Socratica doesn’t have any beauty recommendations for you.
It’s fun, we just don’t have anything to contribute here.
And we don’t do Follow Me pictures. We’re mostly sitting at our desks, working.
Kudos to Murad Osmann for popularizing this new style of photo.
But we can recommend great books ALL DAY LONG.
THIS we can do!
I thought “Influencer” was a term only used for YouTube vloggers and the beautiful people on Instagram. I’m happy to learn I was wrong!
Amazon has opened the doors of its Influencer Program to a wide variety of YouTube channels. This is an opportunity for these channels to share their favourite products, and for all of us to buy from their storefronts as a way to support these channels. The creators receive a small percentage of every purchase made through the links on their storefronts.
Easy to Use – I got this up and running in under 5 minutes.
Easy to Update
Includes pictures of items
CONS:
Not customizable – we’d love to break this into sections (Math, Chemistry, Film Equipment)
No place to write blurbs. Let us say WHY we’re recommending a product.
I’m all for exploring alternate revenue streams, since YouTube ad revenue is not nearly enough to support a business. So we set up our shop, and we’ll start sharing the link, and we’ll see what happens. Let us know what you think (or if you have any other ideas to fund our scicomm work at Socratica).
We recently received a question from one of our viewers, Tracie Parks, about our Cornell Notes video:
Tracie found our video about how to take notes helpful, especially because it shows HOW someone would take notes during a lecture, using a specific lecture! This video features one of our videos about the History of the Atom as an example.
We’re so glad to hear that Tracie is sharing our Study Tips Series with her 6th grader! That’s really the perfect time to foster those skills. It takes years to be a Great Student, and Middle School is when most kids start to be challenged to do more in school. They start to take notes in class, read books for information that will be tested on, and write papers. These are the kinds of skills we want to help people with with our Study Tips.
Tracie was hoping we had an example that was a little more accessible to her middle schooler. We do have a series of science videos that are perfect for middle-schoolers. This series is all about those questions that pop up but you’re not sure of the answer – Why is the sky blue? Why is the ocean salty? Here’s a video about Why Leaves Change Colour in the Autumn:
Now let’s show you how we would take notes for this video. First, we’d prepare our paper (or buy paper already prepared for Cornell Notes), drawing lines for a big Notes section, a smaller Cues section on the left, and a Summary section on the bottom:
Then when we start our lecture, we’d take quick notes on the major points, making sure to write down key terms like the names of the pigments. After the lecture, we’d check on the spelling of these terms to make sure they are correct in our notes.
Notice there’s a lot of space between the different sections. That way, when we review our notes later, there’s room to add anything we missed. The little headings in the Cues section helps organize the different ideas.
Finally, after the lecture is over, we’ll re-read our notes (maybe check them with a friend or with the textbook), and then we’ll write a brief Summary.
Tracie, have your 6th grader watch this video series and take notes, as practice. Remember you don’t have to write down every word! Just the key ideas. Use abbreviations when you can.
One BIG advantage of watching videos is that you can pause, rewind, or even watch the whole thing over again if you didn’t understand it the first time. And you can post questions in the comments!
Thanks so much for sending in your question. We’re absolutely thrilled to think we are helping someone on the beginning of their journey to be a GREAT Student!!
Socratica has just hit 25,000 subscribers! GOSH that makes us happy. Thank you, everyone, for your support and encouragement. We will continue making educational videos to the best of our abilities – we think you deserve it!
We can’t stop smiling!
If you have friends who enjoy watching educational videos, please send them to our channels. The more people who watch, the more videos we can make. Every person helps!
I honestly can’t really remember not knowing how to read. My darling mum taught me, through a kind of osmosis, simply by reading to me incessantly from the time of my birth. She loved to read, so I loved to read. By the time I started school at around 2 1/2, I already knew how to read. “Ice Cream!” I read the announcement on the board to my teacher. (Friday was ice cream day at my preschool.) “Can you read that?” she asked, incredulous. Hey, there was ice cream on the line. This was no time for messing around with Play-doh.
Now that’s positive reinforcement.
We have made a new video for all the kids who need to learn this magic trick.
What are “Sight Words,” you ask? A fellow named Edward William Dolch compiled a list of words commonly found in children’s books. The list was prepared in 1936, and is still commonly used to this day. They are broken down into different levels, according to the grades in which children are expected to memorize these words.
Edward Dolch championed the “whole word” method of learning how to read. Many of the Dolch words can be sounded out phonetically, but recognizing these words can dramatically improve reading speed and comprehension. Between 50% and 75% of all words used in schoolbooks, library books, newspapers, and magazines are a part of the Dolch basic sight word vocabulary.[1]
This video covers all 40 of the Dolch Preschool Level Sight Words. Each word is pronounced, spelled, and used in a sentence. The pictures will help new readers remember each word. Please share it with your favourite new reader!
My darling mum taught me how to read when I was really little (2 – 2 1/2 or so) by reading out loud to me. She read kids’ books to me, but she also read her Reader’s Digest and mystery novels and eventually, just by following along, I picked it up. But most kids learn in school in the more traditional way, first by learning the alphabet, and then sounding out words with phonics and recognizing words by sight. Learning how to read and loving reading has had the most profound effect on my life. For someone who loves to read, it feels like my solemn duty to pass on what I know.
But learning, even learning something Very Important, doesn’t have to be solemn and serious. I have had so much fun making my “little learning movies” with Socratica, and I hope that comes across in our videos. The latest videos I’ve been making are about the alphabet, one for each letter. We filmed these with our old friend Louise McCartney, star of many of our early videos. Actually, Louise was in the very first video I wrote and put up on YouTube, “Anion.” Louise is herself now a teacher in Texas. One of these days I’ve got to write a bio about her, because she has done such a wonderful job bringing the words on the page to life. Louise also has that joy of learning, and I think you can tell she’s going to be a great teacher.
Louise plays “The Letter Lady,” who teaches kids what sounds the letters make, and how to write them, and helps you pick them out from other letters that look similar. I don’t care, I’ll say it myself, the videos are simply beautiful. Just because we’re making these videos for little kids, that doesn’t mean we’re cutting corners. We are lucky to work with truly adept and accomplished graphic designers and editors who use their artistic eye to make something we like to watch. After all, if I don’t enjoy watching my video, why would I expect a new learner to want to watch it over and over?
We just finished the Letter I, and every few days we publish another letter. Please subscribe and share these videos with young friends who need to learn their letters of the alphabet as the first step towards a lifetime of reading. We know how important it is. Let’s make it easy and fun for them!
The Socratica Method 