At school in my play time I caught a lizard in the garden. Today I caught a lizard that was as big as a goanna with a blue tongue and a giant brown tail. He bit me on the thumb as I was holding him tightly. I jumped and dropped him and he got away. In time I will become a better lizard wrangler.
Dardo (aged 7); (art work by Dardo)
Filed under creative writing, Learning, Posts, Short Story
“Does handwriting matter? Not very much according to educators. The Common Core standards, which we have adopted in most states, call for teaching legible handwriting, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.”
“What’s Lost As Handwriting Fades” – by Maria Konnikova
I have just finished reading this article and you can follow the above link to access it. The article suggests evidence is emerging of a greater link between handwriting and learning. It appears children learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand.
A 2012 study by Karin James at the Indiana University supported the association between handwriting and learning. Children who had not learned to read were presented with index cards with a letter or shape they were to reproduce. They could either:
A study of their brain waves as they reproduced the shape or letter showed an area of the brain, active when an adult reads and writes, was highly stimulated when the child drew the letter on a blank sheet of paper. The activation was significantly weaker through the other two processes.
Learning is a complicated process. When we reproduce letters, or anything else, by hand a plan is required before executing the action. The end result is highly variable in that it will not exactly represent the original. Learning to identify variable representations is important to decoding letters when reading.
The research by Virginia Berninger, a psychologist at University of Washington, indicated that when a child who composed text by hand (either printing or cursive) “They not only consistently produced more words more quickly than they did on the keyboard, but expressed more ideas.”
There is also a suggestion of different neuro-pathways being developed in the brain when a child progresses on from printing to cursive writing.
Research at the University of California have reported laboratory and real-world studies of students learning better when they take notes by hand than when they type on a keyboard.
So is it time to throw away the pen and paper and adopt the technology and the keyboard? Was it time to give up walking when we invented the car?
Filed under creative writing, Learning
Late one dark and dingy night soaring high through the clouds above the Indian Ocean was a China baby on a magical carpet with an owl called whisper. The magical carpet worshipped the China baby because this young child was definitely no ordinary child. He was the son of a king and the richest man alive. The baby travelled once a year on the magical a carpet to a land called Neverland. The baby was so happy and could not wait to reach the land. Sparks of joy hit his heart as he reached the island in hope for hours of joy. After he plays he and whisper are back in the sky soaring high through the clouds over the Indian Ocean.
Jacko (aged 10)
Filed under creative writing, Posts, Short Story
In a hot jungle a big brown lion was sleeping late at night. He was a big mean lion with a wonderful mane. When the lion woke up he saw a big deer and started to slowly move towards it. The deer started to move away but the lion pounced, hit a tree, ‘ouch’ and lost sight of the deer.
Gordon (aged 10)
Filed under creative writing, Learning, Posts, Short Story
Early one morning when there was a screech on the shiny wooden floor, a young girl woke up in her bedroom. Betty was three years old, had blonde shiny hair and, because she was easily scared by little noises made during the night, she kept a beautiful white bird in a nice white cage in her bedroom. She started to walk over to the cage when she felt the carpet moving and fell down. She started to fly. Suddenly Betty and her bird flew out her window and far below them they could see her very own castle.
Abbie (aged 10)
Filed under creative writing, Posts, Short Story
Late one creepy night at the very bottom of the Pacific Ocean lived an old, slimy octopus. He was weird, feared by all, looked hurt and ugly, and his eyes shone bright red. His tentacles were short and yellow. He smelt like a rotten fish and the carcass of a frog. The octopus was sick and tired of being feared and he wanted it to stop. He wanted to have friends and be liked and so he called an ocean meeting to discuss his loneliness. Later that creepy night stood an unhappy and lonely octopus as he realized that no animal out of the entire Pacific Ocean had come to the meeting.
Jacko (Aged 10)
This is a very sad, rather funny story, about a lonely octopus. Note that Jack has used a simile as he describes the way that the poor old fellow smelt.
Filed under creative writing, Learning, Posts
The small boy is on a magic carpet flying in the clouds with a bird. He is happy and his bird is flying beside him. They are on their way to the moon because they are looking for aliens. They got lost. They searched for the moon and at last they found it and they went home.
Dardo (Aged 7)
Filed under creative writing, Learning, Posts
At 5.30 on a Monday morning, in a village, three college boys were climbing a tall tree because they were trying to reach a red Queen apple. Oscar, Finlay and Patrick had just paid three hundred dollars to go to school at Marist Brothers private collage at Ashgrove and they were feeling excited and proud of themselves which is why they decided to stretch Oscar’s arm to reach the high apple on the tree. They tried all day until they achieved their goal at 5 pm and then they took the lovely apple to Oscar’s mother and she cut it into sixes, which is two sweet pieces for each of them. The apple filled them up so they didn’t have to eat their corn and cabbage quiche for dinner that night, which all three agreed they didn’t like. At 5.30 on Tuesday morning they were starving again.
Oscar, aged 7 years.
Filed under creative writing, Posts, Short Story
Early one day on an old dairy farm lived a shaggy worn out pig. This old worn out pig had lived a horrible life on a small dose of food and water. The pig was tired of living on the farm so he thought to himself, “I have to escape”. Every day he chewed and chewed at the barbed wire fence until it snapped apart. The pig was so happy! Later that day the pig escaped. In the morning the dairy farmer realised the shaggy worn out pig had escaped.
Jacko (aged 10)
At times the writing tutor will challenge the student to write on a topic, in this case a pig. The student and the tutor have fifteen minutes to come up with a story. Creative writing can sometimes be creative anxiety, and an anxiety which may leave a child immobilised (and not just children). You cannot remove anxiety by avoiding the stimulant (the test situation) so we encourage the children to have fun with the pressure of competition. Once fun is realised pressure dissipates and creativity flows. This time I have included the tutor’s work, just for fun…
When the rain came at the old tractor factory the pig knew it was going to be a good day. Slender by pig standards she was a pale skinned pig with a gentle nature. It was her normal job to sweep the floors and feed the dogs, but not on wet days. When it rained her task changed to singing for the assembly workers to keep their spirits up. At morning tea when she had sung her way through Justin Beiber’s songs and was gargling in the bathroom for her next bracket, the sun came out.
The Tutor
Filed under creative writing, Learning, Posts, Short Story
“These are the best years of your life.”, self assuring words spruiked by many a parent and teacher to seven-year old students who do not need reassurance after remembering their potty training years. They have just cruised through the first two years of primary school, they know all the numbers, the alphabet and can write their name; what else is there to learn?
Year 3 is where many young students realise their world will never be the same again. It is during this year they discover numbers do not stop at 1,000 but continue all the way to 10,000 and they have to know their order, place value, and be able to recognise if they are odd or even! Not only that but there are numbers smaller than one that no-one told them about as they are introduced to the fractions 1/2, 1/4, 1/3, and 1/5.
When learning the multiplication table by heart for 2, 3, 5 and 10 no-one warned them about having to manage multiplying a two digit number by a single digit number, without a smart phone. In fact, they are expected to develop strategies to perform addition and subtraction in their head (mental maths). Counting on, regrouping and partitioning are all strategies employed to perform mental maths.
It is during this year our students are introduced to metric measurement. I hear very few complaints from students in our tuition centre about learning measurements. I simply remind them that learning 1,000 metres equals one kilometre is much easier than remembering there are 1,760 yards to a mile, 22 yards to a chain, or 16 ounces to a pound.
Yes, there is a lot to learn in Year 3 (and this is only maths) and yes, these may be the best years of their life because Year 5 is ahead of them, but we won’t tell them about that yet.
XtraMile Tuition Strategies (North Brisbane) - 0415 049461 