John Bald/language and literacy

Bedtime stories aid reading - brain scan evidence.

Eleanor Harding of The Mail has a succinct account of new evidence from brain scans, from Dr John Hutton of Cincinnati Children's hospital, showing that regular bedtime stories increase brain activity in areas associated with understanding meaning. Well worth reading, and a fine example of educational journalism, seeking out new evidence - in this case from a conference in San Diego - that most of us would not otherwise see. 

 

Dr Hutton owns the delightfully-named Blue Manatee children's bookstore in Cincinnati (click on the manatee to visit the site) and below is a screen shot from his video urging parents to "unplug" children and return to human communication. Click on the picture for a link to the video on Cincinatti Children's Hospital's site.

Dr John Hutton reading a story to children and a parent at Blue Manatee Bookstore, Cincinnati.

The brain research confirms the wide-ranging evidence in the UK of the benefits to children of active interaction with their parents, and perhaps also the consequences of its absence. In the early years of the last century, widespread malnutrition led to rickets. Modern intellectual neglect has similar consequences for the mind. I must admit, I love manatees - the ultimate in peaceful creatures. So here is another pic...

LOLA - Love Languages at South Sefton College, with Dr Kim Wallace.

Dr Kim Wallace won the British Academy Schools Languages Award in 2014, and is speaking at a Westminster Forum event on Tuesday 28th April.  A Youtube video of pupils' views is here. An interesting point is that the stronger students are involved in teaching in other schools, and that several want to become language teachers. One pupil moved from a B to an A grade as a result of this teaching.   

click on page to go to site.

Vive L'Hermione...

L'Hermione is a reconstructed 18th century French frigate, that is currently sailing across the Atlantic. The original carried the Marquis of Lafayette to take part in the US war of independence, and and this accurate reconstruction is the only example of this type of warship currently taking to sea. Wikipedia in French is here

 

French in Quebec - free ebook

This interesting Ebook, offered by the Smartling internet translation service, is fascinating, as much for the old French expressions that have been retained in Quebec, as for some new ones that have been developed in response to the legal requirement to have notices predominantly in French. So PFK = KFC  (poulet frit Kentucky). In some ways, the Québécois are more French than the Parisians. Enjoy.

Why are fractions difficult, and how can we make them easier?

A teaching assistant once told me of the teaching method used in Scotland when she would not accept that multiplying a number by a fraction resulted in a smaller number. She was belted every day for a fortnight until her parents persuaded her to capitulate. These days, fractions are more likely to lead to frustration. The numbers involved are usually small, so the difficulties are not the same as those involved in long multiplication and division. Most things are written down, so there is little demand on working memory. The problem lies in understanding what we are doing, and fractions go against intuition. Multiplication gives us a higher number usually, so why not with a fraction? Once we substitute "of" for "times" we remove the barrier to understanding that led to such misery for the assistant. So how can we do this for other aspects of fractions?

The first stage of fractions is as easy as cutting up a pie into equal parts. President Eisenhower learned this at home - whoever cut the family pie had to take the last piece, so there was an interest in accuracy. The largest part that can be produced by an equal division is two. The smallest depends on how sharp the knife is, but children don't usually have to operate much beyond a sixteenth. A complication is that each prime number has a new range of equal parts - compare a half with a seventh, for example. How to manipulate these different, and incompatible parts, so that we can complete calculations using fractions?

It's not difficult to rank fractions in order if the numerator is 1.  The smaller the denominator, the bigger the fraction. So a half is greater than a third, a third than a quarter, and so on. But how do we know if two-thirds is more or less than three-fifths? Or five-sevenths?  The ratio of fiths to sevenths is not straightforward, and I have a pupil who is struggling with this. 

The key seems to be that ranking fractions in order of size is more difficult than it looks. Like adding or subtracting fractions, we need to be able to put them all on the same level, which makes the apparently simple task of ranking them a two-part task. We need to find a shared (aka common) denominator, then recalculate the numerator in terms of this. That will show us which is greater. The longer the list of fractions we have to rank, the more complicated the task.

tbc