7 Abilities every child needs to succeed in school.

There are seven learning abilities that various tests measure. These tests cover all the abilities educators believe children must have to do well in the classroom. The results of the test may determine how your child is grouped (ability tracking) slow, average, or advance. As a result children are instructed differently. Those placed in advanced groups are given richer content than those placed in slow groups. Over time the gap between the two groups widen making it impossible to catch up, limiting the abilities of the slow group.

7 Learning abilities:

1. Language
• Receptive
• Ability to tune into and understand the language you hear.
• Expressive
• Ability to use words orally to express ideas and feelings in a clear, organized manner.
2. Knowledge/Comprehension
•  Your child's understanding of information, social standards of behavior, and common sense that kids their age generally understand.
• Ex. Colors, shapes, seasons, holidays, farm animals, fruits, vegetables, etc.
3. Memory
• Long-term
• Ability to retrieve learned information from the past or after a delay.
• Ex. Why do we wear hats?
• Short-term 
• Ability to retrieve information just given.
• Ex. Can you repeat.......?
4. Mathematics
• Ability to work with simple computation skills.
• Ex. patterning, sequencing, ordering, classifying, and comparing.
5. Visual-Spatial Reasoning
• Ability to reason and solve problems using pictures, images, diagrams, geometric shapes, maps, and tables.
6. Cognitive Skills
• Abstract/Symbolic Thinking
• Ability to make generalizations based on concrete experiences.
• Sequential Thinking
• Ability to think about information in a particular order, recognize patterns, and be able to anticipate and predict what will happen next. 
• Ex. Being given pictures of a child taking a bath, putting their pajamas on, and going to bed and asked to put them in order. 
• Conceptual Thinking
• A set of features that together form a category of ideas or objects. 
• Ex. An apple is a red fruit we eat and grows on trees. Or a plane is a means of transportation, fly's high in the sky, and has wings.
• Problem Solving 
• Ability to respond when faced with a challenge involving unfamiliar information or processes. 
• Ex. Putting a puzzle together or recreating a block configuration/pattern.
7. Motor Skills 
• Ability to control hands and fingers.
• Ex. Pencil grip draw/write, cutting with scissors, folding paper, buttoning/unbuttoning, playing with small toys/blocks, etc. 

These learning abilities can help you give your child the best possible academic start. Work with your child to build on them. You don't have to drill your kids or spend countless hours working on them (although you can without them knowing it). Try to spend 15-25 minutes a day on learning focused activities. In this blog I will share how I work with my kids to improve their abilities. My teaching begins from the time they wake up to the time they go to sleep. It begins with talking. Talk, ta-talk, ta-talk, talk, talk. 

Please see my post on What type of learner is your child? to effectively improve your child's learning abilities.