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Everyday school stories that teach grown-ups how children learn
Ever since my now grown-up niece was a child, she would not ask me for fairy stories or adventure stories, but always wanted me to tell her school stories..and real school stories, stories about the goings on that I had experienced during my teaching in schools for all ages, kindergarten, primary and secondary. Even when I had finished a story, she would contemplate on what I had told her for a while, and then eagerly beg for another. As she got older, she told me to write these stories down, but to me they were every day and so I never did as she suggested... until now in this BLOG that is.
I saw her recently, and she started her requests over again, but this time with her daughter beside her to listen too. In my heart I think, that over the years and through her interest in all these school stories, my niece learned a lot about children and how they learn. Alas she did not become a teacher, though I am sure she would have been a good one, but she has certainly become a very interested-in-education parent and oh how we need lots of those. My niece and I now live thousands of miles apart, so I write this Blog for her and for people like her. Everyday school stories that teach grown ups how children learn.
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20th January 20102
Being wowed in Africa by Show me wow!
Chris,
We are wowed by your mind broadening material on thematic teaching and we are particularly impressed by the simplicity of presentation. depth of complexity of subjects covered and the compelling relevance of application.
Although we are teaching in Africa, we realize these themes are universally applicable and we will wholly adopt them to our system. We appreciate the creativity, the foresight and the sensitivity that has gone into this fantastic website. Keep up the wonderful works and keep on updating us on your innovative teaching methods.
From a group of teachers working in a school in Kenya
Dear Show-me-wow Kenyan visitors,
I am delighted to help and thank you for taking the trouble to write with these compliments Thank you so very much. You have made my day! Let me know what you want on future website pages and I'll get typing!
from Chris
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18th January 2012
I am both delighted and humbled by a poem sent to me today from across the world and from a teacher who wrote this for me and about me. You will know how I encourage teachers to recycle and look at everything in a different way, in order to maybe make use of each item creatively in lesson planning. Like this teacher, many others have told me they unpack their shopping and, whereas before they met me, they would toss the bags and boxes away, now they look at everything and ask., "What would Chris do with this at school?"
I am proud to share this poem with you.
Chris
I think of you sometimes,
your sweet smile curled up at the corners,
your sparkling eyes always challenging me to do something new.
I see you
in an empty shoe box,
in the inside of all that white stuff when you buy a new appliance.
I collect it.I ask myself, "What would Chris do with this?"
My husband says,
"Throw it away!"
For a moment I let it linger.Creativity is in the air!
What can it be?...a shelf, ....a T.V., a splendid collection space
Hmmm?
And then I say
"Gee Chris. Where are you?
You did this to me, but I love it!
That's what made an ordinary teacher
...different!
Thinking of you Chris"
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January 11th 2010
Welcome to teachers in Sweden
I have just returned from a magical snow covered Sweden. There for a social visit, I, by chance, met many teachers who were like bees round honey, wanting to know about and visit the www.show-me-wow.com website. I thank them for their welcome and their interest and I note the number of visitors to my site has jumped up over the last days, so welcome to teachers in Sweden and I hope the site helps and gives you many ideas to have fun in your teaching.
Thanks also for your invitations to visit schools whenever I return to your beautiful country. I truly look forward to seeing you again.
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January 9th 2012
Well done with a smile!
"Chris, from what you did, I am reminded, I really don't praise them enough, don't give them enough positive feedback".
Then, by chance, and out in the car over Christmas, we are approaching a village with a traffic sign that suddenly lights up and seems to shout "SLOW DOWN". We were already slowing down and we commented that the sign was not showing much of a Christmas spirit by flashing out this negative command. One of the car passengers said to me,
"You know Mum, in some countries they actually show a smiley face when you are approaching at the right speed and they have found this has a much more significant effect on drivers keeping to the correct speed"
Well! Just what those teachers were saying last term about the wonderful effect positive responses have on improving performance. I hope they remember this and I send them a smile and wish them a
Happy Teaching New Year.
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December 6th 2011
Magic wand!
The small daughter of a friend of mine announced to her family she only wanted one present for Christmas. Having seen her look at hundreds of toys in toy shops, as well as watch television advertisements promoting all sorts of products to tempt a child to whinge and whine for this and that, the family was amazed and soon asked what this one present would be.
"I want a magic wand!" the little girl announced, "because if I have that, I can magic all the other things anyway!"And now a change of scene. I have been watching on the Internet, various Youtubes on "How to be the greatest teacher!" Many top rank educationalists keenly offer lists of various attributes needed to achieve this accolade, like, caring, compassionate, competent, confident and the list goes on, rather like a Christmas one.However, the one attribute that really touched my heart was empathy. You see, if a teacher can really empathise with a student, can stand in his shoes, see, hear, feel, sense the world as that student does, then surely that is a magic wand, for with that kind of empathy a teacher "can magic all the other things anyway!" ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ November 1st 2011
Sorry to be boring, but I just had to tell you that there were 4152 visitors to the
www.show-me-wow.com site in October. This is the largest number ever! I won't even say
"Wow!"
but will shut up and imagine all the places you are all visiting from. It will be like a world tour!
Wow!
Oops! That slipped out didn't it?
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October 10th 2011
Go on enjoying it!
Wow again!
Another more-than-ever number of visitors to this show-me-wow site last month, all 3833 of them and September has only 30 days too! Thanks also for the emails I receive telling me how useful this website is, from students and new teachers to well established and experienced ones and from parents, and all these site visitors from so many different parts of the world. I am so glad to be able to help and all I can add is, just go on enjoying it..the teaching, the parenting and the site that is!
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27th August 2011
Lavender and lace
The village hall car park was getting busier and the villagers were carrying in vegetables and fruit produce and plants and flowers and crafts to set each item out in its allocated space ready for the judging to start within the hour. A very English scene at the beginning of Autumn.
In the craft section, a piece of hand made lace spread immaculately on lavender coloured tissue paper took my eye and, as I admired the intricacies and dedication of the work, a lady approached me.
"Isn't this wonderful?" I exclaimed.
"Thank you. I made it!" she said modestly.
"Well congratulations on achieving such a wonderful piece of craft work" I said.
"Well it was all straightforward really. You see we had a teacher who was so nice to us and who had such a passion about her subject and wanting to put it over. That's all a teacher needs!"
I had to smile at her philosophy and I thought
"Spot on...all those pages on my website and she said it all in two sentences"
I thanked her. She thought I was thanking her for showing me her work, but I was thanking her for putting so much into so few words..and she had no idea who I was or what I did, so not a clue about this much traveled and very wordy website! I hope she won one of the trophies and if so, that she told her teacher.
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June 20th 2011
Sometimes things backfire on teachers!
A young teenager I know was overpowered by a large education project he was having to face and so he and I had a cosy chat about the importance of breaking such big challenges down into small achievable goals. Oh I know you have heard that expression time and time again within these web pages, but he hadn't. So there I was encouraging him by saying that he had made a good start and, although he had to get over the next hill and beyond, he could break this all down and take on one slope at a time!
His face lit up and he said,
"Do you know when I was seven I was still using stabilisers on my two wheeler bike?"
I wondered what this had to do with the thread of conversation we had been following until he said,
"And then I took courage and took the stabilisers off..and now, years later, I can cycle all the way to my friends house without touching the handlebars!"
This was his example of showing he knew he could break challenges down into small achievable goals. I, for once, was speechless! Well what could I say, except I hope that in breaking challenges down he did not break any bones in the process!
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July 17th 2011
Reply letter to a Mum who wrote to me today....
Dear T,
Thanks for writing to me. Visitors to this website come from at least 25 countries so I am having to guess where you
are. I guess the USA, (can't guess the State!) but could you confirm that? Your geographical setting obviously
influences how I respond, because I have more idea of resources available if I know where you are.
As a Pre K teacher you will know of all the strategies for teaching reading as well as the importance of making
learning fun and keeping it entirely stress free...the stress free bit being difficult when you are so worried about
your dyslexic son.
There is myriad of answers to your question and it is a just a case of gently working through them to find the key. I
smile as I recall the two nephews I am currently staying with here in England who were, at your son's age, also on IEP's
and non readers. They hated, absolutely hated, to even touch a reading book, so I wrote each of them a letter every
day for when they arrived home from school and at the bottom wrote the number of words in it. They would run home
to see the words and funny drawings I had included. I went overboard to them at how amazed I was that they could
read that number of words and they went overboard to me at how they insisted they could read even more the next
day..so the next day I gave them more. And so it went on until they were fledged. Only a few weeks back and ten years
on from all this, I was amazed when one of them handed me a file of poly pockets,inside each one, one of those
treasured letters. I had no idea these had been kept!
"Do you remember Tom?" I asked, "When I asked you why you were so good at reading these letters, you told me,
"I am better at reading writing than reading reading Auntie Chris!"
We found the key for these boys and there will be a key for your son. First job is to get his eyes tested please..and
not by him standing several feet away from a test card, but properly tested..and check Scotopic Sensitivity on my
Special Educational Needs page..just to make sure he is dyslexic and not Scotopic! Opticians do not always pick this up!
Best wishes to you and your son. There must be lots of Mums facing this challenge so, sometime today I will pop this
reply onto my blog. I wonder what the response will be. You never know with show-me-wow!
With very best wishes from Chris
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June 26th 2011
Not always the heavy tomes that have the impact!
I feel like an actor "between jobs' at the moment. Schools have been occupied with exam timetable interuptions for some weeks now and there is a general run-down towards the end of the school year, with many Year 10 pupils in England out and about doing work experience. In small towns it is quite a shock at this time of the year as, wherever you go, you see a Year ten pupils helping in the car park, serving bread in the bakers, sweeping curls from the floor of the hairdresser's and even filing documents in some high powered offices. Here it seems the world is being taken over by Year 10's!
So I have taken on a new role too and relaxed by revisiting the works of some of my favourite authors. I had forgotten how clever they are at making such vivid pictures in my head with words. Most of my reading has been quite lengthy books and, I have to admit, some of them have been so weighty that they have been hard to handle as I have been burning the midnight oil with their gripping tales. But one was a light weight and thin book that took my eye on the library shelf because I admire its author's work. It was desribed as a book which
"explores the psychology of a woman who is trapped by her illiteracy and her fight to escape her own family's perception of her."
But what impact! It's a Quick Reads book, written in large fonts and simple words and sentences, so a completely different style from those heavier tomes I have been balancing on my midnight pillows. Yet style and subject go hand in hand and although, as teachers, we know the perceptions this illiterate woman suffers, it is good to experience her pain now and again, if only to remind ourselves, (as if we need reminding) of the handicap a non-reader can desperately suffer.
From me, I thank Joanna Trolloppe for her heavy tomes, but from www.show-me-wow.com, I thank her even more for her writing of "The Book Boy".
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June 20th 2011
A lesson from a pencil maker
The pencil maker taught the pencils 5 important lessons.
1) Everything you do will leave a mark.
2) You can always correct mistakes you make.
3) In life, you will undergo painful sharpenings, which will only make you better.
4) What is important is what is inside you.
5) To be the best pencil, you must allow yourself to be held and guided by the hands that hold you.
My thanks to the teacher who sent this to me. I just had to share it through www.show-me-wow.com .
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June 14th 2011
Compliments and confidence!
May was a busy month for me with traveling back from Florida to England, and an even busier month than ever for the
www.show-me-wow.com website with a record number of visitors, more than 3,500 of them. I have been flattered and delighted by lots of compliments following this record breaking month. Compliments not only mean a lot to adults, but also mean a lot to children too are benefitting from this little site.
I am reminded of a private school I worked in in Dominica, where one particular class of 7 year olds was run by Miss B., a wonderful American teacher who did not know she was a wonderful teacher, just thought everyone was like her. Wanting to improve the children's confidence, she told them about compliments and suggested that each time the class or anyone in it received a compliment, she would put a bar line on the board and when they had 20 they would have a popcorn party.
One day, I silently crept in through the open classroom door trying to be unnoticed and sat down on the carpet as it was obviously circle time. But the teacher softly and genuinely welcomed me and the children quietly said "Good Morning, Mrs Lawrence!". I quietly said "Good morning" back and, just above a whisper, told them how impressed I was when I came in that they were all so quiet and such good listeners to the teacher and to each other. I said that the classroom door was wide open (classroom doors have to be open in all that heat.) and yet they were not disturbing any of the other classes They smiled proudly. Instantly, a hand shot up with the child desperate to attract the teacher's attention.
"Please Miss B, was that a compliment?"
he burst out, saying this certainly above a whisper.
"It most certainly was!"
and, as Miss B stood up to add another bar to the line, the children exploded into a football goal scoring moment! The whole school shook! The teacher and I exchanged smiles and nodded at the children's confidence! We could imagine the corn popping!
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30th April 2011
Tick Box Teaching
I was lucky enough last week to fit in a visit to yet another American school before my flight out next week. Again I met with some hard working and enthusiastic American teachers from whom I was able to glean lots of great classroom tips. But, during all these school visits, there has been a concern about the amount of frequent and long lasting tests that now have to be given to all age children. (Remember that country farmers' saying "You don't fatten a pig by keep weighing it!"?) The teachers fear the practice of more and more of them teaching to the test and the elbowing out of the curriculum those very valuable creativity styled learning activities because of time constraints and other pressures,
So it was a breath of fresh air to read a pamphlet in this latest school written by Dr Michael Meyerhoff on "The Power of Play"
Though Michael is an Early Childhood Education expert, his theories, in my mind, fill most age groups. If I adapt his words slightly, he is saying that "being too structured, pushing too hard, focusing too closely on the content" is not really what true "education is all about"
Now I understand the concern about all this testing, but if it has to be then at least some work leading up to it can be done creatively can't it?I am reminded of my class of low attaining 16 year olds, who were studying Shakespeare's Macbeth for a national exam. Even then I did not teach to the test, but taught through creativity and fun, so it is possible, and they all passed, but it takes a lot of skill and determination not to follow everyone else in adopting a tick box teaching style when so many pressures are out there.
I was so at home with Michael Meyerhoff''s words, that I wrote telling him this immediately and, to my surprise and delight had an instant reply.
"Thank you so much for your kind comments. I did have a chance to visit your web site, and of course, I absolutely love what you are doing."
Kindred spirits then? I wrote back and asked if he had a group of like minded teachers who can chain themselves to a fence in support of creativity and fun in education, otherwise we shall all have nations of adults who have passed test after tick box test, but who cannot be creative enough to think outside those boxes.So come on all you creative teachers all over the world. I'll bring the sandwiches!
You can Google Dr Michael Meyerhoff, and read more of his ideas, or email him on epicntrinc@aol.com
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23rd April 2011
Such a wide job!
My recent visits to Florida schools makes me realise again and again about the necessarily wide job description of teaching.
Before I arrived here, I visited the English church where my grandparents were married. I brought the pamphlett about it's history to my brother in America. It tells of a Francis Howlett, the first schoolmaster of the town "about whom anything is known"! I thought this was a misprint until I read the rest.
Apparently, Francis has a wooden memorial in the churchyard and someone who knew him wrote:
Francis Howlett,
comedian, schoolmaster, post master, tax collector,
vestry clerk, printer, travelling librarian, musician and general referee"
It also says, of this school teacher, that
"Truly, he was a man of many parts."
It seems from watching many teachers over the last few weeks, that wherever and whenever teachers are teaching, nothing changes much. (I'd love to know more about the "general referee" aspect of Francis' job...and am sure this aspect should be included in teaching job descriptions today!)
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22nd April 2011
Give them a hand!
I have been visiting another welcoming school in Florida, but this one an Elementary school for Pre school children to students aged 12 years. I have been observing and exchanging ideas with lots and lots of friendly teachers there and I thank them and their Principal for their welcome. I chuckle at their amusement with my English accent and that they have named me "Mary Poppins", though sadly some of the younger students have no idea who Mary Poppins was!
In one kindergarten class, they were starting their project on Oceanography and were using their own hand shapes to cut and colour ocean creatures. Sometimes they needed just one hand to draw round, sometimes they had to use two. I thought this was a great idea for developing fine motor control and concentration skills as well as for cutting and colouring skills and....FUN! Thank you to the class teacher for letting me share the idea on this Blog.
Ocean creature shapes made by drawing round little hands
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21st April 2011
The very thirsty caterpillar
"Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar" Bradley Millar
I have been visiting all the classes in a wonderful Preschool in Florida and I thank the Principal and teachers for the welcome they gave me. The classrooms were bursting with news of yet another chrysalis turning into a butterfly, as the children monitored this wonderful event through the walls of a food net.Some children had made their own grass caterpillars by filling a sock with soil and grass seed and watering it. They added eyes and feelers as the grass grew. They said it was a very thirsty caterpillar, but they were proud of how well he had turned out, as they were when they watched each real life butterfly come out of its chrysalis.
The "tent" where the real life butterfly came out of the chrysalis
"Which flower shall we put it on before it flies away? Isn't it beautiful?"
("Butterflies are self propelled flowers" R.H.Heinlein)
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19th April 2011
Editing
So many teachers do not see the value of getting children to edit their work and then write out a best copy (publishing) for a display or for their best work folders. You will see on my webpage on writing skills that I feel very differently. I see editing and publishing as two very valuable activities, as does the teacher who wrote the words below in an email to me. And editing can be fun, as you will read from this inspired and inspiring lady.
"On Thursday we used 5 students as policeman to go around editing their colleagues composition. If you got more than 5 errors you would get a ticket! Boy you should have seen them editing so thoroughly, since they were given 8 mins to edit their compositions before the policeman got to them! I wish I had thought of that earlier!
Prior to that I had them in groups of 5 to compose an impromptu story given a topic.That was so exciting since I told them it was a relay race that the story was handed to them like a baton and they were supposed to run with it, to put in whatever they liked, emphasing their voice and word choice until I clapped my hands to indicate change of runner! That was fun! Well they are really taking charge of their learning.
Thanks Chris for all the support and advice you give when the going seemed rough and the task insurmountable."
Wow! Lucky students to have such a fun teacher! I wish I had been there don't you?
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31st March 2011.
3,422 worldwide visitors this month!
Wow!
Thanks for visiting! Now the last day of March and the total number of visitors to the
www.show-me-wow.com website so far this month has broken all records and is today stands at 3422. Visitors since
www.show-me-wow began in September 2007 are from Australia, Barbados, Belgium, Canada, Commonwealth of Dominica, England, France, Germany, Holland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Kisibati, Malaysia, Nepal, Nigeria, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Tahiti, Trinidad and Tobago, U.S.A., Wales and Zambia. I'd love to add more countries so do let me know if there are any I have left out.
"Chris please help. My students just won't settle down to work. What can I do?"
(Thankfully the advice I gave was soon reported to have worked, a relief for me as well as for that teacher and probably for those disaffected student too!)
The site has been growing bigger every month, yet I am amazed and delighted that it hit this milestone as it circles round the globe. If it has been visited by 3,422 people in March, then let's hope it has been of benefit to even more children and students. Fantastic! I am very humbled by its success. Well done show-me-wow! and thank you visitors wherever you are on the globe.
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18th March 2011
Making Lemonade
The first time I met this particular Dominican teacher I knew she was good, She came on a set of eight afternoon courses I ran to train teachers in Accelerating Literacy Skills. She was so enthusiastic and willing to try ideas and was delighted when they worked. I visited her classrooms over the last years and saw her energy and passion and her pupils' response as they went on and on loving school and accelerating their progress. We corresponded and became firm friends. Well we have so much in common you see!
Today she wrote to me, saying she was up early to get some work done as she was finding she was too exhausted at the end of her day. I am not surprised as she goes at it at breakneck speed. Here is my reply.
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Dear C,
I am glad you are changing your schedule..but also change your input re energy. You need to delegate more to the children..so the classroom works more like clockwork. Look at where you are over performing re energy use and ease back now..so that the routine you have already established carries you and there is more of an element of what a friend calls "Making lemonade"..that is, you have set up the systems, now let those ingredients do the work. Then you can relax and smile, have time in the classroom to let the children see you sit and think.(a good role for them as we do not give children enough time to sit and think and we should.)..and wait to enjoy the gentle sipping of that lemonade!
This is sent with a huge huggy sigh! Cheers!
Love from Chris xxx
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11th March 2011.
Put on a happy face!
I am helping my brother and his wife move house from one American State to another and oh the ups and downs of it all as we pack and wait and come across one challenge after another and as we take on a several day travel to arrive just in front of the removal van. Then the work really starts. Oh how the many moods of this move have shown in the expressions on our faces. When you are tired and challenged, you rarely smile or you get a fit of the giggles! Well this is what we have found anyway!
Unpacking a box marked KITCHEN, I came across a fridge magnet with sketches of different faces on it. Each face is labeled, so there is Exhausted, Confident, Happy, Bored, Overwhelmed, Frightened, Embarrassed, Angry. I look at each one and realise we have had all those faces on our journey and unpacking, and what a difference each expression conjures up in my memory of this house moving event so far.
I remember the two very different expressions of two different hotel receptionists whom we met on our stop overs en route. How they influenced our moods as we arrived tired and aching. So, to teachers, which expression do you have in front of your class and which expression works best to promote learning? Maybe they all work to an extent, but I am sure some work better than others. If only teachers had a mirror permanently set up to show them the expression they were exposing their pupils to. I bet the teacher who shows confidence, happiness and pride gets the best out of her pupils.
Maybe I should write a note to those two very different hotel receptionists just to give them the same tip as I am giving to teachers. What do you think? Which one would you prefer? See what I mean?
P.S. Get children to make different expressions and get the others to name the expression and then ask the why, what, where when questions as a start to creative writing. Maybe you could start with those receptionists. Why was one happy, one miserable and unhelpful? What had happened to make her like this? Where was she and when did it happen? Describe what she saw, heard, felt, etc . Get two children to act this and maybe to talk to each other about it.
March 8th 2011
Single-sex Schools
Sitting on the plane on the next final stage of my journey to Texas, I was reading in the American Airways Magazine how a new Dallas public school "The Barrack Obama Male Leadership Academy" was to open in August of this year for 200 boys. Apparently a similar single sex school for girls was set up in 2004. This single sex philosophy had instigated highly contentious arguments and I considered them as I read with the droning background of the aircraft engine.
I went to an all girls school after I was 11 years old, so boys were no part of our hidden curriculum. I know men who went to single sex boys' schools and I have friends who went to co-educational schools. I understand the arguments. I smiled as I thought of the staffroom chatter in a co-ed. school for 11 to 18 year olds and the despair of young teachers over a boy who was disaffected and disruptive. The older teachers would say, "Don't worry, as soon as he gets a girlfriend here he'll simmer down!" and he usually did. I have heard of this same school now setting a balance in segregation. It is still co-educational but the policy in many classes is to sit the pupils boy next to girl. It apparently has a calming effect and it is said the pupils pay better attention to the teachers.
Way back, when I did teaching practice, I worked in an all girls' primary school which was on the first floor, (the one above ground level if you are American) of an old building, the boys' school being downstairs. The visiting tutors would often have to supervise students in both schools and they would tear their hair out as they described the experience of going up there from heaven with the quiet and co-operative girls down into the hell of disruptive boys. It was said that boys do better in Maths and Science and girls in languages.Should this be another reason to mix them? As I said, and as the Dallas educationalists have found, there are many arguments for and against single sex schools, but you will guess that I have a view!
My view is that if they have an inspired teacher, there is no need to separate girls from boys. In fact they can benefit more from being in a school that replicates the mixed sex community in which the school stands. Nevertheless I wish the Barrack Obama Male Leadership Academy all the best and look forward to following its progress.
March 4th 2011
Sky Diving!
Flying across the Atlantic Ocean recently, I was thinking about how children mix reality with imagination and how we, as teachers and parents, often kill creative thought in children. Sir Ken Robinson, in his TED talk on Creativity, is right when he so eloquently says the same thing.
These thoughts of mine were instigated by an incident in the queue for the aircraft loo. An American Mom was standing there with her young wriggling-with-a-full-bladder son who was, unbeknown to her, trying to distract the urgency of his need by twiddling the handles of the emergency exit doors. His mother soon noticed this and in panic and a loud voice exclaimed "Don't touch the door!" Then, realising the level of volume in her voice and imagining those who had heard her were questioning her parenting skills, she sweetly told him that moving those handles would open those emergency doors. In all innocence, his imagination superceded his sense of reality (oh.. and of danger) as he suggested,
"Then we could all go sky diving Mom!"
It was impossible for the other passengers, who had heard this in their half slumber, not to smile as I feel sure Sir Ken would have done. Do look Sir Ken up on Google!
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February 14th 2011
Not only the teacher sees it
This morning quite a lot of local television news time was given to a school where the writing skills of their primary level pupils, (and especially boys) had achieved two years of writing development over only one year because each child was encouraged to write a blog. Now a blog is a piece of writing put on the internet where anyone in the world can read it, (like the blog I am writing now). The children were interviewed and asked why they thought this method was working so well, why it allowed them to enjoy writing and how it was it improved their writing competency,
"We get feed back from other people and they say some nice things."
"When you write it ordinarily, only the teacher sees it!"
So it wasn't really to do with the fact they were in an immaculate classroom with good wall displays and the individual use of wonderful computers, it was because they got feed back from people who had nice things to say and not just from the teacher!
Well we can all do that in our schools even if we have no computers..(or if we have them but they are not working). I have often asked why it is that teachers do not set up opportunities for children to read each other's work, (and write a tidy comment too), and why teachers do not set up wall displays of the edited and published work of the children. This is such a wasted opportunity and, after all, as the children themselves said, they learn so much more if it is NOT ONLY THE TEACHER who sees their writing.
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January 28th 2011
Dinosaur High
Yesterday, I went again to one of the most amazing museums in London, which must also be one of the most amazing museums in the world. Well, 4,000 people of all ages visit it every day and it loans out 100,000 items each year. There were elderly visitors, young parents, students and, of course, children of all ages. There was so much to see, so much to do and such a lot of fun there, with some school-group children being "real scientists" in white overalls carrying clip boards and wearing fun plastic explorer hats. What a place to learn! It was so obvious that the children's appetite to find out was stimulated, and I could hear reading aged children asking 'What is that?" again and again, and all this because so many of the labels were just too high for them to see! Even for me, many labels in the Main Hall were 8 feet off the ground and sometimes distorted by reflections on their glass coverings. I loved some of the panoramic models that all children would have found fascinating, but sadly they had to rely on someone picking them up to see.
It is hard to criticise such an amazingly wonderful place of such world renown, but children are not dinosaurs, so I try to imagine the top people there taking my advice and going, after hours, round this huge building on their knees to get a child's eye view. There is probably no money to make drastic changes now, but maybe in the future they will, having been on their knees, consider children not being dinosaur high.
(By the way the "real" dinosaurs there were wonderful, as any child will tell you!)
Please bear this in mind with classroom displays too. If your displays are for younger children, then please get down on your knees and see your classroom as they see it. If you do not do this, so many learning opportunities are lost.
(I had an email from this top museum and they promised that in their future plans they will try to do better! Congratulations to the Natural History Museum, London and thanks for replying)
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January 21st 2011
Prickly tips
It was silly really. Having negotiated passed this overhanging briar several times already, I carefully, and without gloves, lifted it back on itself in the hope it would stay there once and for all. But as I said, no gloves, so hardly surprising the tip of a thorn, quite tiny too, stuck in the end of my finger..a splinter, so small that I just could not remove it, try as I might. So it stayed there and stayed there. I could not type efficiently, nor write, nor push a needle through fabric to sew, nor press down with it to do lots of everyday things. What a relief when it came out, and what a surprise how very small it was, despite the restraining effect it was having on my getting on with everyday tasks.
It reminded me of the boy whose writing was atrocious and whose teachers and parents were despairing, especially as the presentation of his coursework did not do justice to the content. But he was left handed and watching him write, I realised that he could not see what he was writing. For him it was a bit like me writing with a blindfold on. All he needed was to be higher on his seat, so a cushion was provided. He could then see what he was doing and his writing was, of course, instantly better. And all for the sake of a cushion..it was a bit like me removing that splinter. A small resolve that made such a big difference.
Imagine my delight when I hear of teachers, who continue to find simple answers to everyday classroom challenges amongst the pages of the www.show-me-wow.com web pages. They have found there that some prickly problems can often be resolved by simple answers.
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January 16th 2011
When reading aloud is allowed
I have a friend who, every Friday evening, has the job of editing a several page professional leaflet before it is soon printed. She searches for errors and missing words. Extreme concentration is crucial and I noticed on Friday evenings with her, that she focused her task much more positively and successfully if she read the text aloud.
I thought no more of this until the other day I noticed someone adding up a long list of figures in a noisy and crowded room..and he was concentrating by talking his way up and down the numbers... aloud!
We try to encourage children to check their work, to edit it, to find corrections in order to improve it. Yet so many teachers just expect this job to be done quietly and most times insist on silence. However, my recent experiences, when watching the lady editor and later the gentleman numbers-adder, made me think we ought to consider making reading aloud allowed..oh and adding aloud allowed too! I think it's at least worth a try.
Click here for page on Reading Skills
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January 14th 2011
Trying to do better.
The last months I have been involved in giving time to my Mum, so additions to this website have been on hold.
Mum was ill before Christmas, rallied round for the festivities, but died peacefully immediately afterwards. She was 94, a wonderful age and so amazing to think of all the changes that have happened in the world since her birth in 1916! Mum's funeral was yesterday.
I am grateful for all the beautiful memories of her, and of the times we have shared lately. I have especially happy memories of Mum's 9 week stay in Dominica, where she came with me to various schools and loved and supported what I do to help education on the island. The children and teachers made her feel so special, which of course Mum was. Mum, rarely bossy, left a strict letter to her three children..
"When I die, do not be sad, but think of all the good times"
Trouble is, as teachers know, it is not always easy for some children to do as they are told..even the ones that are now grown up!
We'll try to do as you say Mum! 
My Mother in Dominica on her 93rd birthday, in Autumn 2009
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Dec 19th 2010
Those horrible homonyms! 
I heard an amusing tale yesterday. Two children were talking about weddings. The girl asked the boy,
"How many times can you get married?"
The boy replied
"Sixteen!"
"Sixteen?" queried the girl.
"Yes because they say, "for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer" and four fours are sixteen!" said the boy.
Homonyms can be such a pain so need to have fun ways for learning them. You can make them up, like telling children there are four letters in number four, or like drawing a signpost, (which incidentally can also look like a gift tag) round the word "
to" so it implies
to a place or
to a person, or by saying "if it means
extra, like
extra thin,
extra big, then add the
extra o to "too".
But best of all is to show children how to make up their own mnemonics. This makes this aide memoire even more personal and therefore more likely to stay in the memory. (I won't tell you the mnemonic I made up to remember how to spell one particular homonyn. It was a bit cheeky, but that way I did remember it, even though with a blush!)
Mmmm, those words, homonym and mnemonic..words like these also need a fun way to remember how to spell them...well at least for some spellers, don't you think?
Click here for page on Spelling Skills_____________________________________________________________________________________________
November 21st 2010
I love to get emails from different people who visit this website and some are full of compliments and very humbling, that I just keep them to myself. However, I hope you will not feel it arrogant of me if I share the following one with you. It comes from a teacher in Nepal, who writes about a trip to India.
" I had been to educational tour to Darjeeling with my students. It was fresh and lively. I represented the group as Language and Literacy Head. Throughout the journey I engaged them in learning through doing by themselves. But my other colleagues did it only through lecturing. My students showed their interest to participate in very many activities like drawing, singing, poem recitation. They were assessed with merit. Seeing them highly spirited and enthusiastic I heard the whisper, as well as the shout of WOW!. I could see nothing but your picture in the BLOG coming into my mind and "You remember one thing and that suddenly reminds you of another!" Chris, you do possess the potentiality of transformation. This was yet another happiest moment I have experienced in my teaching career, but you deserve all the credit."
All credit to you Chiran, as you are the one trying out the ideas, but thank you for your kind comments all the same!
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November 18th 2010
No Prince for Rapunzel!
Sitting chatting by her fire with a long-time-retired school caretaker recently, we soon got to recalling, all those years ago, when I was working in the same school as her. I had a class of 7 and 8 year olds and we were doing traditional tales and fairy stories. One corner of the classroom had been taken over to illustrate Rapunzel in her tower. The children had painted the floor to ceiling stone walls in different shade of grey, with touches of green moss here and there. Rapunzel was made by drawing round one of the girls, cutting her out and "dressing" her in different paper clothes. Her hair was strips of crepe paper that hung down from her high tower almost to the classroom floor. But we moved onto the story of The Frog Prince and I brought into the corner, a plastic garden pond around which the children had collected and arranged jars of tall reeds and wild flowers. It looked fantastic, but needed livening up, so the pond was filled with frogspawn, which soon became tiny tadpoles. After one particularly warm evening, followed by a warm early morning, I arrived at school to find this caretaker looking both amused and horrified,
"Chris, I don't think you ought to rush into your classroom today" she said. But too late. I had already opened the door! There on shelves and chairs and school tables were lots of tiny frogs hopping excitedly about. But what a quiet day followed. I met the children as they arrived, told them of what had happened. "Frogs need us to be extra careful and attentive" I said. "They are so much smaller than us!" During the day, children came across one frog after another and quietly and gently picked them up and took them outside onto the grass near a neighbour's pond. Such fun, such living and so much learning. Their intense observations of the development of these tiny creatures was far more meaningful than seeing them drawn in black and white in a book. But poor Rapunzel! Not one frog had stayed long enough in that classroom to turn into a prince for her!
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November 1st 2010
Are you listening?
I often wonder why it is that, if deaf people can be good listeners, why can't hearing people be as good?
I have been staying with a friend who has had a hearing problem for very many years, yet she is one of the best listeners I know. She gives eye to eye contact, she concentrates with interest in whatever the person talking to her is saying, yet she bashfully says she is not a good listener and even questions whether she has got the listening right. I know that when I speak with her, she usually has! This friend is truly a good listener.
We all have experience of the other sort of listener. (I find that they are not good listeners because they are often too busy talking about themselves!) You can converse with such people, but, after a while, you just know they are not listening...not really listening.
My friend with the hearing problem has taught herself good listening skills and how important that is for learning. In the same way, teachers need to teach children to listen, not simply tell them to. Telling a child to listen just does not work. Teaching a child to listen is much more likely to do so. Whenever a teacher emphatically complains to me "They don't listen", I simply think that that teacher has not taught them how! They need to look at the
www.show-me-wow page on Listening Skills don't they?
Click here for page on Listening Skills
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October 28th 2010
Welcome to Wales
This week I have had a visitor to www.show-me-wow.com from Wales and so I have added that beautiful country to the list of 23 countries from which visitors to this website come. From this website I say "Welcome to Wales!" I also saw these words on the road side when I co-incidentally arrived in Wales for the weekend. There, apart from enjoying walks in the colourful autumn scenery, I also visited, Aberystwyth Museum...and it was a wonderful surprise, because it was so outstandingly good. Why? If I list words like colourful, inspiring, fascinating, enticing you to move from one part to another, friendly, versatile, stimulating, easy to learn from, walls that were really working, you'll get an idea of the spirit of Aberystwyth Museum.
Sounds like a perfect classroom doesn't it?
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October 23rd 2010
Feeling Prickly!
This is all about sitting uncomfortably on a hard seat, staring at the tightly held white page and trying to make sense of the black squiggles and shapes there! Perhaps harder concentration would help it make more sense. Perhaps not to bother and just pretend!
The voice at the front had said they would all sight read together and they started. Everyone seemed to manage fluently, except the one who squirmed and wondered why it was all so hard. None of this made sense and the feeling was prickly.
Was this a child in a class tackling an easy reading book? No, it was me at choir practice! Sadly I cannot read music, but by trying to do so, at least I know how a child who cannot read books might feel.
Teachers..(and parents too), please be kind and understanding to all non readers so they don't feel prickly. And thank you to my choir leader who has such patience with me!
Now let me have another go at that choir song!
Click here for page on Reading
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October 6th 2010.
Please Miss, let's learn about Dominica!
Today I was invited to attend a Harvest Festival held in an English school where I had been a teacher 30 years ago. There were new extensions and lots of changes to the building and I admired it all and the work of the children on the walls. Lots of learning was taking place in all the classrooms and the children read and sang beautifully for their harvest celebration. Parents were in the audience and some could have been pupils in the classes when I was there! The children sang one particular song which touched my heart. It was called
"The Harvest of Love"
An empty bowl, a crying child, a mother filled with dread
An empty cup, a scorching sun, a dried up river bed.
We must be aware and show that we care
So let's work together in this world we share
Let's learn how to give, to help others live
And reap the harvest of love
Afterwards, the head teacher invited me to go back on another day and do some teaching, not specifically literacy teaching in speaking and listening, reading and writing, but he wanted to give the children a chance to learn about how other children live, especially the children in Dominica.
"Maybe we can sing some Caribbean songs and cook a Dominican meal and write letters and send parcels"' he said.
"Wow!" I said and nodded in agreement. "Thank you!"
Thanks also to all those people, who provide meals in Dominican schools for underprivileged children and for all the books and pencils and stationery sent to show-me-wow for me to pass on to children and teachers there, a true harvest of love!
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September 30th 2010
Wow!
You have shown me wow again!
This month had the highest number of visitors to the
www.show-me-wow.com
site EVER and, just as the clock moves us into October,
the number of visitors for September hits
2,277!
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September 13th 2010
Out of those seats and changing places
In England, the children are back to school and dressed in the autumn version of their school uniforms. Mornings and nights are chillier and teachers are taking advantage of the last of the not-too cold days, in order to get children out and about.
I have been staying in London and seeing school parties in and around the Tate Gallery, the Houses of Parliament, Shakespeare's reconstructed Globe Theatre.
This all links with a link Adam sent me today. Children learn more efficiently, and there is less forgetting, if they have opportunities to move away every now and then from that same old seat in that same old classroom. How lucky are the teachers who do not have to fit this in with the Autumn rush that happens in cooler climates like London. Sun all the year round? Then even more opportunities for getting out of those seats and changing places...a welcome change for the teachers as well as those glued-to-their-seats students, and so educationally sound these experts say. Well we knew that didn't we? We just need a push now and then to remind us!
Adam's recommended link :
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/health/views/07mind.html?_r=1
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Train Mums and Bus Mums
I sat near to a family on a two hour train journey from the north of England to London. The children were about 6 and 8 years old. The parents were calm and had brought quiet games to play and fruit and biscuits to eat and fresh juice to drink. They talked quietly to the children and they all enjoyed sharing what they could see from the train window. It was a relaxed journey and though tired at the end, the family was calm and ready to go on to the next part of their trip.
A few days later I sat near a family waiting for a bus to take them into town. The mother was on edge,
"Jack, put your jumper back on!" Jack did not!
"Jack if you don't put that jumper on I'll take you back home" Jack knew she would not!
"Jack do not open those sweets now or you will spill them!"
Jack opened the sweets and drank the fizzy drink, which no doubt hyped him up even more.
"Jack I have told you lots of times to put your jumper back on. Now stand still" Jack disappeared into the sweet shop saying,
"I'll be just ten seconds!"
I imagined the two mothers as teachers in a classroom situation, both tired at the end of the day, but one calm and looking forward to tomorrow and the other completely frazzled and dreading the next day ..just like the two teachers on my Classroom Management page!.
And all I could think was POOR JACK!
Click here for page on Classroom Management
August 29th 2010
Reminders of France
I am in France having met up with my son Adam in Toulouse, to then drive up into the French Pyrennees, back to the little village in the mountains where I used to live and where I set the story designed to be used for a drama lesson in French, and referred to lower down this blog page. The scenery is spectacular, the village every inch what you would imagine in rural France in sights, sounds, smells and, at this time, in the excitement of Le Tour de France international cycle race about to pass nearby. My made up tale is a simple story but encompasses the everyday words the actors can practice ready for if they ever go to such a spot. Well they would not only need to be able to say Hello, but would need to buy bread and cheese and wine and the wonderful apple pie you can buy at the epicerie there. They might even watch the professional cyclists and shout, with the crowd, 'Allez allez!" And if they can't go, the teacher can always recreate this village and cycle race in the classroom. It is good fun, as it should be, whichever way they get there!
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August 24th 2010
Sweet Perfume!
One evening recently, I sat in awe in an English country pub, chatting to Geoffrey, a young, enthusiastic and professional archeologist. I apologized for being so keen to hear about his work when he was trying to have a leisurely drink after his day's work!
"Oh that's OK. Everyone asks me, especially about what has been my best find so far. They imagine jeweled crowns....... or silver cups..........
or golden pots,
.....but it wasn't that!"
Then he described his uncovering of some Roman posts that had once supported a bridge across a nearby river. The team had dug down into the solid and airless clay to reveal more of the posts and, at last, the time had come to lift them out. These posts had been buried with whatever the Romans felt would preserve them, including oil and fat. For only three seconds immediately after the posts had been sucked from the clay, Geoffrey had been able to take in the air and smells of the very day, all those hundreds of years ago, when the posts were hammered into their foundations. For just three seconds he was at that riverside, visiting all the Roman goings on as if it were now.
Ask the rich perfume makers of the world and they will tell you that smells are so evocative for everyone of their customers. Ask me and I will tell you that smells can be evocative for children too. My idea in my Creative Writing section recalls the time when I took matchboxes each containing a small amount of coffee, or curry, or bleach, or mixed spice or whatever I could find, into the classroom. The children took turns to choose a box and have a sniff. (Unlike Geoffrey, they had more than three seconds to savour the moment!) Then they had chatting and thinking time before writing. Everyone agreed the quality of their finished creative writing from this stimulus was sweet perfume!
...........Oh and back to that English country pub, I raise my glass and say
"Cheers Geoffrey for sharing that Roman post story with me!"
July 22nd 2010
Two passionate ladies taking education outside the box.
It was my son who sent me the TED link (I love TED talks) about Kiran Bir Seth, who has been groundbreaking at Riverside School in Amedabad in India, teaching young students life's most valuable lesson, "I can!" Her students take local issues into their own hands, lead other young people, even educate their parents. It is inspiring to watch her enthusiasm as she talks about her passion and the wonderful results. The link is http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/745 I'd love to meet her and I thank her for her emailed to me compliments about the show-me-wow site.
But the second passionate lady I was able to meet, and only recently too, and another ground-breaker is Sue Humphries, a retired Head Teacher of an English school, where her vision has also been to think outside the box, by looking outside the school building and creating wonderfully tactile, imaginative and magical spaces within the school grounds to encourage sensitivities to nature, to shapes and forms with woodland paths and tree houses and standing stones..an area where children are never told "Don't touch!", but where they are encouraged to experience and learn with all their senses. www.forthenvironment.org/susan_humphries
Sue appears as a quietly, contemplative listener and thinker, as she leads you through this outside learning space, so you can take in all these experiences yourself. Kiran is young and bubbly and full of vitality, selling her ideas with her enthusiastic voice, her hands and her sparkling eyes and smile.Two passionate ladies taking education outside the box and what treasures they are! Being in England at the moment, I am thinking of how very much I would like to invite them both together to tea!
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July 19th 2010
I adapted this from a rhyme I saw pinned up in an English classroom I recently visited. Maybe it would be good in your classroom.
Don't keep using said!
Try whispered or stuttered or stammered or yelled
Uttered or laughed, giggled or howled
Use screamed, shrieked, cheered or moaned,
Try whimpered, whined, sobbed or groaned
Or whooped or screeched or snorted or sighed
Chanted or hummed, bellowed or cried,
Use questioned or answered or gossiped or pined
Grunted or growled, snivelled or whined
Or raved, wailed, drawled or nattered
Or snarled, exclaimed, ranted or chattered
But please don't keep using said
So students, use interesting words much more
....then I believe your marks will soar!
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July 17th 2010
Now back in England, I have just enjoyed a superb production of "The Wizard of Oz" by a local primary school. The production was imaginative and inspiring, the acting was fresh and fun, the music delightful and the costumes and sets vivid and colourful, altogether a successful event in very many ways and loads of learning going on.
The story is of Dorothy and her little dog, who get caught up and swirled around in a tornado, landing in Oz, where they find a scarecrow who needs a brain, a tin man who needs a heart and a lion who needs courage.
I was thinking of the lion and how much courage teachers need to make changes to their classroom routines and to their teaching styles. It's even harder at the end of term when you are tired. But things will be fresher come September so come on, be that lion and get that courage, easy for you as you already have the heart and the brain!
Changes can often mean greater success for less effort... and, unlike that lion, you don't need the Wizard of Oz to make it happen, and you don't even need to go to Oz to get the ideas, because there are so many on this website!
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July 1st 2010
Stories in windows
The stained glass windows in Freiburg church are breathtaking in their jeweled colours and masterful depictions of Biblical stories and local legends. As I settled today on a wooden pew there, the sunlight is bursting through them, dappling the black and white checked stone floors. I try to make out the stories of each pane in these windows that were put together all those hundreds of years ago in order to illustrate the Bible to people who did not read.
I glance, I study. I start to understand and my interest is fired, but I reach a point where I want to know more and I am searching for answers to some of the details. I can’t find them, my interest starts to wane, my mind loses its thirst to study and I glance away.
I needed somebody to intervene at that crucial point to keep me going and I thought of teachers in schools who proudly hang up a new chart, introduce it and then forget to do that intervention to make it come alive again. The student loses his thirst to study and glances away!
If you want to get the most out of your work and your students’ work, then making your walls work and making your charts work is essential. But me? I think I’ll go back to those windows again this afternoon and have another look, just to fire up my inquisitiveness. You never know! Hopefully I might find some good teacher to give me some answers!
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June 28th 2010
School's Out!
German lunchtime and children are streaming out of school with a more than normal enthusiasm. The sun is hot and the scene is a market place, immaculate with huge houses that look as if they are made of gingerbread., each one a different colour and each festooned with brimming-over flower boxes at their gleaming windows.
The older students hurry past me, noisy with their chatter. My eyes follow them and I wish I could understand what they are saying. But no need, for the sign on the back of their T shirts tells me what it is all about:.
Ten years of siesta and now fiesta!
Ah ha, school leavers, but surely not ten years of siesta , though I wish them joy in their fiesta!
June 25th 2010
Genetic bookworms!...Adam’s book titles
Though I am a minimalist in the way I have set up my home, and though my son is the opposite, we both like to collect books and fill shelves… and then more!
So when visiting Adam in his home in Germany this month, I found myself scanning his book collections, eliminating those titles written in German, as sadly I do not have the talent to read those, but letting my eye run along the spines searching for some fiction to enjoy or something to do with schools. Now, although Adam is a teacher of sorts, he is not a school teacher, yet my eyes make me smile as I read some titles which could, (though don’t) contain school ditties
I found,
"The Pursuit of Wow!" ...well that's appropriate to this website, and,
"Think better"
"The imagineering way"
"Give me time!"
"Hug Your Customers"
The Art of Innovation"
"Exhibition Design"
"The Big Book of Humorous Training Games"
and finally, and yes this title really was there on Adam's shelf too...
"Where's your WOW?"
(Adam's website is www.workplayexperience.com )
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4th June 2010
P's and Q's
I am told that the expression P's and Q's is short for pleases and thank yous and I am thinking of this as here, after my flight to England, I am relaxing and keeping my elderly Mum company. I am watching the local television news programme. It's about a nearby school.
Now we in Dominica like to welcome tourists and we rely on them to help our economy, but many of us living on this beautiful island know that our customer services skills could be better. Politicians and local businesses are working on the nuts and bolts of improving things so that visitors really notice how we truly appreciate them coming. We know that on-going training is needed in general, but we also know that manners and politeness can often best be started in the classroom.
My English television news programme shows a local school where they are having "Etiquette Week". The children had lessons and practices in good manners the week before and then their "Etiquette Week" was formally launched with encouragement in future weeks to keep up the good work.
For my part, I should be sad to see retailers as etiquettely programmed automatons, but it is good to see how you don't have to be shy about being polite. So what about planning an "Etiquette Week" in schools no matter where you are? It would certainly put a shine on everyday living and I think it is a lovely idea.
Please think about it. Have a good day and thank you for reading this!
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June 23rd 2010
.....From London to Germany.
London City Airport, a smaller-than-the-others-by-far airport, as you would expect from somewhere within a city. I sit in the Departures Lounge between rows of travelers all framed by shops selling expensive perfumes and souvenir knick knacks, and everywhere festooned with notices, so many that everyone scans for what they need and ignores the rest. Isn’t it wonderful how brains can do this?
“Departure Desk”,
“Toilets”
“Gate 3”.
What a challenge the advertisers have to compete with what they want us to notice and at huge expense for the rental space too! So they employ different fonts, different colour schemes, different symbols, high powered intellect, all to get the attention on what they want travelers to read.
Many children find scanning an overloaded chalkboard a huge challenge and teachers do not have the skills to employ those expensive strategies that advertisers use at London City Airport…But teachers do have dusters, and occasionally have different coloured chalk, so help those would-be scanners in the classroom to find what they want on the chalk board by
1) avoiding overloading with masses of white words,
2) drawing quick pictures and/or diagrams as a focal point, (and it really doesn't matter if you feel you can't draw! Just do it!)
3) using different coloured chalks, if you have them.
You’ll teach those children to scan and then, who knows? In the future they really will be well prepared to cope with all those words at London City Airport!
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May 23rd 2010
A golden garland and a flowery garland...
Two days until the eleven year olds in Dominican take their Common Entrance Examination and much hustle and bustle and last minute tips are in evidence in classes as children work on their own individual weaknesses to try to push up final scores in Maths, Language Arts, Science and Social Studies.
But the common complaint from teachers of this age group from the many schools I now know quite well is that the children are weak in comprehension and that there is a lot of work to do to get them to avoid grammatical errors in their written work.
"Stories!" I shout. I am amazed at how little story reading and story telling is done in these schools. I am told that many teachers are too shy to feel comfortable in this area, even though stories are the most wonderful and most natural way to learn...(I am beginning to feel I have written this before somewhere on this BLOG! Forgive me!)
Stories help children to develop a visual memory and that is a huge bonus when they are doing comprehension work. And we don't all speak as grammatically correctly as we are expected to write..(especially for Common Entrance) yet, by regularly exposing the children to the grammatically correct language of good authors, the children learn correct grammar without even realising it. There is a wealth of stories to read or to tell and to have fun with. I love the expression which was emailed to me this morning from a visitor to this website. He teaches very young children in Nepal.
"Yes, we do have stories and I think that I am what I am now, due to the stories that I could hear from my granny. I am retelling these stories to my kids now. Every folk story here ends with: “A golden garland to the listeners and a flowery garland to the story tellers, may this story reach up to heaven and come back again when it is to be narrated”. I love to listen and tell the stories. They are the source of our living!"
C.T. (Nepal)
Wow!
May 2nd 2010
Just sitting at the roadside, Miss!
A few days ago I took a two hour journey to the north of the island to visit a secondary school. A timetable had been prepared for me to visit each English class followed by a debriefing for all the members of that department when school closed at 1 p.m.
It happened that one class had gone out on a trip leaving three boys behind. They were 16 years old, and I invited two teachers to silently observe as I worked with these boys who were bright, interested and well mannered, but poor readers. I talked with the boys about how that feels. Two of the boys explained and their words were very moving. The third boy said very little, content enough to listen, but seeming to me to be verbally lacking in confidence. I asked the boys about their hobbies. One said "Cricket Miss!" The second said "Basketball Miss" I made him stand up to see if he were tall enough to be a champion. He stretched out his arms and I stood under one. We laughed! He was tall enough! But the third boy remained silent. Head down, he said he had no hobbies..just spent his time "just sitting at the roadside watching". I dragged him to the blackboard and teased one statement after another out of him, saying as little as possible, just looking at him so he knew I expected more. I wrote his words on the board as he spoke.
I just sit at the roadside Miss
And I watch Miss.
I see society Miss,
The good and the bad Miss
The bad? The fighting and drug dealing Miss
The good? The going to church and the making families Miss
I just sit at the roadside Miss
And I watch Miss.
He smiled as I said 'Wow!" I got him to stand back as I performed his poem. He said he had never done anything so well before. You could tell by his face that he meant that and that he was proud. And all he thought he was doing was sitting at the roadside and watching, but he was doing so much learning and I loved his mellowness of heart. His two friends burst into spontaneous applause and so did the two silent teachers. This is the reward in teaching, not big pay packets, but experiencing magic moments like this!
Recommended book "I am a Pencil" by Sam Swope, who writes whilst students dictate.
1st May 2010.
Rabbits do multiply a lot!
I have been back in the classroom with a Grade 2 and on my own, re experiencing the things teachers feel everyday. It has been exhausting and stimulating and I still get a thrill when a child comes out with an expression or description that is original and charming. (You can tell they have done no boring exercises off the blackboard with me in the room!)
In Dominica, the children have not been over exposed to reading lots of books, so their own creative writing does not come so much second-hand, but from within them and that is what gives me such pleasure and such inspiration.. We used a thematic approach (of course), centred around "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" by Beatrix Potter. The classroom is now full of rabbits, and multiplication...well rabbits do multiply a lot! The Maths lessons were to do with multiplication sums about the rows of carrot, cabbage and lettuce plants in Mr Mc Gregor's garden. I made up sums and the children made up sums for each other. They loved doing that, and they made sure they knew the correct answer! We sang songs of Peter Rabbit and not only dramatised the story, but continued it with Mr and Mrs Mcgregor sitting at their supper table disgussing what to do about the rabbits stealing their vegetables. That was when the creativity and originality came in. When dramatising the story, the children were almost rewriting the book verbatum, but at the supper table it was all their own words in their own order. It was charming.
Such were the words in an email I recently received from a visitor to this website. How I admire his creativity with language. It too is charming. English is not his first language, but he speaks with the same spirit doesn't he? He writes,
"I have managed to conduct the class through Playway Method based on Thematic Approach. I am glad that the result is very more satisfactory than that of traditional method:to dictate with chalk and duster and to role play as a politician giving unceasing lecture."
Thank you to this teacher and best wishes from show-me-wow. I am so glad you find the website helpful.
27th March 2010
A learning trip tip
End of term and teachers are busy marking exam papers and writing reports and some teachers are gloomy.
"Their marks are so disappointing!"
"I thought they knew all this!"
"They didn't bother to learn it!"
"They didn't remember all the notes I gave them!"
"We spent a lot of time on the chalkboard going over and over this and they still didn't remember!"
The lists of scores are completed, the reports ready to hand out and an end of term school trip is next on the school schedule, nothing expensive, somewhere near, but an opportunity to break away from the daily routine, to change the scene, to see things in a different way, to explore and discover and discuss, to learn through the senses and to have fun.
The teachers who were gloomy about the exam results are enjoying the day too. A break from the chalk and talk routine and from all those hours of marking exam papers and report writing. They watch the children and smile and say,
"They remember experiences like this all their lives. They never forget them you know!"
Well they know this and I know this and you know this, so why do we not take advantage of knowing this and employ some of the end of term trip techniques when planning lessons? A break from routine, a change of scene, an opportunity to see things in a different way, to explore, discover and discuss, to learn through the senses and to have fun. Maybe those gloomy teachers would find that more creative lessons inspire children to remember, just like a school trip inspires children to remember.
.
20th March 2010.
Wine and snails!
French Day at a local primary school and I was asked to tell a story. I agreed, imagining a small group of children in a classroom corner, but it turned out it was to be the whole school and out on the playground. A big pagoda was to be put up for the children to sit under and invited guests would be on "stage" from 9.30 'til 12 noon and it was to be televised. Oh and I had the last slot, by which time the children would be fed up, tired and probably naughty.They would have had enough, for it was hot under that pagoda.
So action stations and no cosy story. It had to be much more visual, if it was to have any chance whatever of success. You have to change your style according to your audience, timing and venue, so I did! I set to to make lots of props and invited a friend, who also moved here from France, to help with the acting. I have some very kind friends! So, with my basket of several packages, each wrapped in white paper and labelled with red and blue ink to look like French bread (du pain), and French cheese (du fromage) and apple tart, (la tarte aux pommes) wine, (du vin) a banana (une banane) and a tin of snails ("Yuck!" said the children to les escargots). We just got on and acted it. The audience loved it. It was fun!
Next day, at another school, teachers and children said “We saw you on the television!" I had forgotten that camera! Fortunately they showed me sitting on the stage whilst someone was giving a talk, saying how I was involved in training some teachers of French on the island. Thank goodness they didn’t show the bit with me fooling around with the wine and snails!
But the story was well received and can easily be acted to, so today I put it on the French page on this site in case anyone might like to try it out.
Click here for French story to act to
18th March 2010
It's hard to be formal for long in Dominica!
Well today I stayed in bed thinking I would keep away from school for a rest, but then, I changed my mind! I got ready, but in such a dash that I did not have everything just as I wanted, like I forgot my sunglasses, did not pack my pencil case etc. etc.
So, with me turning up unexpectedly and the school being short staffed, I volunteered to invigilate a grade 6 exam. Entering their classroom, the children were ready with their desks in lines. They nearly always quietly cheer when I go in their room, so I had to go in with a finger on my lips to keep them in the formal mood. I put on my formal face, (but not my frightening one as I am still working on that!) and I told them the way we were going to do the exam. I kept every minute formal, told them they were to make no eye contact with anyone, they would be given their papers upside down and were not to touch them until I said so, told them I would write on the board "Time started" and "Time ended". Having said all this, I dramatically studied the clock to start on the dot, when I said,
"Turn your papers over and begin"
It went well for the first 15 minutes as I formally sat behind them or quietly walked up and down the rows. Then a boy put his hand up. I walked slowly over to him, leaned over his desk and put my ear near his mouth to hear his whispered query. This is sometimes hard for me, as accents can be quite difficult, so I took a while. But during this time I could feel something touching my foot! I tried to concentrate on the boy's query and, without moving, looked down. The girl opposite the boy had noticed I had not completed buckling my sandal and so she was on the floor doing it for me! How could I not smile at the informality? She finished, I just nodded a thanks and went back on patrol, trying to stifle a chuckle! I love these children!
4th March 2010
The teachers are amazed and stand wide eyed and open mouthed as the boys, (including, would you believe, the football team) are running to the library in every free break time, trying to be first in the queue! Free ice cream? No! Someone giving out dollar bills? No!
The reason is ..................................COMICS!
A kind donor responded to the request on my wish list on the
How can you help page of this show-me-wow website and sent 40 comics for boys. I put up a display in which I included a Spiderman suit borrowed from the five year old next door and, with a poster on the Library door saying
Spiderman, Batman, and Superman
are in the Library today,
the word soon got round.
And the girls? They are enjoying the quieter and more peaceful break times, as the boys get lost in their reading adventures. And the football team and their lack of practice? Well they had two matches and won 8. 1 in the first and 12. 1 in the second. It seems everyone is happy, so I send a special "Thank you" to the donors..oh and another special "Thank you" to the boy who kindly loaned the Spiderman suit.
2nd March 2010
A different view
It's been a week of glasses. It started with the tiny screw in the side of my specs coming out and the lense plopping onto the concrete classroom floor, fortunately not breaking. They are the style of glasses worn by most old fashioned teachers, ones with half lenses, so you look over the top at the children in class and look down through the lenses to get a different view as you read a book. It started me thinking about screening children for eye sight problems and how we stand a child so many feet from a chart and ask them to read the letters. But this tells only how well they see from that distance, but not how they see when trying to read! For this they might need a different view.
In one class I was visiting one day this week, the children were busy at their reading and writing, but one, ten year old child intrigued me, particularly in the way she was holding her head. I took her out to test her and found she was reading at a level three years below her chronological age. I happened to have with me, several pairs of glasses that you can buy over the counter, reading glasses that magnify, but have no prescription lenses in them. A donor had thought they might be useful and so sent them to me. I offered the girl the ones with the least magnification to try. She put them on, looked at the text and her face lit up with a smile. I tested her again with a parallel reading test. Wearing these glasses, she scored 3 months above her chronological age! What a difference! She went back to class confidently wearing the borrowed glasses and with a note to take home. Maybe she will need prescription lenses, but if not, what a difference a $20 E.C., or £4 or about $7 U.S. can make to her learning!. She was reading functioning three years behind without the glasses and three months ahead with them. I imagined the delight of the donor.
Well, my lens is still out of my school ma'am glasses and without them, there is no chance of me being able to see that tiny screw that is somewhere on the concrete classroom floor. Never mind, I am happy that the young girl will now start to flourish with her different view. Maybe she's the one who'll see that tiny screw!
5th February 2010
Sewing and Slogans
The old apron I wear for messy jobs at school was really past it's best and no longer Caribbean appropriate with its message written boldly on the front "An apple for the teacher!" So out with the sewing machine and whilst it chugged down the seams, I was composing my new apron message. The sewing finished, I wrote on the apron front and in permanent pen.
"Good teachers never stop learning!"
Well they don't do they? They question and assess and evaluate their teaching style and strive to improve. And good teachers don't stop children learning either. Take an example this week.
A one-day visitor, an exceptional music teacher, enthused and inspired a group of new-to-him Grade 5 and 6 boys until they sang like a wonderful choir and proudly performed their newly learned canons outside the Principal's Office with the visitor conducting. How sad they were at the end of the day, to say a goodbye to him.
Next day, in Assembly, the Principal called the boys to the front to sing their songs to the whole school. But where was their yesterday conductor? There were murmurs and whispers as the boys could not make a start. Their delay could have been a prompt for the Principal to congratulate them and tell them to go back to their places! But this Principal is a good teacher! And what do good teachers do? They never stop learning, never stop learning themselves and never stop the children learning. She quietly stood back with a grin of encouragement and the School took her role and waited patiently too. The boys took a while, but soon one boy stood in front and divided the group in two for their two part canon. This boy returned to his place, but there was another silent delay! The Principal remained as she was. Another boy leaned forward, said "One , two three" and the choir started on cue and sang beautifully. This Principal was encouraging the learning rather than stopping it. You see, as a good teacher, she never stops learning!
It's just as my apron says, so I think she deserves one too don't you?
31st January 2010
Newsflash!
Show -me-Wow! is certainly feeling Wow today. Over the last twelve months the number of visitors has crept up month by month, and today reached a new target, now averaging more than 1,000 visitors a month.
Two friends of mine, who run a super website for their charity "Hands Across the Sea", (please look at it as this husband and wife couple do wonderful work for schools in Dominica) congratulated me on the news of the steadily increasing number of visitors to the
www.show-me-wow site saying,
Hi Chris,
Congrats on your site hits, that is really good. Your site has a lot of energy and enthusiasm. The challenge for all of us with websites is to somehow convert the lookers into doers. The e-mail newsletter has been a good tool for us.
Cheers, TL
I wonder how many onlookers to Show-me-Wow! have been converted from "lookers into doers."? Well, when visiting schools, I recognise many changes in teaching styles and classroom management, changes that are Show-me-Wow instigated to improve teaching and learning. And those other visitors, who are not teachers on the island of Dominica, are certainly generous "doers" in supporting schools here with gifts of supplies and with their good wishes and practical help. I'd love some feed back from anyone who reads the site, to let me know what they think, whether they are lookers or doers! And good luck and thanks to Tom and Harriet Linskey of "Hands Across the Sea", as they are doing an amazing job for Dominica and are a lovely couple to work with here.
Click here for www.handsacrossthesea.net
30th January 2010
Boys' Week!
I arrive at Grade 5 classroom to find the teacher is delayed, and the schedule is running late. I rustle up the situation to get the students ready for their first lesson. But a lone child, much smaller than Grade 5, is standing in the door frame with a thin book in his hand. My look at him says "Did you want something?" "Please Miss I have come to read." In my scrabbling to start the day I had forgotten!
The class is silent, I stand behind the little boy, my hands on his shoulders ready to prompt him should he need it. I can feel his heart beating with excitement and fear. The class gives him their full attention and he reads steadily to them. His look of pride is all over him as they clap him and he leaves to find another class to read to. I get back to the day, but as I turn my head....a lone child, smaller than Grade 5 is standing in the door frame, another boy holding a thin book expectantly waiting to read "to the big ones!"
The start of the day is delayed, but the learning that has gone on is golden!
It's Boys' Week in Dominica and this is just one of the activities that has been going on in one school. There have been visiting speakers talking to just the boys, a church leader, a policeman; the boys were encouraged to bring in their carboulliet, their hand made lorries that have a pole leading up from the axles, and are steered by a simple pulley in the boy's hand. What fun they were parading round the playground from the simplest ones with wobbly bottle top wheels, to one that was so intricate it even had working headlights. And the Thursday Boys' Talent Show was amazing, with drumming and a solo "Lionel Richie" singing and even an Elvis tune somewhere.
And the girls? They enjoyed sharing some of it with the boys, but when the boys left them to go to one of the Boy Talks, they just enjoyed the peace and quiet and Grade 5 girls got lost in the pages of Michael Morpurgo books."A male author Miss and it is Boys' Week!"
And what did one teacher say to me? "Chris, the girls say that you said they will probably have a Girls' Week and it will be far better than the Boys' Week and the boys won't be able to moan as they will already have had their week!" Did I say that? Does that sound like me? Oh dear!
21st January 2010
Perfect Harmony
In Dominica it is a special H.F.L.E. week next week and I am told this is Health and Family Life Education. It's strange how titles change as the years roll. Schools here are to focus on boys and so one school has decided to call their week, simply "Boys' Week"
Today the Principal of this school announced the forthcoming event and said boys would be taking all the Assemblies for the week and there would be lots of other activities. Some men would come in to give talks and "Mrs Lawrence will do a special display in the library", so "everyone must make sure they come to school and did not miss any of it".
The girls echoed my misgivings about focusing on boys with straight faces and a near silent groan!
"Well you wouldn't want to stay at home and miss it would you girls?"
asked the Principal, expecting a supporting shake of the young female heads.
"Yes Miss" they nodded and chanted in unison!
She was very surprised at their response, needed their support and so immediately said,
"But you have to come. The boys are going to do everything and if you are not here they just won't be able to manage!
It's amazing how some Principals have the skills to say just the right words to win the students over. The girls gave a nod of agreement and the boys a silent shoulder shrug with a smile of acceptance. Ahhh, perfect harmony!
15th January 2010
Into cupboards!
Well, with such a long break since writing here, you could have thought I'd been hiding in cupboards, but I have actually done 9 weeks full-time in schools, so I've been rather busy! But wait, I have been in cupboards!
Take this week for example. A school in the north of the island where, as is common here, several classes share one large space that is divided by free standing chalk boards. This alone has its difficulties, but add to that the fact that this big space is frequently used for public meetings of all sorts, and you can imagine any charts or wall displays of children's work takes abuse as well as extra wear and tear. But the inside of the cupboard is safe! We cleared out the rubbish, paper or cloth covered the dreary shelves, used the top shelf for teacher books and the lower shelves for children's story books, neatly arranged and some facing forwards. We used the inside of the open doors for displaying children's work, because the cupboard is left wide open all day with seats round it to complete this Book Nook. A little table, or stout box covered in a cloth and the children are ready to enjoy their own special reading space. The class librarians close and safely lock the cupboard at the end of every school day.
This done, one delighted teacher looked at a second cupboard, thin and sad looking and sighed. It had to house the broom and cleaning things that several classes shared. I immediately thought of that wonderful book "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis. To the class, I read the part of the story where Lucy goes into the wardrobe and feels the fur coats which start to feel prickly like fir trees, and the moth balls under her feet which are not mothballs but snow! She is in Narnia! The children were fledged with the idea, they are writing and illustrating their own stories for where the back of their broom cupboard will lead to and these will be mounted on bright coloured paper onto the outside of the cupboard to brighten it up. So, in this class at least, it has not been just me into the cupboard, but, in their minds, the children too! It's funny how cupboards can be looked at in all sorts of ways and these latest ones are now certainly looked at with a smile!
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12th December 2009
Pre School politics!
So there I was, working with a very young teacher and her class of three year olds, having explained the value of taking a theme and developing it to accelerate learning. We chose the colour red for the theme. She had a bowl of red objects to show the children, asking them the colour of each object. I took in an empty red plastic medicine bottle for them to look through and see the classroom all red. We spread out the red objects round the room and, in a crocodile line, danced around looking for and standing by objects that were red. They were each given a red crayon and drew those red objects and coloured them and then, as they finished and with red paint, they made butterflies. We ended the day with a story of Santa and him putting on his red trousers and red jacket with a red hood.
As the children were ready to go home, I picked up a red plastic pepper pot and asked one little bright-eyed boy what colour it was. He smiled in confidence and answered
"Blue!"
Well maybe the thematic approach does not work so well for some children!
Now the island of Dominica is festooned with red and blue flags for the election next week. I sincerely hope, whether it's red or blue, the colour that is best for Dominica, will be the one that is chosen.
11th December 2009
From the heart!
I have been working with Language Arts classes of Grades 4, 5 and 6, focusing on Creative Writing and especially on improving each child's writing style. So I told them not to keep to the simple words they could spell, but to be brave and try more interesting words. And we chanted my rhythmic tip to remember to consider including,
"What you see, what you hear, what you smell, what you taste, what you feel on your skin and what you feel in your heart."
The children swing their bodies to this and whisper it, or say it in a deep voice or any other way to make it fun and to make it stick in their memories. I explained that probably the hardest line to write was "what you feel in your heart", so I challenged them to try to respond to that line somewhere in their writing, to write about what they feel in their heart. Little did I expect the home made envelope that was pushed into my hand sometime later. Inside it was a sheet of paper on which was written, in the wobbly writing of a not exactly top of the class, nine year old called Tafari,
miss Laurance your teaching
is a wonder that shines my star
that makes my heart go
beep beep
beep
There's nothing else to say is there?
17th November 2009
It's snowing in Dominica!
From out of a big box in a Grade One classroom, came all the parts to make a cardboard igloo, and so it was excitedly fastened together and has become a popular nest for two or three small children to snuggle into and to get lost in the pages of a reading book, from a box of books all of which have a cold theme, like snow, icicles, frost and polar bears. Some cold weather work-cards have been made for the children using snowy pictures from old Christmas cards and they are going to use toilet roll middles and white, black and orange paper to make penguins.
How fascinated they are to know about cold, as I look from their classroom window at the bright sunshine on the blue Caribbean Sea and see the sun's rays beating in on their cardboard igloo!
Back home from school, I see a covering of white on several of the shrubs in my garden. No I am not imagining it! The covering is a spread of white star shaped flowers on a shrub called "Snow in the mountains". It seems that wherever I go at the moment I see "snow" in Dominica!
I shall be asking show me WOW! donors for more fronts of old Christmas Cards in January, so we can replenish our stock for more work-cards. Snowy pictures and any other sorts from greetings cards are so useful to us in schools here in sunny..oops sorry... snowy, Dominica!
14th November 2009.
A cosy glow!
Today I have a cosy glow from working with a wonderful young 9 year old, who just cannot read and who has already repeated two school years. Yet he is articulate and charming and had such an amazing love of books, which defied all negative feelings he had harboured that would normally have put such a child off books for life. When he told me more, my heart was deeply touched. He cried as, in front of his Dad, he tried to explain his inadequacies. I said to him "I am going to help you, in the hope that you will be able to do anything when you are grown up".
"But I can't read!" he whispered. "I thought I would just be an old man on the road!"
Bit by bit, as he rested his eyes between squinting at text, his feelings came out.
"I sometimes get headaches, they take a little while. When watching the board I don't see words good, so if I get it wrong, I have to erase it, because I copied the wrong word and the teacher, she put a pen over it!"
"My eyes burn, like they melt in the heat. I close them to see again. Sometimes it works. My eyes don't like looking at stripes.Words start getting smaller at the top and sometimes I see all types of different colours that hurt my eyes" ".T.V. make my eyes funny!" and he swirls his hands round to explain "Out in the sunshine makes me feel dizzy . I just shake it and it goes for a bit!".
I told him I thought his eyes were not working properly, but I knew he had a good brain.
"Do you now believe that you will read soon?" I asked
"Now I believe I am not thick! I believe I am real! God! It's amazing. I think Please God let me learn!"
I feel sure my new friend is light sensitive (Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome) and this will be followed up with an optometrist appointment. Today I had a cosy glow, but actually we all did and I wouldn't be surprised if you felt it too!
12th November 2009
Poor Comprehension? Well hide the chalk!
I have visited 4 schools this week, so I talk to teachers and principals a lot. We have lots of enjoyable chats and giggles and a few moans. And what is it they bemoan most? Well it is always reading, but truly, the most bemoaned area is the children's poor comprehension skills. Oh dear!
I have also been investigating a man called Daniel Pink, who talks about the two sides of the brain, the left side that deals with routine and sequencing and mundane everyday regular stuff and about the right hand side of the brain dealing with creativity, with inventiveness, with design, with broader imagination and thinking.
In so many Dominican schools teachers work really hard on those left hand sides of all those brains, day in day out, but the right hand sides are given such a poor deal. So much regular routine chalkboard work and repetitive practicing of routine skills for those left hand sides, but not nearly enough drawing and creating and cutting and sticking and designing and inventing and model making, display creating and listening to stories for all those right hand sides of all those brains. I truly think that that's why those teachers have cause to bemoan the poor quality of their pupil's comprehension skills.
I think an instant fix would be to have a day in school without chalk, to give those right hand sides of those brains..(teacher brains and student brains) a kick start in improving those comprehension skills! Up until now teachers have focused on decoding and that's not enough is it? So what about hiding that chalk some days.... or does that defy comprehension?
11th November 2009.
The way they see the things they say
I love the fact that language is such a living thing, changing all the time as new words are added and new phrases come into fashion. I love the fact that young children have the courage to experiment with words and phrases and to make up alternative words, where they are not sure. We all know of children innocently saying in, The Lord's Prayer "Harold be thy name" and one young lady of 3 years adapted a hymn line "all Creation" to sing "all the Asians!"
I also love it when young children make up words to express themselves and say these words with such confidence, as it the words have been in the Oxford Dictionary for centuries. One boy had taken such an age to learn to read and was still struggling until I met him and suggested he might need glasses. He did and when he wore them for his first reading session afterwards he said "Now those words don't look bluzzy!" Well bluzzy those words obviously were to him, and to express it in such a way showed everyone he definitely needed those glasses didn't he?
But last week I loved another expression of a 6 year old, who was so disappointed when he was told a much looked forward trip was canceled.
"Well that's a wasted excitement!" he said.
A wasted excitement is what I feel when I see children having lessons that start straight in with the words "Page 27..Read the passage and answer the questions on Page 28!"
Now I don't love that! I think
"Well that's a wasted excitement!"
31st October 2009
The two days I cried!
Last week I worked with a 10 year old Grade 5 boy, a non reader. He was so good looking and so polite and reminded me of my brother and so I told him that my brother did not learn to read quickly, yet always was a clever chap. He just didn't catch on with reading so quickly. I explained reading was like learning to swim, one day you are trying and trying and you think "This water will never hold me up!" and the next day it does and you can swim. I knew he was really keen and knew he was not "thick" as he claimed to be. I told him I was prepared to work with him, but we had to start at the very beginning and I asked him if he was prepared to do that. The result was, I worked with him for hours and he clicked! He could read and his face showed his pleasure. He was devouring easy to read books and was lost in the concentration and the pride. So I asked him to tell me how he felt and he said, " Good and nice and I couldn't read this morning and now I can and I want to thank you for helping me" and I cried!
"See" I said.."you aren't thick! But now you are making me cry!" and he smiled knowing I cried openly with happiness.
Then I took him to his class and told them the story, saying it was about a boy who they did not know (and I winked so they knew that they did know him) and when I got to the part of the story where I told the boy we would have to "start at the very beginning", we all sang the song and everyone smiled! It was a treasure of an experience!
I spent the next days wondering why he had not learned to read before, but I was also looking forward to my next visit to that school so I could do some more work with him. I did not anticipate the outcome. He was not in school. He rarely came to school, as was the case with his brothers and sisters. So that was why he could not read! His was a family who did not put school attendance high on their priorities list.
This time I cried inside with sadness!
Good teachers always try to go on learning
I thought you would all like to see these photos taken at St Luke's Primary Schools during National Independence Celebrations in October.
I try to be a good teacher and I know a good teacher never stops learning, so here I am being taught the steps to the traditional Bele dance, by boys from all through the grades. who love to dance too. Sorry I still look like Mary Poppins though, but it's hot working dancing on the concrete of that school yard, and the children keep you active, so you need an umbrella!
The children look richer than they are. There is a great pride at the school in looking good on this day and the whiteness of the shirts is part of that pride.
This is what you do with your feet Mrs Chris Lawrence! Heel then toe, then side together side!
On the map of Dominica, I am taught how to point my toe.
And now you must learn what to do with your arms Miss Chris!" "But what about my umbrella Samuel?"
(Thanks to Samuel's Mum for the photos)
28th October 2009
There's no business like show business
Have you ever heard a teacher say "Wake up and get on with your work" as a child starts to slouch into the uncomfortable wooden classroom chair with fatigue (or dare I say boredom)? Well sometimes children really need to sleep, no matter what is going on, especially if they are very small children. I saw an example of this recently and it made everyone who was watching smile.
During the Creole Festival here in Dominica, a little dance troupe was on stage aged from about 7 years to a tiny. They were wood nymphs, dancing around the stage, each with a flower in her hair. When the sun came up, they had to tuck themselves down on the floor and "sleep", whilst a girl came dancing on with a basket "picking " the flowers. But it took a bit longer than was expected, as some of the flowers had been too firmly attached to the hair of those wood nymphs. There was some time consuming tugging to be done to "pick" those flowers and when the basket was eventually full, the flower picker skipped off stage. The wood nymphs, now alone, had to wake up and dance, which they all did except one. The smallest dancer, the really tiny one, really had fallen asleep! Her mum had to come on stage and lift her off!! There really is no business like show business... or is there?
If a child in your class starts to slouch in that uncomfortable wooden classroom chair, take that as a sign that you need to change the activity and the tempo of the lesson, or that child really will fall asleep!
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26th October 2009
Little and Large
Sorry no Blog entries for some time. I have been upside down really, as I have been spending more time out in secondary schools and, conversely writing a new web page on Early Years Literacy. This is such an important area in the development of literacy skills and there are so many pre school groups on the island of Dominica due, I think, to the fact that many mothers work. I hear that courses for pre school leaders are very expensive to attend and so hopefully this new web page will help. I should be pleased to know what pre school leaders think of it, so send me your comments so I can improve it.
So pre school and secondary school..not so different really. All the same philosophies that learning should be creative and fun if it is to be as successful as it needs to be.
29th September 2009
Rare as snow comics
I have always given strong support to the value of comics, as one way of encouraging reluctant readers to get lost in reading the pages of an albeit comic strip story. Comics appeal to across the age range and across the reading ability range, so there is no stigma accompanying them as their might be with say an "easy reader" book. The language of the comic is the spoken language, unencumbered by descriptive writing, so the action moves along swiftly and readers, especially reluctant boy readers, like that. The pictures give contextual clues, so that helps the reading fluency. The stories can be stand alone or can be produced in episodes, so encouraging developing memory skills, if the child is lucky enough to have the luxury of the comics in sequential order. Comics give readers opportunities to read a complete text all in capital letters, which few books do, and they encourage phonic skills development with their BIFF! POW! PZAZZZ! Also they don't look like a book!.
You can tell by this list, that over the years, I have had to stand firm in support of comics as part of a reading development package, but check the links below and you'll see that my opinion is now becoming more acceptable and for that, I am so glad!
So with all this, I am hopeful some kind show-me-wow visitor will send us some comics, as they are as rare as snow here in Dominica!!
27th September 2009
News is out!
Dear Dominican Teachers and Principals,
I hear that the news is out that I have just received a large consignment of school supplies from both the U.K. and the U.S.A. and all for distribution to Dominican schools. Visitors to show-me-wow have schemed and planned and generously dug into their pockets to help us. They would call themselves ordinary, everyday folks. I don't know any millionaires! They trust me to deliver their gifts to schools who will look after and be thankful for what they, as donors, have willingly gone to a lot of trouble to provide and then send.
So
1) If you are a school who hoarded such books in a box so the children can't use them,
"We didn't put them out in case the children tear them Chris!", I assume you did not need such supplies and so do not need more!
and
2) If you are a school who has received supplies already, but never got round to send a thank you for me to forward to donors, I assume you did not want the supplies and certainly don't want more!,
BUT,
3) If, however, you are a school who has never received show-me-wow supplies and would appreciate and be thankful for some now, please contact me.
OR,
4) If you have already received supplies, which you appreciated and sent thanks for, I want to tell you that the donors enjoyed your thanks and both they and I are happy to give you more.
I am sad to be so blunt, but I have a responsibility to distribute supplies conscientiously. I know you will understand!
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Chris.
26th September 2009
Mary Poppins!
I have so much admiration for Jo Jo, the British Super Nanny, who is frequently seen on television screens dealing with the most horrendously badly behaved children. She works wonders and her main philosophy for success is that children should have lots of attention and praise when they do well, but have little attention, but consequences, when they misbehave. Show-me-wow visitors will have heard that somewhere before!
But oh Jo Jo,your overloading of your charts, your fonts are not age appropriate for the children you have made them for and you pin charts too high for those children to get a good view! So why not get on your knees and see the charts at their level...oh and maybe accept an invitation to Dominica to attend a show-me-wow workshop. Mmm! And whilst you are here, I wonder if anyone could find a naughty child for you to work with!
Click here for page on Teaching and Learning Principles
11th September 2009
Drum roll please!
Happy Birthday show-me-wow, now two years old and how time flies, especially on a beautiful tropical island like Dominica. We may have our round-the-year sunshine, our 365 rivers, our waterfalls, hot pools, blue ocean and our rich green tropical rainforests, but we are in great need of more training for teachers and more supplies for schools. And this is what show-me-wow has been doing for the two years since it was launched in September 2007. Teachers from schools across the age groups have been trained either one on one in their own classrooms, in a whole school group in their schools, at "Make it and Take it" sessions in town and even in my own workshop at my home in Giraudel. Supplies come in either with good warning or as pleasant surprises, and so many that I am overwhelmed by the generosity of donors from all over the world. In two years, they have sent 2,500 story books for all ages, 74 First Aid boxes for use in schools, hundreds of pencils along with crayons, thumb tacks, string, clothes pegs, erasers, calculators, science charts, yarn, achievement stickers, felt pens, marker pens, construction paper, writing paper, small gifts for graduation prizes, folders, pencil cases, coloured chalk, colouring books, scissors, the list goes on. And the website itself is visited by teachers and well wishers from all over the world. I have such a humble feeling as I read teachers' thanks from near and far and emails from well wishers who ask what we need next or who tell me a box is on its way. Little did anyone think, in September 2007, that this little website would touch and inspire so many people. Show-me-wow has turned out to be pretty amazing even though only two years old! Thanks everyone!
10th September 2009
Letter from me to Secondary School Teachers
Dear Secondary School Teachers,
Up until now, I've neglected secondary schools in my www.show-me-wow.com web pages, I know. Strange that, as I came to Dominica from working for more years than I will tell you in an English secondary school. But the systems and philosophies in secondary education here in Dominica were so different, that I seem to have settled down more comfortably in Dominican primary schools. Well I get lots of compliments about the website from all over the world, one even came in in the last minutes from England, yet I did have a comment from a secondary school teacher who complained "What about us?" Oh dear, cries of help from teachers are hard for me to ignore. So, on the navigation bar you will now find a new web page
"Literacy in the Secondary School"
and this term I shall be in secondary schools offering more help there, bringing in supplies and finding more ideas to add to this new secondary school web page, as I tweek its edges. Please help by letting me know what you think.
From Chris.
P.S. Guess what now? I have just had a cry from an Early Years teacher saying "But what about us?" That's how teaching is. Always something to do and never a moment to be bored! Now let me think, Early Years? Mmmm!
9th September 2009
Down with Grafiti!
When people all round the school environment work so hard to keep the place looking respectable and cared for, it is soul destroying when grafiti rears its ugly head here and there! Once it starts, it spreads like a germ, so the answer is to nip it in the bud immediately.
One such occurrence happened at my school. We were blessed with a wonderfully efficient and business-like caretaker. There was no grafiti, not even in the toilets. Everyone took a pride in this. The attitude was when you see it, get rid of it immediately!
But one day, a disaffected teenager was in trouble and gleefully and with no one noticing, went back into the empty school site and, to get his own back, sprayed grafiti on the school shed. He then disappeared, eager to get back to his chums and score street cred in boasting about what he had dared to do. But the caretaker was one step ahead. Instead of waiting until morning to report the matter and upset the school with a lengthy investigation as to who the culprit could be, this wonderful caretaker took cleaning staff off their normal routine and they all set to to clean off the grafiti. Imagine the looks on the faces of the students as they arrived on the..........
school bus...............
The culprit had boasted his achievement, but there was no evidence of what he had supposedly done. His red face and downward chin gave him away and his street cred was deflated immediately. And the caretaker walked passed with head held high, a clipboard and a knowing smile!
27th August 2009
"Clear away and go home!"
There are some teachers, who are such good classroom managers, their skills are so fine tuned they are imperceptible. There are others who have successes with classroom management and when they slip up, they learn from their error. There are other teachers, who have few skills in classroom management and are either exhausted through trying to run a class badly, or their failures go unnoticed by them as they stick their heads in the sand and long for the holidays!
I think the second type of classroom manager is most interesting. They try to learn from all their blips. Take this example. The school, due to open for a new term had no class teacher for the six year olds. Then, in desperation, a man was suggested with a degree not in education but in art, an enthusiastic supporter of the school, and with children of his own. And he had time between his art projects. He was appointed and teachers and parents were impressed as they peered through his classroom door. The children adored him, and worked hard for him. The room was vibrant and his story telling was amazing as he enthused over the words and the illustrations. He was the second type of classroom manager though. One afternoon he had the whole class doing Art. There was a hub of colourful activity, and he did not notice the time ticking towards three thirty and home time. Passing by, I saw the state of the room and the parents arriving at the school to collect their children. "Mr X, " I whispered. "You need to be clearing up as it is almost home time!" He looked up, saw the clock, said "Right everyone clear away everything and go home" So they all went home!
Guess who had to do the clearing up and who stayed to help? See what I mean about learning about classroom management all the time? Well with all that washing up you would wouldn't you?
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26th August 2009
So why is it I do as I do and don't do as I say?
When in trouble as a child, I would stand before my father and he would reprimand me with
"Don't do as I do, do as I say!"
That has suddenly become pertinent to me in Dominica, where I have had a big special need about driving, as it is so different from driving in Europe. The roads are often narrow, steep and winding, the other drivers, always rushing unpredictably and the vehicles not always up to scratch..(well actually the Dominican's love their vehicles so much that's one thing they do do..avoid scratches!) Let's just say driving here is culturally different. True, some newcomers take to it easily, but as for me and as for quite a few of my female friends, we are definitely Dominica's slow learning drivers! But I could not keep relying on my husband to take me to schools, nor rely on buses as I always have such a lot to carry. So not driving is what I do, but "small achievable goals" is what I say. That's it! Small achievable goals. Sunday morning, cool and quiet, I set off on my own to drive our big old brown jeep down the narrow twisty road of the mountain.I achieved it! I drive to the Botanical Gardens and park to enjoy the Flamboyant trees in flower. I achieved it! So the next goal? I set off round the town and park on the Bay Front. I achieved it! I then tackle driving through the bustling early morning market. I achieved that too! I set off towards home and rounding a blind uphill bend, a flashy blue car is rushing towards me...................
.......................
I stop and reverse. He jams his breaks and skids on the shingle.I had coped with a near mis-hap. I achieved it!
Yes small achievable goals really do make a big task more possible, so I should have listened to myself ages ago . "Don't do as I do, do as I say!" said my father. And what is it I say?
Whatever the learner's difficulty, break the task down into small achievable goals.
20th August 2009
There's a balance needed isn't there?
Sitting at home with doors wide open all day is usually very quiet, apart from the sound of the birds and tropical wildlife..oh and the frequent torrential rain, which soon stops and dries in the sunshine. But it's holiday time and so there are children about next door. The young ones don't seem to stop for breath in all their chatter. I can hear them discussing what they are doing, experimenting with new words and phrases, learning speech patterns from one another, and never stopping. Later in the day some teenagers arrive for a visit, talking all the time, explaining, discussing, giving points of view, extending language development. So you know what I am going to say now don't you? What a difference when they return to the silent world of school, and what wasted educational opportunities when they are kept so speechless for hours. I recall arriving home from school with my teenage son. He was bursting to make noise and all I wanted was peace and quiet. His teachers had ruled a silent room, whereas my classes were full of discussing and explaining and drama. There's a balance needed isn't there? Children need to have opportunities to speak, discuss, express, query, use the spoken word in all it's forms. They don't improve their speaking skills by constantly copying words from a chalk board!
And throughout writing all this what is my background noise? The birds and the tropical wildlife and the non-stop chatting of the children and teenagers next door. Well it's all so natural isn't it?
6th August 2009
Sharing the load
It is lovely to come across teachers now, well into the school holiday, looking refreshed and less exhausted. I think you have to be a teacher to really understand how tired you get by the end of a school year...some times so tired you can't think! I recall an end of term child dashing past a plastic jar of water and in his haste, and unbeknown to him, knocking it over. The exhausted teacher, too tired to call him back, grabbed the mop!
I so often see teachers doing everyday classroom jobs that children would like to have the responsibility to do, if the idea is sold to them in a positive way that is. One school here has a Hall of Fame, photos of Caribbean heroes down what was once a dreary corridor. And one of those photos is of "Our School Wardens", a group of children who, at the end of every school day, set off cheerfully with an old wheelbarrow to check the school is clean and tidy..knowing they are proudly in the Hall of Fame, respected and responsible for the part they play in the running of the school.
So now refreshed teachers, why not take a while to make a jobs chart for your classroom, a chart with slits in so that name cards can be changed as the weeks of next term roll by.Give yourselves a break and plan to share the load, but sell the idea positively. And that boy who inadvertently knocked over the plastic jar of water? Make him Chief Floor Inspector and hand him the mop!
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21st July 2009
A tale of two mermaids
I have been making a mermaid! The Bottle Village story is still popular and so I thought its horizons could be expanded downwards and under the sea. Just imagine the stories that could be created. the drama, the poetry, the songs. So, with two plain pieces of fabric each cut identically in mermaid shape, I stitched round the edges and stuffed. (I did the two arms separately). Then I added hair and ear-rings, a bead necklace and bracelets and sparkly sequins on her fishy tale.
One of the summer schools is in mermaid mood too. The kindergarten class drew round one of the little students, added long strands of paper hair and had fun drawing the scales on her tail, making the same loopy patterns I used to have to do when practicing handwriting shapes, but to have done a mermaid's scales would, for me, have been so much more fun!
We compared our mermaids and talked about their faces. The children wanted to put their mermaid's face on first, whereas I leave putting on faces to last. We talked about whether my mermaid was a happy mermaid or a sad mermaid..and then why. Already the story lines were coming into little heads. So language development, concentration skills, handwriting practice, working as a team, so many things that you can learn from one mermaid!
My mermaid will live near Bottle Village, but I know that the paper mermaid will be rolled up and put under a small child's arm to take home. I wonder where these mermaids will end up...well you never can tell with a mermaid..and there is yet another story!
Click here for Bottle village to Promote Literacy
20th July 2009
Wide eyed needles.
What fun with some older primary children making a curve out of straight lines. We drew a right angle, marked 7 spaces a centimeter apart along each arm and labeled the vertical line one to seven, top to bottom and the horizontal line one to seven, left to right. Then, with careful ruling of lines we joined the number one mark to the other number one mark, two to two, three to three and so on until we formed a curve with all our straight lines!
"And you say this is Maths Miss! But it's fun! I wish etc etc...."
Well you can imagine the rest.The children were hooked on this curve work and progressed to marking out a piece of card in the same way, but sewed the lines rather than ruling them. But I had run out of the sort of big eyed needles with not too sharp a point to accommodate all this enthusiasm, and cannot find such needles here in Dominica. What sad faces!
Then today my heart was touched even more for these needles. I was at the basket workshop for the blind and visually impaired. How I love to go there and how welcome they make me feel when they hear my voice. I love the colour of baskets, the skill with which they are made and the rhythm of the weaving. The weavers were trying to sew pictures and words in raffia onto placemats, but were short of those wide eyed needles with not too sharp a point. "We can't find any in Dominica!" said the class leader. I felt sad as they were trying to manage with what the had and I said I'd ask my BLOG readers if they could help. If you can, please post to me at
Chris Lawrence, P.O.Box 2114, Roseau, Commonwealth of Dominica
and I'll be able to make more fun with Maths and make those lovely blind and partially sighted people especially happy.(They need coloured raffia too) Thank you.