Tag Archives: study tools

Why Social Studies Matters

social studies

Social studies is concerned with a wide array of disciplines that impact and affect human society on different levels. At the school level, social studies is a commonly taught subject and can include geography, history, anthropology, sociology, political science, and so on. Social studies is inherently important to any school curriculum because it teaches children the value of good behavior, ethic, and civics and molds them into better more productive citizens. Not to mention it is invaluable for any democratic society with global values. 

When your child goes to school and then grows up further, they will undoubtedly need to interact with other children from other cultures or will read about them. Social studies provides a kind of map that can be followed for children to know how to live and behave in society and understand its underlying mechanisms. 

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Flashcards: An Effective Study Tool

 

flashcardsStudents are always looking for more effective ways to study and parents want to help when possible. Two students, Michael Bollinger and Max Holnaicher “are using technology to take an age-old learning method – flashcards — and bring it into the 21st century,” says Microsoft’s dailyedventures.com. With SAT and ACT tests approaching, CardKiwi.com flashcards could be a valuable resource when used to study vocabulary and math formulas.

FreeTech4Teachers.com : “Card Kiwi is a flashcard service whose appeal is its simplicity. Flashcards on Card Kiwi are text only. As you flip through your flashcards you rate your understanding by simply clicking thumbs up, thumbs down, or thumbs sideways. Card Kiwi will show you the cards that you rate with a thumbs down or thumbs sideways more often than the others until you’re using the thumbs up on every card in your set.”

“Spaced repetition works, increasing knowledge retention by up to 50 %,” says B. Price Kerfoot, an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. What are the advantages of spaced repetition? “In fact, in one memory study, students who used spaced repetition learning techniques were found to have outperformed other students in over 95% of cases (Cepeda et al, 2008).“

To summarize: using cardkiwi students will save time (they can share the work of creating flashcards with their friends) and significantly improve their recall rates. The application is so simple to use, they even have kids in grade 2 using it.

Watch this simple video that explains how it works and your student can join for FREE and begin using it immediately.