John Bald/language and literacy

Sheila M Smith. Modern French Course.

At a talk on Tuesday, I passed round my copy of Sheila M Smith's Ma Première Année de Français. After I'd come nearly bottom of the class at Easter in my first year at secondary school, I took this home and boned up on it every day during the holidays. To my surprise, by the summer exams, I was no longer 26th, but 6th. I'd mentioned this partly in fun, and to express fellow-feeling with other slow learners,  but one of the group asked if he could find a copy, as looking at it had been the first time he'd understood French. The book is part of A Modern French Course, and available from time to time secondhand. I've now assembled the set apart from volume 4, which I'm interested in buying, or swapping for some French stamps. Purely on the basis that succeeding generations should have more available to them rather than less, I'm going to post the book here, one chapter per week.

Chapter 1.

View this photo                       View this photo                       View this photo

Progress report, bright seven year old and 9 year old.

Bsyo knew 2x this week with just one slip in place on 6x2, which she corrected quickly, so we started on 3x, she saying them with me and losing place much less often than she had while learning 2x.  V pleased and happy.  9 year old, who had not known 2x at the beginnng of December, completed his first multiplicaton practice, multiplying three-digit numbers by single digits, using the standard method. I'd given him half a dozen and asked him to do more - mum was confident that he'd succeeded, and, when I checked, he had made only one error in 15 examples. This is excellent progress in three months, and was made possible by explaining how to move the overflow numbers (aka carrying) without getting confused. This week, he will practise multiplying by two-digit numbers.

Bsyo's reading keeps getting better, though she still has to go back and work out words one letter at a time. So, we work on blending letter combinations, using the technique of working on similar words to a word that has caused a problem, then going back to it. We are now at the end of Ruth's purple set of books, and there is a twist - Bsyo reads the parent's introduction as well as the book itself, so that she learns to read longer and more intersting words such as continue, impressed and ignore, as well as building up her blending skills. She'd been dressing up as a Roman Empress at school, and liked the impression of a leaf on a reproduction Roman vase we have in the house.

Nine year old has written a nine-line description of Oliver Twist, with accurate grammar and punctuation, but some spelling mistakes, including groul for gruel, workes and skruffy. We work on these using the principles of Slimmed Down Spelling. I get out my Doulton set of Dickens characters and he decides his next description will be of Mr Jack Dawkins, aka Dodger. We read the Dickens introduction to Dodger, and mum will re read it with 9yo before he writes his description. This writing was a solid L3 overall, and a good base for reaching the expected standard by the time he goes to secondary school. 9yo's life is changing for the better.

Using ipad to promote speaking and listening skills.

Using iPads to promote listening and speaking skills

Saturday  26^th April, 2014

10.30-1.30p.m.

Canterbury Hall, 18 Cartwright Gardens, London WC1H 9EE

Fees: (inclusive of refreshments, follow-up and VAT)

First-timers £35             Previous blen attendees £30.00

£25.00 each for two or more booking together

Places restricted - essential to book asap

Download REGISTRATION FORM AND INVOICE

 

Audacity - free. Lets you add a sound file to any resource. A couple of hints.

Audacity is a freely downloadable sound deck that we can use to add a high-quality sound file to any resource. For people highly skilled in ICT, it is straightforward to use. I'm not... so here is how I managed to use it.

First of all, audacity loads very easily, though it offers a lot of other add-ons that you may not want. They're not scams, but be careful to reject them.  Make sure you have a working microphone - I found the one on my webcam worked perfectly well. Then, you have a screen with a red button to press to start. Make your recording, which can be anything from one word upwards, and press the square button to stop.

You then need to export the file rather than just save it, and put it into a format your computer will read. If you simply save it, it will stay in Audacity's own format, and your computer won't necessarily be able to use it. As I'm on PC, I select the microsoft .wav format from the menu. 

Next, when you export the file, put it into the same folder as your original resource, and keep them together. If you want to use your resource on another computer, make sure you transfer the whole folder to it and not just the resource - the computer makes a link to the sound file, and does not embed it in your resource. I usually use powerpoint. I go to in insert, then sound from file at the top right. A symbol appears on the slide for me to click to play the sound. Get these couple of little things right, and Audacity will be a good friend.

 

Charlie Rose - American journalism at its very best.

Charlie Rose's Brain series on American tv features interviews with top scientists, who use the full resources of the media to explain their work. The wonderful Eric Kandel takes part in this programme, in which we see a child hear for the first time, thanks to a cochlear implant. Who says the Americans can't to public service broadcasting? This frame has a clip from another hero, Helen Keller, who knew about deafness and blindness, having suffered both (click to enlarge):

 

 

Young children learning French: Wimbledon Chase School

Wimbledon Chase school has some lovely video showing young children speaking French with confidence and learning to write. Click here for a link.

 

Teaching Assistants' Edufax - A Manual for In-house training. Free download.

In the early 1990s, I ran a DFE pilot scheme for teaching assistants. It had a self-contained handbook, designed to allow schools to train assistants on their own site and in the context of their own work. The main emphasis was on teaching techniques. References to national strategies, current at the time of writing, should be revised in the light of the school's current curriculum. 

An updated version was published in the Edufax series, but is no longer available. I'm therefore making the full text available here, for free download, and will add some "in a nutshell" pages in a subsequent posting. I retain the copyright, but individual schools may download and use the material within their own institution. Correspondence is, as always, very welcome.

Download Classroom Assistant's Edufax, Third Edition

Tables - a game of two halves? ...and an interlude on data storage.

Bsyo a little slow and losing place on second half of 2x yesterday, so we concentrated on that, with immediate improvements in confidence. My other pupil had the same issue with 7x but only hesitated on 7x8.  Focusing on the second half of a table, without going through the first half, allows full attention to be concentrated on it. Both traditional chanting, up to 12x, and the reduced version up to 10x (which does not help people work out the true cost of annual contracts), tend to start at the beginning, and so waste time with things that are already known, rather than concentrating on the point of need. This doesn't work in music practice, and I've seen lots of benefits from abandoning it in tables.

And for the interlude, a little miracle, the Kingston Data Traveller. 

More or less actual size, proof against all wear and tear through its solid metal casing, and fitting onto a car key ring, this device stores 64gb of data, and costs under £25 delivered. I'm just upgrading from a 16gb version, that now costs under £10. I know it's true, but I still don't believe it.

Success with multiplication tables, and the error of over-using number lines.

The pupil, whom we'll call Simon, is 9, and did not know the 2x table two months ago - he got lost after 2x2, and guessed wildly. Yesterday, he said the 2x table up to 8x2, then got lost - not a maths problem, but one of co-ordination. Once he was back on track, he had no further problems. As we'd worked through all of the other tables, we went straight to 7x, the most difficult, as 7 is a prime, and the final digit does not repeat itself until 11x7.  He got to 5x7 without error, and then got lost, so we worked on the second part of the table. Once he can say a table, he is pretty good at picking out individual items, which is the key to using tables for multiplication and division, as well as to the manipulation of fractions. 

Key steps:

1. Learn to say 2x very carefully, and don't go on until it's in place with only slight hesitations. This may involve spending much more time on 2x than is usual. We do not stop at 10x, but go to 12x. Not only does this prepare for the calculation of annual rates from monthly contracts in later life, but reinforces the pattern of the first two digits in the table.

2. Move through the tables to 5x. Do not jump straight to 5x. This allows a sense of number to build as the intervals between items steadily increase. Jumping straight to larger numbers does not allow this. The "top down" approach is as fallacious in maths as in reading.

3. From 5x, go to 11x, effectively the 1x table, or counting, in two columns, then 12x, counting plus 2x table. Touch on 10 breifly, then 9x, with final digit decreasing by 1, and 8x, with final digit decreasing by 2. This section can be covered in one lesson.

4. This leaves 7x and 6x.  Explain why 7x is difficult, and say it together, slowly. Depending on how quickly the child learns, either introduce 6x as something easier, or leave it until 7x is in place. Expect 7x to be learned over a few weeks with daily practice. Pick out items and simply supply them without criticism of the child does not yet know them

Now we'd got this far, we moved to calculation. Simon could add single digits, though not always reliably, particularly 6 + 7, 8+7.  So, we use the trick taught to me by a parent of taking two packs of cards, removing the 10s and aces, and throwing down cards in twos and threes for the pupil to add up instantaneiously. An excellent way of speeding up knowledge and recall of addition facts.

Writing things down, Simon can add single digits, and two columns. Moving to three, he gets mixed up in moving (carrying) a unit to the next colum of tens - he both carries the unit, and inserts it into the answer. We tackle this by writing the outcome of each sub-section diagonally, so that the unit is inserted into the next column, and Simon starts to get the sums right. I give him six to do at home for practice.

The school has told his mother, "We don't do it like that. We use a numberline."  The boy is nine, not six, and cannot go through life drawing a long line to add things up. HMI have said that the traditional, formal method (aka algorithm) is more efficient than the alternative. But why should the school take any notice of HMI? Ofsted, which no longer inspects standards in subjects, rated them outstanding before Christmas, and that should be the end of the matter.

Simon has read 100 pages of his relatively easy book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He reads three more to me, hesitating only over "wallet" and "relative", which we explain. Wallet is a word in which the letters don't tell us everything, and we explain the shortening of the a between relate and relative. Simon remembers things he's learned very well.

More on his French shortly. The school doesn't do any languages, so I do.

Reading Recovery - the way forward. An exchange on Guardian Education.

Writing in Guardian Education, Pat Stone confused me with another John who had been involved in writing phonic materials. The exchange led to this clarification of my view on reading recovery, which I've criticised in the past for weaknesses in research and method, chiefly for the absence of a clear basis in phonics. The outcome has been to identify a strength in RR that has become much clearer since Kandel's  book, but also to strengthen the case for a revision of its teaching techniques.

To put the balance on RR. Close personal attention and individual teaching to children who do not make a good start in learning to read is essential. This side of RR gets the kind of teaching provided in Oxbridge tutorials to the people who most need it. The practice of re-reading the text used the day before provides excellent practical reinforcement for memory, which is almost always an issue in weak readers. This is consistent with Kandel's book on the development of memory, which has unfortunately not been published in the UK, but which I've discussed on my site. I've not been ignoring this issue - it's just occurred to me.

Both RR and the zealots are, however, wrong about phonics. David Crystal's Spell It Out shows that English remains phonically based, despite the transformations that have occurred in the thousand years or so of its development. On the other hand, since the Norman conquest, changes have muddied the link between sounds and letters - eg on the introduction of th. These changes can either be left to look and say, which to me is a synonym for look and guess, or they can be explained. I explain them, very, very simply, in terms children and failing adults can understand, by going back to first principles and showing how reality departs from them, and why. This is the reason I can turn round serious problems in one session, and have been doing so since the session reported by Sue Palmer in the TES in 1996. It is also the reason why I think the techniques set out in the RR handbook need to be revised.