Dyslexia and social networking

One of the great thing about web 2.0 and social networking is the connections and people you meet (although not really)! Luqman Micel commented on Sarah's dyslexia blog recently, inviting her (and us) to see his blog on dyslexia, teaching and learning from Malaysia. No air tickets required, and of course I was able to click and read his content which was very useful, challenging exisiting practices and adding to the melting pot that defines different approaches to individual learning needs. You can read Luqman's blog here. Social networking allows people with dyslexia and learning difficulties to communicate with confidence as it is about the message and the content, not necessarily the accuracy.

One humourous posting on Luqman's blog was this poem on the complexities of the English language...

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Then shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let's face it - English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England .
We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
We find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
Grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.
If you have a bunch of odds and ends
And get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English
Should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
While a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
In which your house can burn up as it burns down,
In which you fill in a form by filling it out,
And in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And, in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother's not Mop?

And if people from Poland are called Poles
Then people from Holland should be Holes
And the Germans, Germs.

And lets not forget the Americans, who changed s to z, but that's another story.

Thank you Luqman

Nigel Latta

Many of us know Nigel Latta, a psychologist and parenting expert from his excellent 'Politically Incorrect Parenting Show' TV show last year. Nigel has an excellent website which you can access here.

I have been enjoying his regular sessions with Kathryn Ryan on National Radio where he shares tips on how parents can support and grow their children in a pragmatic and realistic way. You can choose from a variety of topics by clicking here to see the online catalogue.

A particularly useful episode recently focused on helping children deal with psychological bullying from peers. This is the scourge of many schools where bullying is common in an invisible way as bullies cleverly dominate through subtle psychological intimidation. Click here for the excellent session.

Enviroschool Interview with Radio New Zealand

I enjoyed listening to Ned and Samantha being interviewed by Jim Rose on Chris Laidlaw's sunday morning radio show. The whole article is 45 minutes long but Ned and Samantha are first up. they did really well - sounded so articulate and confident. We have become a leading school through our Gold award. Overall it is also an interesting discussion about education and action learning.

Listen here

Orchestra

We have, at Muritai, an increasingly competent school orchestra. Started early in the year by Kate Donnelly we were treated to a performance by them at a recent school assembly. They have really improved over the last half year and should be proud of their efforts. After Kate left to go to Cambodia, Oli Ryks, Ruth Hooke and Jenni Champion, all extremely competent musicians in their own right, have nurtured them through so they are playing well together. Our orchestra is very young and showing a lot of potential.

 It is difficult enough to learn to play an instrument but to learn to play with others and different instruments - that requires a lot of skill. Well done to them all, we appreciate their contribution.  Watch them grow over the next few years.

Blogging at Muritai

As you know all classes have blogs. A trip to feedjit indicated the Stu Devenport's blog in room 13 was the most visited blog in Wellington with Kim Cookson in third place. It is nice that people are visiting our class blogs as it opens our classrooms to the wider community without having to visit into class. Stu and his year 5 class have made an awesome video of how to make paper and Kim and her year 1 class have blogged the visit of her father, an electrician, in support of their inquiry unit on 'Flick that Switch'.

It is a very interesting development and by being part of the 'blogging community' we have huge access to some really neat things being done by teachers and classrooms around the world. You may like to visit this really neat site about logging the teaching of  maths in a  virtual way.

Armistice Day - 11.11.08

We were pleased to be able to be part of the Armistice Day celebrations at the Eastbourne War Memorial last week. The Eastbourne RSA invited the senior students to be part of the procedings and we chimed in with haka and waiata to show our appreciation of the contribution our armed services have made to our countries history. Feedback from the RSA has been hugely positive and it is nice to be able to continually play our part in our community celebrations.

You can see the performance by watching the movie below.

Life Education

This week we have hosted the Life Education Trust's mobile classroom so our year 7-8 children could partake in the From the Shadows programme about drug education. This is another part of our lives today that 'would never have happened in my day".

Life Education has a mission statement to help give the young people of NZ, through positive health-based education, their knowledge and skills to raise their awareness, to live a fulfilling and healthy life.

As children grow they face a number of negative influences that over time can have a negative effect on changing their desires and leading to problems associated with poor health, low self-esteem and abuse of people and substances. Life Education is a non-profit organisation that works in schools and is linked to the school curriculum. They teach children about the wonder of life, themselves, and other people, with the aim of showing them how to reach their full potential. The Life Education philosophy focuses on creating sensitivity to values which lead to an understanding and appreciation of human life. This enables the child to make decisions about any negative influences that might impede the development of their fullest potential.

I spent some time in the 'classroom' and was  very impressed with teacher Jo Manks, the delivery of the programme and the children's engagement in such a controversial issue as drug education. The talk was hard-hitting, relevant and educational.  Check out the Life Education website to see what a wonderful resource this is. . There are some great resources at their parents link here.

The End is Nigh!

Tomorrow is the last day of term. Sad in some ways as it has been fantastic but we are all very tired and could all do with some family time. The Lorax last week was a huge success and I was so impressed with the confidence and the capability of the children. It is well documented that the year 8 children were my new entrant group when I started and they really raised the bar when performing in the show. It is so nice to see them progress from 5 to 13 - it is a real journey for them. I was so impressed with our lead actors that carried the show. Georgie and Finn as the Lorax and Michaela and Kate as the Oncelor were just superb. We haven't had that level of dialogue in a show for a long time. Overall everyone pitched in and played their part and that is what helped it to be such a great show. Thank you all for your continued support.

Dyslexia Awareness Week

This week is Dyslexia Awareness Week. Check out the website. Defining dyslexia is a complex and contested process and there are no agreed definitions internationally. The Ministry of Education has drafted this definition as a starting point for our work and as such, it is as a working definition with further refinement expected. The key is the Ministry has recognised dyslexia as a learning difference, rather than a disability and by doing so have turned it into an opportunity for better understanding.

A working definition alludes to Dyslexia as a spectrum of specific learning difficulties and is evident when accurate and/or fluent reading and writing skills, particularly phonological awareness, develop incompletely or with great difficulty. This may include difficulties with one or more of reading, writing, spelling, numeracy or musical notation. These difficulties are persistent despite access to learning opportunities that are effective and appropriate for most other children.

Have a look at this great Youtube ">presentation on Dyslexia.

Dyslexia however is not an end point. It makes things very challenging, especially for children at school working within the ‘traditional’ classroom environment. In my reading about dyslexia I have been inspired by a useful article, written by Jacqui Taylor in an edition of a monthly magazine called Parent and School Today. Jacqui describes dyslexia as a gift and defines it as being able to perceive the world from many perspectives, to view the same thing from many different angles allowing special talents and skills in fields such as art, creativity, design and leadership. Two very well known New Zealanders to have experienced dyslexia are John Britten (motorcycles and engineering) and Richard Taylor (Weta).

Research suggests that people with dyslexia think predominantly in pictures, not the sounds of words and as school tends to cater for word thinkers there needs to be adaptation to the curriculum and the teaching process to cater for all child. It is thought that 10 % of children think this way. That is why there is a variety of approaches to learning to Muritai and why a range of different learning experiences is so vital to make a students day, with their colleagues, a positive contextual environment. Go to the Team Up website for more information.