You want the best for your child. So do we.

The world is changing fast, and it’s clear that all students today need to keep learning after high school, either at a two- or four-year college, at a trade school or apprenticeship program, or in the military.

Your child needs to work toward one or more of those goals so he or she will have the knowledge and skills necessary to maximize the career opportunities available.

After all, as much as you love them, you don’t want to support your children forever.

Make sure that your student works hard and knows how important education is for his or her future.

The following action stops can help you:

1. BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR CHILD’S TEACHERS. Find out what each teacher expects and how you can support your son or daughter in meeting those expectations.

2. READ. Reading is the foundation for all learning. Expose your young person to a wide variety of reading materials (newspapers, magazines, books, Web) and be ready to discuss what he or she has learned.

3. PRACTICE WRITING AT HOME. Letters, journal entries, e-mail messages and grocery lists are all writing opportunities. Show that writing is an important form of communication.

4. MAKE MATH PART OF EVERYDAY LIFE. Paying bills, balancing a checkbook, cooking and shopping are all good ways to help your young person understand and use mathematical skills.

5. EXPECT THAT HOMEWORK WILL BE DONE. Keep track of homework assignments and regularly look at your student’s completed work. Some teachers give parents a number to call for a recorded message of that day’s homework assignments; others put the information on the Internet. Talk to the teacher about how you can stay up-to-date with important information.

6. USE THE COMMUNITY AS A CLASSROOM. Continue feeding your child’s curiosity about the world 365 days a year. Visit museums, local government buildings, state parks and workplaces. Encourage your student to volunteer to show how learning connects to the real world.

7. ENCOURAGE GROUP STUDY. Open your home to your child’s friends for informal study sessions. Promote outside formal study groups through church or school organizations or other groups. Study habits learned early will carry over into high school and beyond.

8. HELP OTHER PARENTS UNDERSTAND. Use your school and employee newsletters, athletic associations, booster clubs, RAPA meetings, or just a casual conversation to get your local community committed to a rigorous curriculum and high expectations for students. Find ways for these groups to step in and help all students succeed.

9. SPEND TIME AT SCHOOL. The best way to know what goes on at school is to spend time there. You may not be able to do it very often, but once in awhile is better than never.

10. LEARN MORE. There are many resources at your school, in your community, at your local library and online.

The Progress of Growth

Living Word Christian Fellowship has graciously allowed us to use land next to their facility to build a 1,000 square foot building for our school. Living Word has been a faithful supporter of Richmond Academy for over three years. It is a wonderful testimony of what God can do between two organizations with like missions and visions for the Kingdom of God.

 Many in the community have commented how amazing it is to see such a successful venture take place in Richmond. With strong leadership and persistent focus, we are a testimony that when God speaks and we obey, He follows through.

 1 Thess 5:24 “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.“

 It is His faithfulness to meet the needs of the children to ensure that they will grow up in the knowledge of the Lord. We are assisting families in fulfilling the commandment of God to parents found in Deut 6:5-10.

The new facility will have two offices, five large classrooms and a gymnasium. We also will have a chapel, faculty lounge, kitchen and library.

All of this is made possible by the direction of the Holy Spirit to the lives of both leaderships of Living Word and Richmond Academy.

Richmond Academy will continue to be independently governed, non-denominational, non-profit, accredited and community supported. We will continue to offer the highest level of training academically and spiritually. Even though we are growing our vision remains the same that God will make provision for every family desiring a private Christian education. Our tuition will continue to be the lowest and most affordable in east central Indiana.

We give many thanks to the Lord who has called us to this project and is faithfully seeing it to completion. We also thank the people of Living Word and Richmond Academy for giving of their time and efforts to construct the interior of the school. To David McIntosh, thank you for moving to Richmond for two months to help oversee the project.

Teaching Students to Think

An important job of educators is teaching critical thinking skills.

When secular educationists talk about teaching students to think, they usually mean teaching them to become skeptics, agnostics, and humanists. To this end, the secularists promote values-clarification techniques and the use of open-ended questions. When they pretend to teach students how to think using these methods, they are saying, in effect, “Break loose from authoritative teachings and think for yourself. Come up with your own meaning.” But without some fixed principles, these students cannot think; they are at the mercy of the liberals and soon accept their ideas. Thus, the liberals are actually teaching students what to think instead of how to think.

A Beka Book teaches students to think using the following methods.

1. We teach students to think by giving them something to think about.

Learning to think is a byproduct of learning subject matter. One cannot think in a vacuum; one cannot learn concepts without content. How can one generalize from particulars with out having the particulars to generalize from? We teach universal truths and help our students store their minds with useful, interesting, important facts and ideas. With this foundation, the students are able to learn how to think. We present the material in a sensible way so that the students can compare ideas as they come before their minds, see the relation ships of those ideas, and systematize them. For example, in presenting history we teach chronology and geography so that the students can make connections between old and new, past and present, far and near, and gain insight into the influence of these, the one on the other.

Teaching subject matter is anathema to the liberal, of course, because he denies the existence of truth. Christians should be wary of whom they follow. Truth exists, and we need to teach it. At best, the taboo against teaching facts is laziness; at worst it is agnosticism. Students need to be taught the accumulated wisdom of the past from God’s point of view and trained in the way they should go (Prov. 22:6) so that they will have a firm foundation from which to evaluate the present and make proper decisions for the future.

2. We teach students to think by using traditional methods of teaching subject matter.

a.         Bible class gives students the foundation of all wisdom. By means of teacher-directed Bible lessons for young children rather than workbook-directed lessons, we ensure that learning takes place in the affective as well as the cognitive domain. The Bible gives us the universal truths which are necessary for all thinking. “Thinking” that does not begin with the fear of the Lord is foolishness.

b.        Intensive phonics training, in contrast to the rote-memorization, sight-word method of beginning reading, trains students in analytical thinking. Rather than being told that c-a-t spells cat, they are taught why c-a-t spells cat. They are given the rules and taught how to apply them to figure out words for themselves (think).

c.       Reading lessons in the A Beka Book program place the emphasis on reading for meaning. Students are expected to read every day, and they are held account able for what they read by means of teacher questions and quizzes that require students to recall facts, see relationships, draw inferences, and make evaluations. Workbooks are seldom used, because they take too much time away from reading and tend to bore students with busy work.

d.       Grammar study requires students to figure out how the parts of a sentence go together to form a whole, how the parts are related to each other, and how the main ideas can be distinguished from supporting details. Diagramming forces the student to figure out how every item in a sentence functions and to place it in a diagram so that the function is apparent. This practice of analyzing and describing the elements of a sentence effectually teaches students to think.

e.       Vocabulary training further sharpens students’ thinking skills as they deal with the precise meanings of words and the history of their formation. The more words students know, the better equipped they are to think.

f.        Literature helps students to fill their minds with thoughts from some of the world’s greatest writers so that they may think great thoughts and learn to express them to others. The questions at the end of the selections in the A Beka Book literature anthologies involve students in all levels of thinking.

g.        Composition is thinking. When students are regularly required to work on a thesis sentence until its subject and predicate express exactly what the composition will attempt to prove, the students are getting some of the finest practice on thinking that they can get. When they write accurate definitions, classifications, analyses, and critiques, they are exercising thinking skills.

h.       Spelling and handwriting free students’ minds from the mechanics of written language so that they can think.

i.       History teaches students what man has done with the time God has given him, and what have been the consequences of man’s thoughts and actions. It thus enables the students to make reasonable decisions for their own lives and times. Most history books ignore the history of ideas. We believe that the events of history are the products of ideas (“As he thinketh in his heart, so is he” Prov. 23:7) and that high school students are capable of grasping and evaluating some of the important ideas that have shaped history. If students are not given, at the appropriate level, a chance to understand such ideas as determinism, pragmatism, humanism, existentialism, and rationalism, they are likely to be taken in by these ideas. A history lesson, properly taught, can give students invaluable les sons in how to think.

j.         Science taught in Christian perspective helps students to think God’s thoughts after Him. It opens their minds to the wonders of creation and shows them how man can subdue the physical creation for the glory of God and the benefit of man kind. Learning the facts of science gives students the materials with which to think scientifically. Observing demonstrations, performing experiments, and completing science projects train them in the use of the scientific method.

k.         Traditional mathematics trains students to think clearly, precisely, mathematically. It leads them to analyze problems, see connections, and work for solutions. Learning the multiplication tables frees them to use arithmetic for solving daily problems. Learning higher mathematics trains them in logic.

3. We teach students to think by training them in those habits which are necessary for thinking and by supplying quizzes and tests which necessitate thinking, not just a simple recall of facts.

Thinking is hard work. It requires diligence, regularity, concentration, and persevering application. When a teacher says, “My students don’t think,” he usually means, “My students don’t pay attention; they don’t know how to concentrate on any thing.” Students learn to concentrate and focus their attention only when they are trained by traditional methods. Action-oriented progressive education does not encourage the discipline necessary for thinking.

There is purpose behind the teaching techniques described in the A Beka Book teacher guides, and part of that purpose is to help students become careful, disciplined thinkers. Teachers need to give students incentives to exercise and sharpen their minds. They should expect their pupils to remember, think, and apply the things that they learn.

Teachers need to ask questions over lectures, reading, and activities to check the students’ understanding and to clarify important concepts. Questions that test all levels of thinking are supplied in great number in the A Beka Book textbooks and teaching materials, and good teachers also ask questions aimed at the specific needs of their students at the moment. There is also a place for workbooks in certain skill areas, but they should not be used as a substitute for teachers making sure that their students concentrate and think. Workbooks train the hand; teachers train the mind. Teachers need to make sure that all students take part in class discussions, answer comprehension questions, put forth an effort to write well thought- out papers, and strive for achievement on tests and quizzes. A Beka Book holds forth a standard of excellence in order to teach students how to think.

Study Skills

Few things affect a student’s performance as much as the development of productive study skills.  Study skills encourage areas such as work attitudes, time management, homework strategies and test-taking skills.  Many study skills are taught in the classroom, but others can only be addressed at home.  It’s never too early or too late to begin working with your child to build strong study habits and attitudes.  It is important to focus your attention on training your child to be an independent worker at every grade level.  Each year students build on the work habits and attitudes they have formed in previous years.  Unproductive work patterns in lower elementary grades provide a poor foundation for upper elementary.  Without intervention and training, the result is a high school student who is unprepared to handle grade-level tasks and concepts.

 The following is a list of ideas to help you develop effective study skills in your child:

• Evaluate your child’s current study habits and work attitudes.  Identify areas of strengths and weaknesses. Then look at each weakness, individually, to determine an effective work strategy for that specific problem.  For example, if your child works independently on homework assignments but does not bring home all the materials needed to complete the work, you must focus your attention on routines which will insure that he will bring home needed materials.
• Set a standard of excellence for your child.  Learn your child’s strengths, weaknesses and potential and expect your child to work to that potential regularly.  If you consistently review your child’s work, you will be able to identify the first warning signs of unproductive work habits.  This will give you the opportunity to address inappropriate work strategies and attitudes before they take root.
• “Do whatever it takes to get the job done.”  This is the motto you should be teaching your children regarding their work.  Some students are very organized; others are not.  Some students are independent workers; others are not. Therefore, the exact same study strategies do not work for every student.  Some students need to use a day timer in high school to remember assignments; others do not.  Some students need to practice their spelling words every night, while this is unnecessary for others.  Productivity is the key.  Train your child to do anything needed to get the job done correctly.
• Check out the study environment in your home.  Most students work efficiently and effectively in a quiet environment which is free of visual and noise distractions.   Create a study environment in which your child can complete homework accurately, within a reasonable period of time.
• With regard to homework, try to establish a routine.  Decide on the time and place in which your child will work.  When choosing the time for homework, think about your child’s body clock. Some students cannot concentrate in the evening.  Their homework time has to be accomplished in the afternoon.
• Keep in mind your child’s learning style when helping them develop strategies.  Many students need visual clues to remember and understand concepts, while others learn best by hearing and talking about concepts.  Help your child discover the methods that work best for him.
• If your child does well when reviewing for a test at home but then performs poorly on the test, vary some of your practice to include the same methods used during the test. (For example, if spelling words have to be written for the test, some of the practice at home should include writing words.)
• Keep in mind that homework time should include the completion of assignments, on-going preparation for tests and the development of weak skills which interfere with your child’s productivity.  Lower elementary students need to read orally to someone in addition to their teachers every day to develop the strong independent reading skills necessary to be productive in upper elementary, middle school and high school.  Older students need to develop the habit of reviewing material regularly, rather than procrastinating until the night before the test.  Students with weaknesses in reading, math and other core subjects must be involved in remedial practice if they hope to fill in the gaps and perform adequately on grade level.

  These are just a few general ideas for establishing productive study skills in the home.  For additional suggestions on more specific ideas for working withyour child, please feel free to contact your child’s teacher or the school’s counselor.