Jj is for Jottings 40. A Listening Activity.
If you have read the introduction to “Aa is for Alpacas”, you will be aware that I have flagged poor listening skills as a growing problem in this increasingly visual world. Children who are poor listeners are limited in their ability to learn in many areas of life, but particularly at school, since teaching will usually have both visual and auditory components (and sometimes auditory only). Continue reading
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
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.”
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
Jj is for Jottings 16: Keep Reading to your Children.
Now that the school year is beginning it’s a good time to remind parents that, just because your child is learning to read, it doesn’t mean that it is time to stop reading to THEM. (That’s not shouting – it’s already bold and the underlining didn’t come through on the post.) I have noticed that, when I question “my” children (clients) about whether stories are read to them at home, an alarming number indicate that they have never had stories read to them (and these children usually have no idea about how to handle a book); some still have stories read to them (yay!); and some used to be read to, but since they began school and are bringing home readers, their parents listen to their readers in place of reading to the children. It is vital to do BOTH. I know it adds time to a busy life, but they’re only young once and it’s definitely worth it because it contributes to their success and happiness. (It should be noted here that I take what younger children say to me with a grain of salt – they don’t always perceive things accurately as a result of their limited experience, so some who say they don’t have stories read to them may actually be read to, but there are many who would be presenting an accurate picture.)
The books we read to our children usually have a much more complex level of language and a broader range of topic than the readers they bring home. In this way children are exposed to information that is outside their direct experience. I was reminded of this vividly last year when I was reading a little story to a child with a particular sound error. The story was heavily weighted with this sound to give him practice in saying the sound correctly in sentences when answering questions about the story. The story was about a boy making a sailing boat and taking it to a canal to try it out. Not surprisingly, my student had not heard of a canal, so he received a lesson on canals and, since I’ve been in a narrow boat on a canal, he also had locks explained to him – why they are necessary and how they work – adjusted to the child’s level of understanding, of course.
In addition to expanding a child’s knowledge and vocabulary through reading to them, it also provides excellent practice in maintaining listening attention, which is so important both in education and in everyday life.
As mentioned elsewhere, I used to read to my children at the dinner table through to late primary school. I did it to share with them books that I had loved as a child or, as they grew up and we moved on to books of an increasingly high level, as an adult. We talked about the books, of course, and I occasionally see glimpses of the positive effects of doing that, even now in their late 20s and early 30s.
You’ll need to go back to the pictures from Jottings 12 and 13 to get the sequence. The coast is now clear and Marshmallow is making a determined advance on the dog food.
Yet more new neighbours. First the triplets were born, and they were followed by twins. They often all play together. They were racing towards me in the second picture, but by the time the camera had actually clicked, they had turned and were off in the opposite direction! Very difficult to get 5 active lambs in the one picture, so I gave up.
Jj is for Jottings 11: Adult Attention Span, Part 2.
In Part 1 we talked about the reduced attention span caused by the devices people use to try and stay connected, and of course all of that applies to people of ages who would have smartphones, not to young children. However it does apply to young children, because they can suffer from lack of attention from the adults around them in all the ways mentioned previously. Continue reading
Art meets photography in Glenda Cornell’s Whistle Stop Studio Gallery.
Jj is for Jottings: 8. Effects of Screens on Children – My Observations, Part 2.
Here is the list of some of the changes I have seen in children and families, partly as a result of technological growth: Continue reading
