:

“In my opinion, the Certified Learning program is fantastic at filling in the gaps that kids have. This is my 20th year as an educator, and I have seen nothing that does it better.”

– Jennifer Maldonado, Lubbock Cooper North ES

“‘Excitement’ and ‘empowerment’ are words being used by these  teachers as they and their students reap the benefits of being able to ‘certify’ that the individual educational needs of students in their classes are being met and they are reaching their goal of truly leaving no student behind!”

– Renee Anderson, SOI Senior Program Consultant

Certified learning (for kindergarten, first grade, and second grade) is a managed program that allows students to work at their own pace. It teaches essential, primary learning skills through workbook, computer, and physical exercises.

This program addresses the following difficulties you may have in your classroom:

• lack of basic learning skills
• students who are unwilling to work
• students falling behind
• students’ inability to focus/concentrate
• uncontrolled behavior
• learning difficulties

Starting Education with a Solid Foundation

There are two alarming “trends” in the classroom that I have observed as a teacher. First, children are frequently focussed on getting their school work done quickly at the expense of doing it well. Conscientious children or those who take pride in using discretion and ‘getting it right’ are in the minority. It doesn’t help that video games usually reward speed over accuracy.

The other trend is students taking social direction from TV shows. Unfortunately, the characters that are emulated are often superficial, stereotyped, and unkind. Competition to be ‘cool’ leads otherwise basically soft-hearted children to become aloof or exclusive. Concurrently, children with borderline social abilities may experience little friendship from one day to the next.

The SOI Certified Learning program was established so that all students would get foundational skills in a systematic way from kindergarten up. Students move at their own pace and master all the basics of their learning module before moving on to the next one. Certified Learning is a program that teachers and students love! Children take responsibility for their own progress and teachers are able to provide one-on-one assistance as needed.

As a by-product of the system, children are taught that accuracy is important and that they are not being compared to one another. They quite naturally assist their fellow students and celebrate each other’s success.

One of the biggest problems for teachers in our traditional classrooms is that the number of children who are able to attend to teachers’ group instructions throughout an entire day is decreasing. The hyperactive students are immediately in trouble as they are unable to ‘sit and listen’ with any regularity. The non-hyperactive students who have difficulty learning by auditory instruction also become disruptive as their tolerance wears thin or they develop the habit of ‘tuning out’. SOI Certified Learning tackles this problem.

How does the Certified Learning system work?

Students are assigned to various stations. A small group will begin at the computer. The first week of computer establishes that accuracy,