"Raising IQs in Toddlers with Autism" Well Blog/The New York Times 12/22/09
This interview with Sally Rogers of UC Davis and the MIND Institute, as well as one of the people behind an apparently successful intervention called the Early Start Denver Model, really interested me. The key to the intervention is play, something that all kids need, and that I just read about in Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong's great Tools of the Mind, and am currently reading about in Stuart Brown's Play.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
WORLD OF LEARNING: WHAT AND WHEN ARE WE READY TO LEARN?
"Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them" The New York Times 12/20/09
Great article from the Times' great Benedict Carey, with the focus on the provocative idea that kids can handle simple multiplication and division concepts before first grade, and a provocative aside, "the brain’s ability to link letter combinations with sounds may not be fully developed until age 11 — much later than many have assumed."
Great article from the Times' great Benedict Carey, with the focus on the provocative idea that kids can handle simple multiplication and division concepts before first grade, and a provocative aside, "the brain’s ability to link letter combinations with sounds may not be fully developed until age 11 — much later than many have assumed."
Friday, December 18, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
LARS'S LIBRARY: LITERARY LINKS
More kids' books Christmas gift ideas and some nice preview pictures from those books at PRI's The World's "Children’s Holiday Books 2009".
The story includes two books I just have happily purchased and read—Kate DiCamillo's The Magician's Elephant and Shaun Tan's Tales from Suburbia—so I have evidence that Carol Zall's recommendations here are excellent. She also highlights a new edition of Alice in Wonderland with voluptuously colorful illlustrations by Rodney Matthews, a new edition of Han Christian Andersen's Thumbelina with illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline, who did such a wonderful job on DiCamillo's previous The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, a pop-up version of The Little Prince, and a picture book, Waiting for Winter by Sebastian Meschenmoser.
Another new, or in this case re-issued, children's book that I'm ordering right now is Alastair Reid's Ounce, Dice, Trice, enthusiastically reviewed here by Daniel Pinkwater. It was illustrated by Ben Shahn!
The story includes two books I just have happily purchased and read—Kate DiCamillo's The Magician's Elephant and Shaun Tan's Tales from Suburbia—so I have evidence that Carol Zall's recommendations here are excellent. She also highlights a new edition of Alice in Wonderland with voluptuously colorful illlustrations by Rodney Matthews, a new edition of Han Christian Andersen's Thumbelina with illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline, who did such a wonderful job on DiCamillo's previous The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, a pop-up version of The Little Prince, and a picture book, Waiting for Winter by Sebastian Meschenmoser.
Another new, or in this case re-issued, children's book that I'm ordering right now is Alastair Reid's Ounce, Dice, Trice, enthusiastically reviewed here by Daniel Pinkwater. It was illustrated by Ben Shahn!
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
WORLD OF LEARNING
"When Teaching the Right Answers Is the Wrong Direction" Rebecca Alber Blog/Edutopia 11/12/09
"Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn" Scientific American 10/20/09
"Decision Making Becomes the Newest Life Science" Edutopia 12/09
Some great stuff by way of Edutopia. My sister has recently been telling me about motivational programs used in Washington state that appear to be about telling kids what they need to do to change their lives. But perhaps a better approach is to let them explore the alternatives without making initial judgments, as in the Decision Education Foundation's program profiled in Edutopia's December issue.
Amber Lamprecht of Literacy and Learning in San Francisco has really made me think about this, recounting her work in helping young people to chart out positives and negatives of possible decisions and having them visualize possible outcomes. Young people, in my opinion, will more often than not make good life choices when they are given tools to make them and are empowered to do so.
The two articles about the problem with "right" answers really hit home with me. I am currently working with a sixth grader and a seventh grader who have homework "study guides" they fill in for literature and social studies. At times, they get frustrated with me because I press them to give me their own interpretation of the material without letting them know if it is "correct," and I get frustrated with the "study guides" because they end up not guiding study, but filling time with empty busy work.
"Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn" Scientific American 10/20/09
"Decision Making Becomes the Newest Life Science" Edutopia 12/09
Some great stuff by way of Edutopia. My sister has recently been telling me about motivational programs used in Washington state that appear to be about telling kids what they need to do to change their lives. But perhaps a better approach is to let them explore the alternatives without making initial judgments, as in the Decision Education Foundation's program profiled in Edutopia's December issue.
Amber Lamprecht of Literacy and Learning in San Francisco has really made me think about this, recounting her work in helping young people to chart out positives and negatives of possible decisions and having them visualize possible outcomes. Young people, in my opinion, will more often than not make good life choices when they are given tools to make them and are empowered to do so.
The two articles about the problem with "right" answers really hit home with me. I am currently working with a sixth grader and a seventh grader who have homework "study guides" they fill in for literature and social studies. At times, they get frustrated with me because I press them to give me their own interpretation of the material without letting them know if it is "correct," and I get frustrated with the "study guides" because they end up not guiding study, but filling time with empty busy work.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
RECENT NEWS: THE CASE FOR LISTENING
Discussing strategies to use with a struggling reader with whom we both worked, a resource specialist at a local school told me that she let a struggling reader listen to audio books, but insisted (and asked his parents to enforce that insistence) that he also get the text version and always follow along.
Julie Moncton, one of the owners of the fabulous All Ears Audio Books in San Jose, wrote to tell me about parents coming in, “kids in tow,” saying, “'I need an audio book for my son. He has problems with reading. Nope—no audio book for my other kids. They read just fine.”
Sometimes it seems that audio books get no respect, despite the fact that they have been a fairly successful branch of the publishing industry. Many adults I know who stress the importance of children learning to read do much, if not all, of their own “reading” listening to audio books.
Personally, I used to classify myself as a non-audio book person. I told myself I just couldn’t get into them. It was difficult for me to maintain orientation, so much easier on the page, where you can backtrack or pause without all that effort.
Then my sister pointed out that using audio books had increased her listening and focusing skills. Maybe, I realized, the problem wasn’t audio books, it was me. Putting effort and purpose into listening, I have begun to reap benefits, just as I do from reading text.
In my work with kids, I've seen audio books open up new worlds, not to mention develop skills that are applicable to all sorts of learning. The reasons that we have for reading text—enjoyment, edification, and gaining knowledge—are just as valid for listening to it. And there is an added benefit: the deep, inherited pleasure that comes from having someone tell you a story.
Many educators don’t place enough value on audio books (or for that matter, reading aloud to kids beyond the third grade), and view them solely as an aid for readers having difficulty with the process. Really, audio books are another, equally important, avenue for content. The kind of “literacy” involved should be respected in its own right, independent from the skills involved with decoding off the page.
Kids who enjoy listening to a book should be able to enjoy it. Kids who have trouble with decoding and fluency should have access to content to which they might not otherwise have access. Not being able to read does not mean you are unintelligent.
In a presentation by John Ratey, author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, he suggested that we stop paying so much attention to the right/left brain paradigm and start thinking about a front/back model.
I find such a model particularly valuable when thinking about reading. To make a simple distinction, the back brain is where sensory input is processed. The front brain is where we set goals and monitor ourselves as we move toward them, where we evaluate our performance and regulate our reaction to that evaluation.
The front brain is what makes humans different than most of the rest of the animal kingdom. It’s bigger, better, and inchoate until rather late in our lives. The fact that it is not fully organized until well into adulthood is probably a good explanation of why car insurance is more expensive for teenagers than it is for me.
If the front brain is functioning well, higher order cognition is deliberate and measured. To think in profound and sophisticated ways, we need to take the time to reflect on incoming information. The tortoise will beat the hare.
Compare that to the back brain, where speed is a far more valuable commodity. The back brain gets us the information, the raw data we use for our thinking. The reader who automatically processes words, whose back brain instantly recognizes letter and word shapes and the symbol to sound and etymological principles underneath, will not have to waste front brain time monitoring the critical task of literacy called decoding, and can use the saved mental energy for critical thinking. Advantage: hare.
It seems clear that back brain weakness, a lack of automaticity in processing sensory input, doesn’t tell us anything about the front brain. Poor readers can be great thinkers. For that matter, great readers can be poor thinkers. So why should poor readers be denied content that matches their front brain capabilities?
If you can’t automatically process written language, but can automatically process oral language, why should you be denied access to that language? And please, I’m not advocating that we give up on teaching reading skills, so tremendously important.
I work with an eight-year-old girl whose reading of low level material can be halting and laborious. Yet she has listened to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, and avidly discusses the books, aimed at nine to twelve-year-olds, with full understanding, making connections to Greek mythology and following her curiosity to find out more.
Let’s show some respect for the audio book as its own medium. And let’s show some respect for kids who demonstrate their intelligence as they interact with that medium.
In a piece on NPR extolling the virtues of audio books, children’s author Neil Gaiman contended that critic Harold Bloom’s argument—“deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear”—was “astonishingly unconvincing.” Gaiman countered that “you can have a close and perfectly valid relationship with the text when you hear it.”
Let's show some respect for that relationship.
Julie Moncton, one of the owners of the fabulous All Ears Audio Books in San Jose, wrote to tell me about parents coming in, “kids in tow,” saying, “'I need an audio book for my son. He has problems with reading. Nope—no audio book for my other kids. They read just fine.”
Sometimes it seems that audio books get no respect, despite the fact that they have been a fairly successful branch of the publishing industry. Many adults I know who stress the importance of children learning to read do much, if not all, of their own “reading” listening to audio books.
Personally, I used to classify myself as a non-audio book person. I told myself I just couldn’t get into them. It was difficult for me to maintain orientation, so much easier on the page, where you can backtrack or pause without all that effort.
Then my sister pointed out that using audio books had increased her listening and focusing skills. Maybe, I realized, the problem wasn’t audio books, it was me. Putting effort and purpose into listening, I have begun to reap benefits, just as I do from reading text.
In my work with kids, I've seen audio books open up new worlds, not to mention develop skills that are applicable to all sorts of learning. The reasons that we have for reading text—enjoyment, edification, and gaining knowledge—are just as valid for listening to it. And there is an added benefit: the deep, inherited pleasure that comes from having someone tell you a story.
Many educators don’t place enough value on audio books (or for that matter, reading aloud to kids beyond the third grade), and view them solely as an aid for readers having difficulty with the process. Really, audio books are another, equally important, avenue for content. The kind of “literacy” involved should be respected in its own right, independent from the skills involved with decoding off the page.
Kids who enjoy listening to a book should be able to enjoy it. Kids who have trouble with decoding and fluency should have access to content to which they might not otherwise have access. Not being able to read does not mean you are unintelligent.
In a presentation by John Ratey, author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, he suggested that we stop paying so much attention to the right/left brain paradigm and start thinking about a front/back model.
I find such a model particularly valuable when thinking about reading. To make a simple distinction, the back brain is where sensory input is processed. The front brain is where we set goals and monitor ourselves as we move toward them, where we evaluate our performance and regulate our reaction to that evaluation.
The front brain is what makes humans different than most of the rest of the animal kingdom. It’s bigger, better, and inchoate until rather late in our lives. The fact that it is not fully organized until well into adulthood is probably a good explanation of why car insurance is more expensive for teenagers than it is for me.
If the front brain is functioning well, higher order cognition is deliberate and measured. To think in profound and sophisticated ways, we need to take the time to reflect on incoming information. The tortoise will beat the hare.
Compare that to the back brain, where speed is a far more valuable commodity. The back brain gets us the information, the raw data we use for our thinking. The reader who automatically processes words, whose back brain instantly recognizes letter and word shapes and the symbol to sound and etymological principles underneath, will not have to waste front brain time monitoring the critical task of literacy called decoding, and can use the saved mental energy for critical thinking. Advantage: hare.
It seems clear that back brain weakness, a lack of automaticity in processing sensory input, doesn’t tell us anything about the front brain. Poor readers can be great thinkers. For that matter, great readers can be poor thinkers. So why should poor readers be denied content that matches their front brain capabilities?
If you can’t automatically process written language, but can automatically process oral language, why should you be denied access to that language? And please, I’m not advocating that we give up on teaching reading skills, so tremendously important.
I work with an eight-year-old girl whose reading of low level material can be halting and laborious. Yet she has listened to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, and avidly discusses the books, aimed at nine to twelve-year-olds, with full understanding, making connections to Greek mythology and following her curiosity to find out more.
Let’s show some respect for the audio book as its own medium. And let’s show some respect for kids who demonstrate their intelligence as they interact with that medium.
In a piece on NPR extolling the virtues of audio books, children’s author Neil Gaiman contended that critic Harold Bloom’s argument—“deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear”—was “astonishingly unconvincing.” Gaiman countered that “you can have a close and perfectly valid relationship with the text when you hear it.”
Let's show some respect for that relationship.
WORLD OF LEARNING: MY REVIEW OF "CONVERSATIONS WITH JEAN PIAGET"
CONVERSATIONS WITH JEAN PIAGET. By Jean-Claude Bringuier, translated by Basia Miller Gulati. University of Chicago, 1980. 145 pages.
Piagetian ideas have had such an impact on education and child psychology that as with all schools of thought that become popularized, those ideas have been vilified or bowdlerized to fit preconceptions. There are Piagetians and anti-Piagetians who have never read Piaget.
There is a good reason. At the risk of overgeneralizing, it seems to me that genius is rarely warm and fuzzy. Piaget can be prickly, and his writing, rooted in rigorous scientific research and expressed in the language of the academy, is always dense and often inaccessible, at least to a reader like me.
That made this slender volume especially helpful. In the process of talking to Piaget and some of his colleagues in 1969 and 1975, Jean-Claude Bringuier skillfully teases out complex ideas in palatable form.
He also gives us a picture of a real person in a real (and messy) study who likes to make fondue and go on bike rides, listens to Bach and Wagner while he works, and wears his Legion of Honor pin because it helps with French customs officials and restaurant reservations.
For anyone wanting a basic understanding of Piaget, you could do worse than to read 'Conversations' and another short book written by Piaget himself with his collaborator Bärbel Inhelder, 'The Psychology of the Child.'
In 'Conversations,' Piaget is bemused by critics who find his theories rigid and restrictive. His deep and profound respect for children and childhood motivated him, like a child, to continually assimilate and accommodate in the process of constructing knowledge.
'That's the ideal I personally strive for,' he remarks to Bringuier, 'to remain a child to the end. Childhood is the creative phase par excellence!'
That makes it difficult to unequivocally state what his theories are, because Piaget was always growing and changing.
Piaget admits that he wasn't interested 'in individuals' but 'in what is is general in the development of intelligence and knowledge.' His denigrators might be surprised to learn that although Piaget did find evidence for fixed stages of developmental transition, he also came to the conclusion that 'the prime mover of evolution is behavior.'
Indeed, while Piaget wants to stay away from recommending best practices for teaching, Bringuier gets him to acknowledge there are methodologies that are might be more effective.
When Piaget claims that 'the role of the psychologist is, above all, to give the facts that the pedagogue can use and not put oneself in his place and give him advice,' Bringuier presses the issue, noting that theory can influence pedagogy.
Piaget answers by complaining that frequently 'absolutely nothing is done to teach the child the spirit of experimentation. He has lessons, he sees experiments demonstrated; but seeing them is not the same as doing them for himself. I'm convinced that one could develop a marvelous method of participatory education by giving the child the apparatus with which to do experiments and thus discover a lot of things for himself. Guided, of course.'
That sounds awfully close to Vygotsky's ideas, and the zone of proximal development, to me.
'Education,' Piaget goes on to say, 'for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society....But for me, education means making creators....You have to make inventors, innovators, not conformists.'
Inspiring words from the man who also tells his interviewer,'Everything one teaches a child prevents him from inventing or discovering.'
Piagetian ideas have had such an impact on education and child psychology that as with all schools of thought that become popularized, those ideas have been vilified or bowdlerized to fit preconceptions. There are Piagetians and anti-Piagetians who have never read Piaget.
There is a good reason. At the risk of overgeneralizing, it seems to me that genius is rarely warm and fuzzy. Piaget can be prickly, and his writing, rooted in rigorous scientific research and expressed in the language of the academy, is always dense and often inaccessible, at least to a reader like me.
That made this slender volume especially helpful. In the process of talking to Piaget and some of his colleagues in 1969 and 1975, Jean-Claude Bringuier skillfully teases out complex ideas in palatable form.
He also gives us a picture of a real person in a real (and messy) study who likes to make fondue and go on bike rides, listens to Bach and Wagner while he works, and wears his Legion of Honor pin because it helps with French customs officials and restaurant reservations.
For anyone wanting a basic understanding of Piaget, you could do worse than to read 'Conversations' and another short book written by Piaget himself with his collaborator Bärbel Inhelder, 'The Psychology of the Child.'
In 'Conversations,' Piaget is bemused by critics who find his theories rigid and restrictive. His deep and profound respect for children and childhood motivated him, like a child, to continually assimilate and accommodate in the process of constructing knowledge.
'That's the ideal I personally strive for,' he remarks to Bringuier, 'to remain a child to the end. Childhood is the creative phase par excellence!'
That makes it difficult to unequivocally state what his theories are, because Piaget was always growing and changing.
Piaget admits that he wasn't interested 'in individuals' but 'in what is is general in the development of intelligence and knowledge.' His denigrators might be surprised to learn that although Piaget did find evidence for fixed stages of developmental transition, he also came to the conclusion that 'the prime mover of evolution is behavior.'
Indeed, while Piaget wants to stay away from recommending best practices for teaching, Bringuier gets him to acknowledge there are methodologies that are might be more effective.
When Piaget claims that 'the role of the psychologist is, above all, to give the facts that the pedagogue can use and not put oneself in his place and give him advice,' Bringuier presses the issue, noting that theory can influence pedagogy.
Piaget answers by complaining that frequently 'absolutely nothing is done to teach the child the spirit of experimentation. He has lessons, he sees experiments demonstrated; but seeing them is not the same as doing them for himself. I'm convinced that one could develop a marvelous method of participatory education by giving the child the apparatus with which to do experiments and thus discover a lot of things for himself. Guided, of course.'
That sounds awfully close to Vygotsky's ideas, and the zone of proximal development, to me.
'Education,' Piaget goes on to say, 'for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society....But for me, education means making creators....You have to make inventors, innovators, not conformists.'
Inspiring words from the man who also tells his interviewer,'Everything one teaches a child prevents him from inventing or discovering.'
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
LARS'S LIBRARY: LITERARY LINKS
Get some great ideas for books to give as gifts that kids will love from children's author and National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Jon Scieszka on CBS's Early Show.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
WORLD OF LEARNING: MY REVIEW OF "TOOLS OF THE MIND"
TOOLS OF THE MIND: The Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education, Second Edition. By Elena Bodrova and Deborah J. Leong. Pearson, 2007. 235 pages.
Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong's well-organized and well-written book is an important reference for those interested in child psychology and development. As well, it is a useful primer for the theories of Lev Vygotsky and followers such as Luria, Leont'ev and Elkonin, presenting those theories in a manner far more accessible and practical than Vygotsky's dense and challenging prose.
I certainly came away an even firmer 'Vygotskian' than I had been before, with a deeper understanding and appreciation of his thinking.
And perhaps a firmer 'Piagetian,' too. Despite the concept of an essential dichotomy instilled during my matriculation through the credential program at SF State, the more encounters I have with Vygotsky and Piaget, the more I am convinced that there are more points of intersection than exclusion in the ways they approached children and learning.
The critical commonality is that learning is constructed in an actively participatory manner. While an argument can be made (and often is—Bodrova and Leong employ it), that Vygotsky is more about personal interaction and Piaget more about physical interaction, neither man would have advocated subtracting culture or object manipulation from any theory of learning.
It makes sense to view any difference as one of emphasis, rather than of fundamental understanding. Both Piaget and Vygotsky make a strong case for learning and teaching that is dynamic, hands-on, and geared to the individual's level of development. Piaget was more interested in universals, looking at the similarities in how all human beings develop. Vygotsky, on the other hand, was more concerned with specifics, examining the differences in environment that affect individual progress.
Piaget's stages—sensory motor to pre-operation to concrete operation to formal operation—are congruent with the developmental accomplishments and leading activities outlined by Bodrova and Leong. What's exciting about Vygotsky, an excitement conveyed by the authors that keeps their work from becoming a dry textbook, is the importance he found in language and play, and his belief that play enables the child to move to more sophisticated levels.
'Play,' he wrote, 'is the source of development and creates the zone of proximal development.'
Bodrova and Leong point out that Vygotsky meant something very specific by 'play.' It is activity that necessarily leads to symbolic representation and thus language, self-regulation, and 'enquiry motivation.' 'When a child squeezes, drops, and bangs a soft plastic cup on the table,' they tell us, 'this is object manipulation, not play. When the child uses the cup as a duck and makes it swim on the table and peck bread crumbs, the actions become play.'
The message that really got to me while reading 'Tools of the Mind,' is that I must worry less about teaching my students what to learn than how they can learn. What is the priority? Bodrova and Leong frame it beautifully: 'It is not enough for the child to create the same product as the teacher or the correct answer. The answer must be the result of the right mental process.'
That means being aware of what is developmentally appropriate, and using the zone of proximal development to help transition to 'higher mental functions.' It means listening to what children say and working hard to figure out what they mean, and listening to what I say and figuring out if children understand why I am saying it. It means making learning engaging and playful, and viewing mistakes that get at purpose and concepts as more valuable than right answers that have no context.
It's a shame when teachers and schools emphasize standards and benchmarks and de-emphasize imagination, creativity and reflective thought. Our culture and educational system too often reward going through the motions at the expense of honoring the motivation of their curious, active young students.
In one of their many wonderful, practical illustrations, Bodrova and Leong note that: 'If every morning before school, Jessica’s parents tell her, "Be sure you do what the teacher tells you to do. Don’t get into trouble," she is much less likely to develop enquiry motivation than if they tell her, "Be sure to learn something today."'
Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong's well-organized and well-written book is an important reference for those interested in child psychology and development. As well, it is a useful primer for the theories of Lev Vygotsky and followers such as Luria, Leont'ev and Elkonin, presenting those theories in a manner far more accessible and practical than Vygotsky's dense and challenging prose.
I certainly came away an even firmer 'Vygotskian' than I had been before, with a deeper understanding and appreciation of his thinking.
And perhaps a firmer 'Piagetian,' too. Despite the concept of an essential dichotomy instilled during my matriculation through the credential program at SF State, the more encounters I have with Vygotsky and Piaget, the more I am convinced that there are more points of intersection than exclusion in the ways they approached children and learning.
The critical commonality is that learning is constructed in an actively participatory manner. While an argument can be made (and often is—Bodrova and Leong employ it), that Vygotsky is more about personal interaction and Piaget more about physical interaction, neither man would have advocated subtracting culture or object manipulation from any theory of learning.
It makes sense to view any difference as one of emphasis, rather than of fundamental understanding. Both Piaget and Vygotsky make a strong case for learning and teaching that is dynamic, hands-on, and geared to the individual's level of development. Piaget was more interested in universals, looking at the similarities in how all human beings develop. Vygotsky, on the other hand, was more concerned with specifics, examining the differences in environment that affect individual progress.
Piaget's stages—sensory motor to pre-operation to concrete operation to formal operation—are congruent with the developmental accomplishments and leading activities outlined by Bodrova and Leong. What's exciting about Vygotsky, an excitement conveyed by the authors that keeps their work from becoming a dry textbook, is the importance he found in language and play, and his belief that play enables the child to move to more sophisticated levels.
'Play,' he wrote, 'is the source of development and creates the zone of proximal development.'
Bodrova and Leong point out that Vygotsky meant something very specific by 'play.' It is activity that necessarily leads to symbolic representation and thus language, self-regulation, and 'enquiry motivation.' 'When a child squeezes, drops, and bangs a soft plastic cup on the table,' they tell us, 'this is object manipulation, not play. When the child uses the cup as a duck and makes it swim on the table and peck bread crumbs, the actions become play.'
The message that really got to me while reading 'Tools of the Mind,' is that I must worry less about teaching my students what to learn than how they can learn. What is the priority? Bodrova and Leong frame it beautifully: 'It is not enough for the child to create the same product as the teacher or the correct answer. The answer must be the result of the right mental process.'
That means being aware of what is developmentally appropriate, and using the zone of proximal development to help transition to 'higher mental functions.' It means listening to what children say and working hard to figure out what they mean, and listening to what I say and figuring out if children understand why I am saying it. It means making learning engaging and playful, and viewing mistakes that get at purpose and concepts as more valuable than right answers that have no context.
It's a shame when teachers and schools emphasize standards and benchmarks and de-emphasize imagination, creativity and reflective thought. Our culture and educational system too often reward going through the motions at the expense of honoring the motivation of their curious, active young students.
In one of their many wonderful, practical illustrations, Bodrova and Leong note that: 'If every morning before school, Jessica’s parents tell her, "Be sure you do what the teacher tells you to do. Don’t get into trouble," she is much less likely to develop enquiry motivation than if they tell her, "Be sure to learn something today."'
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
WORLD OF LEARNING: LISTENING IS LEARNING
"Neil Gaiman Asks: Heard Any Good Books Lately?" NPR 11/30/09
More fodder for my upcoming essay on audio books, and the need to respect the listening experience as its own kind of duck (see "What Is Reading, Anyway?" below). It turns out that Gaiman forwarded his argument for audio books previously on his blog in 2005, where he is even harsher on Harold Bloom than in his NPR story. He tells us that Bloom "demonstrates his twerphood to the world" in a comment solicited as part of an New York Times story on the validity of the audio books experience. To wit (quoting from Gaiman's blog):
"Deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear," said Harold Bloom, the literary critic. "You need the whole cognitive process, the part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you." From this we learn that art and wisdom only go in at the eyes. What comes in by the ear is manifestly a lesser experience. The corollary, of course, is that real writing gets written down by the hand, and only inferior, wisdom-less writing gets dictated by the mouth, which is why Paradise Lost must have been rubbish...
Not to mention The Iliad and The Odyssey. Which brings me to an earlier critic, Socrates. Maryanne Wolf tells us in her wonderful Proust and the Squid that: "In examining written language, Socrates took a stand that usually comes as a surprise: he felt passionately that the written word posed serious risks to society." His reasoning, Wolf informs us, was quite similar to Bloom's. Except that Socrates felt that it was written, rather than oral, language that did not engage "the whole cognitive process" because written language offered less need for using memory and internalizing knowledge.
Maybe by not listening to audio books, Bloom is the one who is not "open to wisdom."
More fodder for my upcoming essay on audio books, and the need to respect the listening experience as its own kind of duck (see "What Is Reading, Anyway?" below). It turns out that Gaiman forwarded his argument for audio books previously on his blog in 2005, where he is even harsher on Harold Bloom than in his NPR story. He tells us that Bloom "demonstrates his twerphood to the world" in a comment solicited as part of an New York Times story on the validity of the audio books experience. To wit (quoting from Gaiman's blog):
"Deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear," said Harold Bloom, the literary critic. "You need the whole cognitive process, the part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you." From this we learn that art and wisdom only go in at the eyes. What comes in by the ear is manifestly a lesser experience. The corollary, of course, is that real writing gets written down by the hand, and only inferior, wisdom-less writing gets dictated by the mouth, which is why Paradise Lost must have been rubbish...
Not to mention The Iliad and The Odyssey. Which brings me to an earlier critic, Socrates. Maryanne Wolf tells us in her wonderful Proust and the Squid that: "In examining written language, Socrates took a stand that usually comes as a surprise: he felt passionately that the written word posed serious risks to society." His reasoning, Wolf informs us, was quite similar to Bloom's. Except that Socrates felt that it was written, rather than oral, language that did not engage "the whole cognitive process" because written language offered less need for using memory and internalizing knowledge.
Maybe by not listening to audio books, Bloom is the one who is not "open to wisdom."
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