learning

Comments Made by Experienced Teachers.

1. Shanti decided she would jump onto Glenn’s back to get a good view of the toenail cutting. 2. “A good position – I think I’ll sit down.” 3. Settled in to watch the full performance.

Jj is for Jottings 35. Comments Made By Experienced Teachers.

Following are some observations I have made and some comments made by experienced teachers in the last couple of years. I find that experienced teachers have an excellent understanding of what enhances learning and what undermines learning, partly because of their long experience Continue reading →

Routine/Fewer Choices=Smarter, Happier Children (3).

Off to school next year – excellent preparation.

Jj is for Jottings 33. How More Routine, Fewer Choices Make for Smarter and Happier Children. Part 3.
Here is the third part of an article which appeared in the Pulse section of the Border Mail on February 6 last year, and it bears repeating. The first part was in Jottings 18 and the second in Jottings 26.
Behavioural optometrist Michael Smith gave these guidelines:
How to prepare your child for the ‘game of school’
• Talk with your child;
• Travel/drive/explore the world;
• Use a wide range of vocabulary;
• Play simple games with words and alphabetic sounds (make it fun);
• Read books daily — limit distractions and make the experience a special time; and
• If you are concerned about your child’s progress or development, do some research and get help as it is easier to rectify problems at an earlier age.
THE fallout is felt in the classroom.
Mrs McCormack (a teacher for 45 years, now retired) knows all too well the validity of Mr Smith’s comments after four decades of teaching.
“Nothing can replace the experience of the smell and touch of a book, of sitting cuddled up on your parent’s knee while they read to you and hearing and seeing the expression in their voice,” she says.
And while she believes advances in technology have brought a wealth of stimulation to our world, at the same time it is robbing children of vital skills needed for school and life.
“It’s like we have thrown out everything that’s old to bring in everything that’s new,” she says.
“It may not happen in my lifetime but I can see a point where the focus will return to the basics — the three Rs (Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic).
Mr Smith is adamant the over-use of electronic media before kids start school is affecting them socially, physically and mentally.
“Plonking children in front of a television for hours a day and then another two hours on the iPad or Xbox is depriving children of movement and of words,” he says.
“So many kids are starting school with a limited ability to be creative, to see in their mind.”
These are the children who end up at Mr Smith’s door.
He has countless stories of parents who come to him almost at their wit’s end about little Johnny mucking up, falling behind and generally struggling to grasp the basics of learning.
In a heart-felt letter, one mum wrote that she once had a son who hated school so much he would cry and lock himself in the toilet.
“Every day he would lay on my bed and say I hate myself, why can’t I learn and every day my heart would break (sic) for him,” she wrote.
“He was three years behind the other children in his grade and falling further and further behind.
“Now he’s a changed boy; he loves going to school, his handwriting has improved 100 per cent and he is now reading books, loves maths and is going well at sport.”
But it was the new-found confidence evident in her son’s own words that captured it best for Mr Smith.
“Thank you for helping me. You have helped me in my school work so much,” the boy wrote in pencil.
“Now can you help me pick up a chick … ha ha.

Televisions in Children’s Bedrooms.

It’s that time of year again when the alpacas have new neighbours. When these twins were a week old, their mother took them further down their paddock into line with our back paddock. The lambs were playing just next to the fence. I came across the paddock – unfortunately with no camera – to find a line of interested alpacas staring at the lambs. Geisha tried to jump on them twice (that’s how they attack unwanted animals) because “They Didn’t Belong There” and “It Was Her Territory”. Thankfully she couldn’t actually get at them through the fence.

Jj is for Jottings 31. Televisions in Children’s Bedrooms.
A few days ago one of my “therapy children” – 7 years of age – brought a soft toy into the session. When asked about it she said she’d been given it as a reward for behaving well in the shop where her parents had bought her a television for her bedroom. (Fancy having to be rewarded for behaving well when you are being bought a big-ticket item!) When asked why she should have a television in her bedroom she said because “lots of” the other children have them in their bedrooms. I don’t know what percentage of children do, but I do know it’s not uncommon. Since children having televisions in their bedrooms fills me with horror, I thought it was a good time to say my piece on the subject. Here are some reasons why TVs and children’s bedrooms should never meet:
• Programs screened when the child is in bed are likely to be inappropriate for the child’s age. Children are unable to discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate content.
• Watching TV in bed will erode sleeping time.
• How are parents going to know if the child wakes up during the night and turns on the television? If children do turn on the TV in the middle of the night, see the first two points above.
• Watching television in bed can be overstimulating and undermine the body’s readiness for sleep. You might argue that the same applies to reading in bed – and it can, but this is more of an adult problem than a child problem, and it is magnified by….
• All screens emit short-wavelength blue light. Light affects our internal body clock, which affects our circadian rhythm, which is our (more or less) 24 hour body cycle which influences many internal functions. This determines when our body is primed to stay awake and be productive and when we feel tired and want to go to sleep. When it gets dark in the evening, our pineal gland secretes the hormone melatonin, which signals to our brain and body that it’s time to get tired and go to sleep. Blue light inhibits melatonin production. As a result, our bodies don’t get the proper signal that it’s time to go to sleep, reducing both the quality and quantity of sleep. In effect, the body is tricked into thinking it’s daytime. Blue light (which we also get from the sun’s rays) are crucial during the day, but have a disastrous effect at night. There is any amount of research on this, from Harvard University, Monash University, University of Toronto to name just a few.
• Tired children do not concentrate or learn well. (Or adults either, for that matter.) Their behaviour is likely to suffer, and this will have a knock-on effect to everybody in the classroom.
Being a parent is a tough call, there’s no denying that. But one of the things we must do is to step away from our children’s whims and “what everybody else is doing” and to think about the long-term effects of our decisions on our child’s health and wellbeing.

Your Brain on Junk Food.

Finally, an introduction to two more of the alpacas’ “friends”. Shikha, a chocolate Burmese (very dark – I think he must be 70% chocolate!) and his sister, Shanti, a lilac Burmese. I’m not sure how friendly the alpacas are with the cats. The cats certainly go into the paddock with the alpacas, but they need to be wary because I’ve seen the alpacas chase them occasionally, especially Geisha.

Jj is for Jottings 27. Your Brain on Junk Food.
New Australian research from Deakin University and Australian National University confirms that junk food damages the brain. The hippocampus is the area of the brain responsible for memory and learning, so if it isn’t functioning properly, then our brains aren’t, either. Continue reading →

Routine/Fewer Choices=Smarter, Happier Children. (2)

Marshmallow sitting on the front door mat. Notice the white bits on the mat from her preening. Quite messy, and rather difficult to get out the front door without sending her flying (not literally).

Jj is for Jottings 26. How More Routine, Fewer Choices Make for Smarter and Happier Children. Part 2.
Here is the second part of an article which appeared in the Pulse section of the Border Mail on February 6 last year, and it bears repeating. The first part was in Jottings 18. We will visit other parts of the same article in other Jottings.
GETTING your priorities right as a parent is a sentiment with which behavioural optometrist Michael Smith wholeheartedly agrees.
As thousands of students poured back into classrooms across the Border in recent weeks, the odds are that some of them will come across the path of the Wodonga Vision and Learning Centre founder.
Mr Smith believes about 30 per cent of children start school before they are ready.
For the past 30 years he has helped children (and adults) with “visual processing problems” who may be struggling in a classroom or with reading.
His work is about much more than prescribing glasses.
Behavioural optometry examines how a person’s vision affects how they function in the world around them, according to Mr Smith.
“Vision is your pervasive means of dealing with the world around you and if you don’t do that well then you are going to be compromised — at school, in sport and even at work.
But it’s at school that the problem generally rears its head, according to Mr Smith.
“Often a child who has not developed their vision adequately will be written off as clumsy or just not good at sports for example,” he says.
“But when you hit school, you have a situation that forces the issue and many kids are just not ready.
“They have not developed the skills they need to be able to deal with the classroom and they are the ones who end up needing intervention.”
So what does this all mean?
It begins when we are babies, Mr Smith says.
“Visual curiosity first triggers a baby to move their hands to try and grasp something or to roll towards something.
“Eventually your movement becomes more and more complex as you learn to crawl and then eventually walk.
“Once you are on the move your visual curiosity can take you to places you can’t reach.”
Mr Smith says that as we get older we don’t always have to go to things and touch them.
“Your vision has had so many experiences, you can look at something and know what is is,” he explains.
But if your visual system does not develop beyond that point, for whatever reason, problems can arise, he says.
“If, for example, you start school and you still have to touch everything you are not going to function in a classroom because you can’t touch words or numbers,” Mr Smith says.
“It is parents who give them their language and they need to both watch and listen to you. That cannot be replaced by a computer screen.”
He says once you have a vision problem it modifies the way your body works and the way you move.
It can also affect behaviour.
He says there are a lot of things parents can do to help ensure their child’s visual system develops properly.
But it requires an investment of time.
It means reading to your child is more important than the washing.
It means less time in front of the television or Xbox and more time playing outside.
“Children need a lot of movement experience,” he explains.
“They need outside play so go to the park, ride a bike, dance, catch and throw a ball or play with a balloon when they are little.
“Give them something to make or create — whether it’s Lego or some paper towel tubes and sticky tape.
“And you must read to your child. That is essential.”
Mr Smith says a lot of children come to him with poor vocabulary and don’t know how to construct a simple sentence.
“It is parents who give them their language and they need to both watch and listen to you,” he says.
“That cannot be replaced by a computer screen.”
But the investment of time can sometimes be the hardest thing to do, he concedes.
“It’s difficult because both parents generally have to work and our society is such that in order to support ourselves parents have to work,” Mr Smith says.
“The parent may only see their child for an hour in the morning and an hour at night and most of that time is spent pushing the kid to get ready for breakfast or dinner or out of bed or off to bed.
“It’s not quality time.
“It’s survival time.”

Handwriting Boosts Brain Power.

I promised a better photo of Marshmallow. This time she has taken over Sam’s basket when he was busy doing something else. She would sometimes lay an egg in his basket. Once I found an egg underneath Sam. Perhaps he was hoping it would hatch!

Jj is for Jottings 25. Handwriting Boosts Brain Power.

When we write, we use whole strokes to depict a letter. In doing this, we activate parts of the brain responsible for thinking, memory and language. Writing engages many more parts of the brain than typing, quite apart from developing a greater range of fine motor skills. Continue reading →

Auditory Sequential Memory – Useful Figures.

Sam, the toenail-eating dog in Spring 2014, aged 15 years.

Jj is for Jottings 22. Auditory Sequential Memory: Some Useful Figures.

Thinking/cognition involves auditory sequential memory (also referred to as short term auditory processing or short term auditory memory) and visual sequential processing, working memory and executive function.
Auditory and visual sequential processing is how many pieces of information you can take in.
Working memory is how many pieces of information you can take in, hold it in your memory and DO something with it (manipulate the pieces).
Executive function is where you have taken in the information and remembered it, and now you are bringing in other information from long term memory and using visualisation (thinking in pictures) and conceptualisation (thinking in words) to manipulate the information and make associations i.e. think.
Auditory sequential memory is measured quite simply by using digit span – how many single numbers are remembered when presented one second apart. eg. 9-5-2-4. The average adult has a digit span of 7 (but this starts to decline after the late 20’s). At birth the sequential processing is 0. Typically it takes around 15 years to go from 0-7. Here’s a little guide:
Age Number of Digits
3 years 2-3
4 years 3-4
5 years 3,4,5
6 years 5-6
7-15 years 7 Continue reading →

More of the Other Side of the Coin

An “aerial” view of Manuel sucking my gumboot!

Jj is for Jottings 21. A Bit more of the Other Side of the Coin.

I thought I’d finished with this topic, but last week I was listening to lectures on autism, and came across some reinforcement from Bob Doman, a very well-respected and experienced educator who works in child development in the U.S. This also ties in nicely with early Jottings on repetition and learning. Continue reading →

The Other Side of the Coin.

Another view of the family cos they are so cute!

Jj is for Jottings 20. The Other Side of the Coin.

Last time I talked about the important role speech pathologists can play in literacy, and this is quite true. In theory, we can make a huge difference. However, as with learning any new skills or working to improve existing skills, practice is paramount. Continue reading →

Literacy Development.

Some of the alpacas’ neighbours who live in the orchard next to their paddock. They can have conversations through the gate if they choose, although the alpacas have never seen chicks this small because they are locked in a pen with their mother until they are big enough not to be attacked by a cat or a bird of prey.

Jj is for Jottings 19. Literacy Development.

There is a close relationship between listening/speaking (oral language) and reading/writing (written language).
From early on in life we listen, think and talk. We THINK in oral language and pictures in our minds. We READ and WRITE by building another layer onto the listening, thinking and talking. Therefore, if oral language is reduced or imperfect in any way, we have a faulty base on which to build written language. It is like trying to build a brick wall on a foundation of sand.
Not all children who have early speech and language problems will have difficulty in learning to read and write, but about 50% will. Many children beginning school do not have strong enough language skills to support learning to read and write, even if they don’t have any glaringly apparent speech or language problems.
Speech/language problems can occur at sound, word or sentence level.
Sound Level: Difficulty in producing sounds.
Not being able to hear the individual sounds in a word.
Word Level: Not understanding the meanings of words.
Not being able to remember familiar words.
Not knowing how or why to change parts of words to change
meaning eg. Adding an ‘s’ to make a plural.
Sentence Level: Not understanding or using the grammatical rules of
language.  Continue reading →