Routines/Fewer Choices=Smarter, Happier Children.

Jj is for Jottings 18. How More Routine and Fewer Choices Make for Smarter and Happier Children. Part 1.
Here is the first part of an article which appeared in the Pulse section of the Border Mail on February 6 last year, and it bears repeating. We will visit other parts of the same article in other Jottings.
IT’s 9.30pm and little Johnny is sprawled on the couch, fast asleep in front of a gruesome television crime drama.
The bright green remains of the freezer’s last three icypoles stain his lips and cheeks.
A laptop lies open on the carpet next to an exercise book, its screen saver blinking almost in remonstration of homework not done.
Aah, but how’s the serenity?
The golden silence of a sleeping child after one of those insanely busy days at work and a mountain of washing, dishes and catch-up emails to tackle at home.
Parents, does any of this sound familiar?
Welcome to the juggling act that can be parenting in the modern world.
But according to education experts on the Border, these day-to-day pressures could be hampering a child’s ability to learn and thrive at school.
From too much technology and too many choices about what they can eat through to the absence of a set bedtime, educators and the people helping the kids who fall through the cracks of the education system are seeing common issues with children who struggle at school.
And it starts long before they take a seat in the classroom.
Rhonda McCormack has been a teacher for 45 years, retiring in December after 40 years as a much-loved fixture at St Patrick’s Primary School in Albury.
She says there could not be a better job in the world.
But Mrs McCormack says teaching is not what it used to be — there’s more paperwork and there’s a lot more parenting.
And while she doesn’t want to sound like “an old school marm”, the mother of five boys herself says a lack of structure and discipline at home is creating students who are less resilient and harder to teach.
“By discipline I mean things like a set meal, bath and bed routine,” she says.
“These days kids have so many choices — if they don’t like what there is to eat, they get something else.
“Children also tend to be built up to think they are brilliant at everything … they take criticism poorly and the word ‘no’ is often not in their vocabulary.
“These factors can make it hard to concentrate on a task and school can become very challenging.”
Mrs McCormack is not necessarily having a shot at parents; she says the challenges of modern society and high cost of living can make the parenting job a stressful and demanding one.
“Parents often work full-time and at the end of the day they can give in on things just for some peace and quiet,” she says.
“And children are experts at zoning in when you are at your most vulnerable. Before you know it, you’ve given them the last five ice-blocks out of the freezer.”
But she says at the end of the day parents have to decide which job is more important because “eventually you will make a rod for your own back”.

“It didn’t look that good anyway.”

 

Learning Vocabulary Through Reading.

Following the sequence from Jottings 16, it’s easy to read Marshmallow’s mind…”I’ll pretend I’m not looking.”

Jj is for Jottings 17. Learning New Words (Vocabulary) Through Reading.

Following on from Jottings 16, in which I encouraged you to keep reading to your children even when they are learning to read for themselves, here is some further information from a 2015 study:
Beginning in primary school, the ability to work out meanings of unknown words through reading is an important skill for acquiring vocabulary, and this continues right throughout life. Continue reading

Quick – and Alarming – Statistics.

Meet Sam’s friend, Marshmallow – a bantam with plenty of attitude. You’ll see a little sequence over the next few posts. She’s in the distance, admittedly, but there’ll be a close-up later on. Sam is eating some dried food.

Jj is for Jottings 12: Some quick statistics.
An Australian study done in 2010 found that 20% of 4-5 year old children were assessed as having a speech impairment.
Following on from that a separate study showed that, from a sample of parents who had expressed concerns about their child’s ability to talk and produce speech sounds, 60.4% did not attempt to access any speech pathology services. In fact they did nothing about it at all. Continue reading

Movement and Learning.

Jj is for Jottings 5.  Movement and Learning.

Pictured: “Will you just go away and stop taking photos!” Manuel – an alpaca with attitude.

 

Did you know that learning requires movement? We fall into the trap of dividing life into physical versus mental activities, but in fact we can’t separate movement from learning.
Skills of all types are built through muscle movements, from the physical skills of athletes, dancers etc., to the less obvious (but very complex) muscle movements involved in speech, language and gesture. Even if our thinking is deep and abstract, it can only be manifested through the use of the muscles in our bodies – speaking, writing, making music, computing and so on.
At the very start of the learning process we move so that we align our sensory organs to receive maximum input from our environment eg. turning your head so that one ear is close to the person speaking to you in a noisy room; moving your eyes around to take in the entire diagram on the whiteboard.
There must be movement to “pin down” a thought. You may sit quietly to think, but an action must be used to anchor a thought – either written or spoken words. Talking (or writing) allows us to organise and elaborate our thoughts. When we talk about what we’ve learned, the physical movements internalise and solidify it in nerve networks.
Studies clearly show that more active people – adults and children – score better on mental tests than less active people. Recent research has discovered that muscular activities, especially co-ordinated movements, stimulate the production of neurotrophins, which in turn stimulate the growth of nerve cells and increase the number of neural connections in the brain. How many times have we observed that the students who excel academically at secondary school are also excellent sportspeople, and many are also talented in music and other arts?
So it is essential to the learning process that we allow children to explore every aspect of movement and balance in their environment – walking along the kerb, climbing a tree, or even jumping on the furniture! Or perhaps a more acceptable alternative to that last one.

 

Learning, Part 2.

Otis Reading One of his Favourites. This was the title of a photo sent to me by a young first-time father.

 

Jj is for Jottings 4. Learning, Part 2.

During the processes of thinking, remembering and being physically active, new dendrites grow. (See Learning, Part 1.) They act as contact points and open new channels of communication with other neurons as learning occurs. Continue reading

Learning, Part 1.

This is what we do when we’re finally let out into the paddock after shearing – have a good roll!

You might need to concentrate a little harder for the first two paragraphs, but bear with me, it’ll become clear in the third. This applies to adults, too, not just children.

Jj is for Jottings: 3. Learning, Part 1.

To understand about learning, we need to know a little bit about how the nervous system works. Continue reading