School bags, School copybook, and Writing lessons
It's that time of year again when everyone has gone off to school with a new bag, new pens, new pencils and new copy books and new books!
We are always complaining about the weight - but has anyone looked at the contents?
I wish I could change it every year... My favourite part of going back to school - the only part I enjoyed was the new pens, markers and coloured stationary my Gran Aunt gave me from her shop in Tipperary. I blame her partly for my love of colour stationary but I also know its vital to my learning as a highly visual learner.
There is not enough colour in our school bags! All I would like to see is colour, colour, colour. Coloured pens, markers, and most importantly coloured paper.
The worst colour to write with is black and the worst paper to read from is white. Why then are we in 2012 still using these tools?
The paper is school copybooks is too small. For many a student the paper becomes an obstacle that constrains them not a wonderful blank canvas to create on. The lines are too constraining - it's all about being tidy and neat and ordered... Not about what wonderful concepts, connections or ideas or inspirations you are having in the classroom.
I would love to see constructive doodling on a minimum of A4 paper and bigger a standard practise.
We have shown over almost 4 years of work with students including many with severe learning difficulties that making the area larger, removing the lines and adding colour opens up a whole world of written expression for them.
Similarly if we want there to be a great deal of structure and to make out a plan we use highly organised paper, squared paper! Still it's not a linear exercise - we don't want linear thinking, therefore we NEVER use Lined paper!
I have known many of our students to be given out to from drawing in class - these students need to create visual maps to remember by - its instinctive for them. They all grow up to be notebook lovers - they go everywhere with one and are always drawing ideas, maps, brainstorms and doodles in meetings and on the phone for the test of their lives - so why not at school?
I have never understood the point of hand writing? It only works for a small percentage of students. The rest are left feeling they can't "write" no they can't form letters in a very limited obsessively structured copybook! Many of these students fail to make the connections on bigger and smaller letters, the order of the alphabet, how the letters are formed, what words start with these letters and of course they stop trying to write creatively because they can't "write"
If we suddenly have them make the letters from play-dough, make connections to well know words, work on large coloured paper and use stencils to show the formation of the letters - they suddenly become masters!
Why do we have to do joint writing? We don't type jointed? No one easily can read joint? We don't read books in joint writing? What is the obsession with joint writing? For some students who have finally grown confidence in themselves and finally feel they have a voice and are creative we now move the "goal posts" once more and make them feel this magic art of "writing" is beyond them.
This reminds me of a very well used example of continuing behaviour through suggestion. It means we never ask why we do something we just follow the order. A woman cooks Sunday roast and cuts the two ends off the meat before she puts it into the pot. Her husband over dinner asks why she cut the ends off - her mother is also at the dinner and the wife says 'because that's what mum did' - so the husband asks her mother who responds because 'that's the way my mother cooked it' - rarely it turns out the great grandmother is alive and so they ring her and ask her why she cut the ends off to cook the roast? The answer - 'because my pot was too small' so three generations of people have cooked the roast the same way never asking why they cut the ends off!
I feel much of modern education can be attributed to the same suggestive behaviour. I'll continue in the next article why I feel the books shouldn't be in the bag...
Dr Naoisé O'Reilly (Expression Developist™)
Zero Quality Assurance in Leaving Cert Exam Corrections says Leading Academic
Zero Quality Assurance in Leaving Cert Exam Corrections says Leading Academic
(Dublin, Ireland, Monday September 3rd 2012).
A leading academic has finally been able to prove over the weekend that Ireland’s leaving cert students have been set up to fail due to being left on borderline marks that can make the difference between passing or failing and getting a higher grade.
Dr. Naoisé O’Reilly Ph.D is concerned that she has witnessed categorical proof that there’s no consistency within the exam papers which leads to a domino effect and ‘it’s pot luck on how well you do overall in the exams.’
The Irish woman says, ‘sure this is going to rock the boat but I’m used to starting national debates and young people’s lives are being messed with here. Afterall, parents and students don’t have a voice and the majority of teachers I speak with tell me they’re afraid to go out on a limb and stick their neck out.’
A simply algorithm could have changed all this and Dr. O’Reilly says, ‘in fact I wrote an algorithm that has been working successfully in an Irish 3rd level institution for a number of years now.’
Dr. O’Reilly started computer programming aged 8 despite being written off all the way through school due to a severe learning difficulty.
Naoisé looks forward to meeting the Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn later this month and putting a case before him for a decentralised process where schools have more responsibility for the exam process and there can be exceptional quality assurance in place to prevent any inconsistencies.
Extract for the Purple View
The Purple View Book Extract:
“Everything we do at The Homework Club is designed to create a learning environment that students can enjoy.”
In the initial interview I look for patterns in Life through sports, home and school. What you are really seeing is peoples natural tendencies. In an ideal World we shouldn’t realise that we’re learning at all. One of the difficulties that I have with the conventional system is that we try to stamp these out. A great example of this is the 4-year-old Kid who doesn’t read well but uses the pictures in the book to give them a sense of what the story is about. When someone covers over the pictures they take away this visual way of taking in information which is that natural tendency of a visual learner. So the next 3 chapters are going to talk about these 3 natural ingredients that everybody has - which are potential, personality and aptitude.
Blue represents a Person’s true nature and potential within. It’s seen to be the colour of faith, truth, confidence and being exceptionally deep in nature.
We use Red as it’s seen to be the colour of energy, happiness, passion, determination, love, power and desire. We tend to have very negative associations with personality expression in the conventional school model - the negative associations with red are anger. We see this side of the personality apparently when people feel constrained in their behaviour and self-expression.
We have now successfully combined potential, personalities and aptitudes into 4 simple ways of working. The next 3 sections in this book are going to describe the outcomes and amazing results that happen when you use this approach.
We use Yellow - Yellow is seen to be the colour of joy and intellect - we classically find people clever because of their skills - classically I believe we see people as “normal” when they have one of two multiply intelligence, linguistic or mathematical - these are what I generally assess. But I believe truly clever people have a grasp of their multiplicity. Your aptitudes alone are not enough to make you smart. You have to realise them and approach tasks in the best way for you.
The box - everyone has this idea that they would like to all “fit-in” and be the same as everyone else - it’s like a giant box we all belong to. So I decided with this method to create one “box” but the difference is that everyone is different in the box and has their own place. They can still be themselves while fitting in. I think of it more like a house with all the doors and windows open where everyone can just come on in - a box still seems a little constraining. But the yellow box in the middle of this picture is one where everyone can be happy as how they really are.
This yellow "box" for me is now the Expression Developist™ Concept, the next instalment of The Purple View that I am currently writing and will be available very shortly! Why we need a new objective in education.
In the mean time enjoy The Purple View. Link to The Purple View
Dr Naoisé O'Reilly (Expression Developist™)
The Homework Club’s journey into Confidence Club
As We re-locate to Dublin City Centre this August it seems a good time to reflect on All that We have created and achieved here at The Homework Club in just over 3 years.
Our main purpose for re-locating is to have access to many more Students and to focus on what We really love and have developed from Our experience over 3 and a half years.
I have attached some short video clips that sum up some of what We have achieved and some of the outstanding feedback We had from the Students We have worked with. As there are 500+ Student feedback comments it’s not possible to include them all. But I wished to attempt to give You a sense of what We have developed in this short amount of time.
In setting up The Homework Club I always wished to create an environment where We all continued to learn. The hugely committed Tutors and Students needing support. I would like to think that Everybody has expanded Their horizons by being part of this experience - including Me.
In just 3 and a half years We have not only helped and supported these Students in Their lives and education - We have taken Our experiences to create 2 more projects to take all of Our dreams in. The Purple Learning Project, www.purplelearning.ie and Confidence Club, www.confidenceclub.ie
In setting up The Homework Club there have been 2 main differences in Our approach to education. Firstly, the way We have gone about making education accessible to all of Our Learners. We have achieved this by using Our own unique learning method - now known as The Purple Learning Project. This is now the outreach element that is allowing us to take Our methods back into all education environments through Our own Workshop experiences.
Secondly, We have always had different objectives and perceptions of what success is for Students. We have always felt that not only are students always good at something but They should be able to use these talents to be good at everything. The Confidence Club is about allowing us to step away from the traditional expectations of success in education and allowing all Our students to fulfil Their dreams - no mater how crazy they may seen now.
Our first Confidence Club Workshop takes place this August.
Confidence Club Workshop August 2012 – Primary to Secondary School Transition.
DNA extraction of a kiwi plant in The Homework Club kitchen
Lesson devised by Graham Huges who has taught maths, science, computers and biology at The Homework Club for the last two years.
Graham Hughes is studying a PhD in Bioinformatics at UCD. He is interested in Science, particularly biology and believes with the correct approach, science can be made accessible and enjoyable to all students. Graham also works on computer techniques to make students more motivated to do well in mathematics.
DNA, DNA come out and play...
If you were to zoom in closely on a piece of your skin, you would see it is made up of millions of cells. If you were to zoom in on a cell you would see it is made up of smaller organelles. If you were to zoom in on certain organelles you would see that they contain DNA. DNA stands for DeoxyriboNucleic Acid and is made up of long strands of the letters A,T,G and C. The arrangement of all these letters in your DNA is the ‘recipe’ for you.
All animals and plants have DNA in their cells. By using household materials we managed to extract and view some of the DNA in a kiwi! Even though you cannot even see kiwi cells with the naked eye, with the tricks of the trade, we can gather enough DNA to make it easily visible. All it takes is a little chemistry...
Firstly we need to make an ‘extraction buffer’. This involved putting water in a plastic cup, adding 2 small sachets of salt and putting 2 squirts of hand soap, giving it a good mix. The soap breaks up the fatty kiwi cell membranes and the salt makes the DNA clump together.
