Show your thinking

I have always unashamedly confessed to being mathematically challenged although I must also add that with maturity, I find Maths less bewildering. Still, I am not into Sudoku or other similar numerically themed games but I do confess that there is one aspect about Maths classes that I’ve always liked. When solving any problem, credit is always given for working shown although the answer may be wrong. I think this is not just fair but educationally sound because working out the problem is the useful part of the Maths lesson not the answer. It also shows what you understand about the mathematical process and what your thought processes are like.

In English, we don’t have such a procedure. And what a pity it is. Time and time again when I am working with teachers on comprehension or cloze tasks, I always suggest that we need to focus more on how children arrive at the answer instead of just the answer itself. In other words, show the tracks of their thinking! I was more convinced about this after completing Harvard University’s on-line course on Making Thinking Visible. How can we know what is going on in the minds of students? How can we help them to make that thinking visible so that we can help them to think better? In the same vein, how can teachers reveal their thinking processes to students so that they understand how their teachers have worked out or thought through certain problems or issues?

In comprehension and cloze, I suggest that teachers teach their students to annotate their texts as they read. Annotating is not just a matter of running their highlighter over certain words. While annotating, students can do a number of tasks such as:

• Determining important ideas.
• Making connections to what is read by writing notes.
• Giving comments on ideas read.
• Expressing interest, delight, bewilderment, or any other relevant emotion.
• Drawing diagrams and charts to track or summarise ideas
• Writing subheadings or short summaries.
• Asking questions of the content, writer’s style and intentions.
• Making inferences and interpretations.
• Noting the use of literary devices and their effects, etc.

For cloze passages, they can additionally show, through annotation, which clues they have tapped on to help them predict the answers for the blanks. At the end of the lesson, paying attention to students’ annotation reveals more about how they have thought through and carried out the task than merely looking at the answers. If students are able to understand and follow a process to working out the answers, they are in a much better position to go on to doing any other similar tasks on their own.

Teachers too should always show their thinking. Don’t just dish out the correct answers at the end of a task; talk through the process you went through to arrive at the answer. This procedure, known as a think-aloud, is extremely valuable in any classroom, as learners will then be able to “see” and hear how the teacher has tackled the task in question. Dishing out the correct answer and getting pupils to copy it down is a complete waste of time. What would students learn from doing that? The same answer is unlikely to surface during an exam. In order for teachers to think-aloud effectively, they need to go through the process of working out the answers themselves. It’s only through such a struggle that they begin to realise where the difficulty and the complexity of the task lie. Much as I empathise with teachers’ unrelenting workload, I am more convinced that working on students’ tasks is an integral part of lesson preparation.

I recommend teaching students to think-aloud their thoughts too as the think-aloud is a powerful tool when used in group work. Used with reading tasks, this strategy can improve students’ understanding of the text and the task. Learning is always a social activity and meaning making is best done when one is able to share thoughts. Classroom tasks like reading and writing always benefit from discussion and think-alouds. Students who have learnt to articulate the thoughts that have led them to certain conclusions not only become better learners but they also help other students to learn.

We’ve had the thinking schools slogan for years now but not enough has been done to infuse thinking into the primary literacy classroom. But it’s never too late to start. If we begin by valuing good thinking in class instead of correct answers, students will learn that the learning journey is more important and sometimes more pleasurable than merely getting to the destination of the correct answer.

Remembering our loved ones...

It’s Ching Ming again and my sister rang last week to say she was travelling to Kota Bahru and Malacca to “sweep the graves”. These, of course, belong to the ancestors of her husband’s family and as the daughter –in-law, she has been doing this filial duty for years. I too will be visiting my father-in-law and other members of my husband’s family who have passed on. My brothers and their wives will be visiting my parents and grandparents. My sisters join them sometimes I think, but Ching Ming is traditionally a ritual that the males and their wives attend to.

I have often wondered why I have not gone back to do Ching Ming. It’s not because I don’t care for the people. And it’s not because I am female. In Malaysia, those who have passed on and who are dear to me include my parents and my paternal grandmother. My paternal grandfather passed on when I was a child, and while I remember him to be a doting grandfather who showered me with little treats, time has robbed me of other memories. My grandmother, on the other hand, lived with my family for many years, and I have many fond memories of doing things with her. Grandma was typical of the strong women of the “sei wui” dialect clan who are fiercely independent. She worked almost all her life and we all like to believe that the Cheah girls took after her. We loved her stories and her witty, sometimes bawdy jokes, but told in the “sei wui” dialect, they always sounded innocent to our young ears. Even though she has passed on for more than 20 years, I remember her clearly and fondly. And while I have not visited her grave since, I have always kept the memories of our days together alive by reliving these stories every now and then, and ever so often with my siblings when we get together. We still laugh ourselves silly over some of her witty remarks.

I thought of my parents too, this Ching Ming, while driving past the PIE and watching people burning joss papers at the cemeteries. My dad used to say that once you’re a parent, you’d always worry about your child, regardless of how old you are. I realise now, that as a child, once your parents are gone, you’ll never stop thinking about and missing them, no matter how old you are. Thinking about them makes me cry….

I remember my father in law too, especially when he was in good health. He used to enjoy travelling around by bus and going to the supermarkets to hunt for specials. And he used to bring me some specials every now and then, including his special dish, steamed carrot cake. We had a good relationship although he was not a talkative man. He also got on well with my father, and I remember how my concerned my father was when my father in law became ill. My father travelled to Singapore just to visit him.

I remember my father as a man with a generous spirit. When we were young and poor, this generous spirit was sometimes quite trying to my mum, but in later years, we began to see that he had always been consistent in his beliefs and actions regardless of circumstances. I used to think that I am not like my mum, an unassuming but practical woman, but in my old age, I have come to realise that I am ultimately my mother’s daughter. She and my grandmother are truly the strongest women I have ever known. Ever my father’s daughter, I was especially moved when my mum was unhesitatingly supported my decision to strike out on my own. She always had faith in me while I can only hope that I have not have let her down.

I miss the members of my family who have left us and I also miss my friends who have passed on- V and GS especially. V was always the irrepressible young man full of great ideas and fun. We used to walk home from the old NIE through the Botanic Gardens, and I often joked that I probably walked through the Gardens more times with him than with my dear husband. GS, another down to earth woman who left behind two beautiful daughters and a devoted husband, was one of the motherly women who took me under her wing when I was a young teacher. She too was full of life and energy, but cancer robbed her of this and eventually her life too.

Is it morbid to think of those who have left us? I don’t think so. Thinking of them keeps them alive in our hearts. Thinking of them leaves me sad, it’s true, but it’s better to be sad than to forget. So I don’t make it to the cemetery again this year. But even if I did, it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. The people we love will always remain in our hearts although they are long gone.

Ching Ming is a tradition that should remain with us. It reminds us to pause, even for a while, and remember the people we have loved and lost. I admire and appreciate those who take the trouble to trek to far flung places to visit their dearly departed. But I am also reminded that the best gifts we can give to those we love are our time and our attention. And the best time to do this is when they are with us.

Punctuation again

I got up early this morning and as I was going through the newspapers, Tiger Woods and punctuation jumped out at me from page 2 of The Straits Times. Here's the beginning of the article entitled Tiger's above par back where he belongs, written by Rohit Brijnath.

Phirr. Trring. Beep-beep. At 7.30 pm in Oslo, 1.30 am in Singapore, 3.30 am in Melbourne, alarms remind us. Wake up, stop work, put down your drink. The Tiger Woods Salvation Show is about to commence at the Masters.

Many teachers know about my interest in Tiger Woods but it's not Tiger that I am interested in here. Instead, study the opening lines and the use of onomatopoeic (sound) words there. Notice the lack of quotation marks. Notice the spelling of the sound words. Share these with your pupils.

Of course, the newspapers have their own house style too, so this is not necessarily the last word on this issue. But, this is one possible way of handling the use of such words in writing.

Punctuation Poser

Teachers always come up with the most mind boggling questions about punctuation. I must admit to being stumped a few times, but hey, I also learn a lot from their questions. Recently, I was asked, by different groups of teachers, about the punctuation of sound words in essays. Do these words have to be within quotation marks? For example, Ring! My alarm clock went off at six.

This is a new one for me in all my years of teaching, but common sense tells me that there will be different styles for punctuating this. Isn’t punctuation often governed by style rather than rules? I favour no quotation marks but I decided to comb through several books to see what the convention is.

Here are some examples from two different books to illustrate my point. I must confess that I went through many books to find these examples!

From Ted Hughes, The Iron Man

And his right foot, his enormous iron right foot, lifted- up, out, into space, and the Iron man stepped forward, off the cliff, into nothingness.
CRRRAAAASSSSSH!
Down the cliff the Iron Man came toppling, head over heels.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

… One of the seagulls flew up-Aaaaaark! He had seen something.

In the above examples, you can see that capital letters are used to emphasise a loud sound and there are no quotation marks. Even the seagull’s scream is written without quotation marks and it is clear that the sound was made by the seagull. And yes, please do note that it’s quite acceptable to stretch out a word to suggest a long drop or a prolonged sound as in CRRRAAAASSSSH!

From J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix.

WHOOSH. With a clattering, a whirring of wings, and a soft fall of dust, a fourth owl came shooting out of the kitchen fireplace.

“… We already knew nearly everything they told us, from using the Extendable Ears. The only bit was__”
Crack.
“OUCH!”
“Keep your voice down, Ron or Mum’ll be back up here.”

.. it froze in midair and fell, with a surprisingly loud thunk, onto the worn carpet below.

“R-r-riddikulus!” Mrs Weasley sobbed, pointing her shaking wand at Ron’s body.
Crack.
Ron’s body turned into Bill’s…

“OUCH!”
Harry had gripped the bowtrukle so hard that it had almost snapped; it had just taken a great retaliatory swipe at his hand with its sharp fingers…

They were saved, it did not matter that Ron had let in those two goals, nobody would remember it as long as Gryffindor had won -
WHAM!
A Bludger hit Harry squarely in the small of the back…

BOOM!
The very floor of the office shook; Umbridge slipped sideways, clutching her desk for support, looking shocked.

Rowling uses quotation marks when the sound is made by a person like the “ouch”. But sounds made by objects like the wings of the owl (Whoosh), the wand ( crack) and the Bludger (wham!) and even BOOM! are not in quotation marks and are capitalised only to suggest a loud sound. Sometimes they are in italics to distinguish them from the main narrative. When writing by hand, it’s not possible to italicise, so this is where quotation marks may come in handy to indicate the difference, for example, “ with a surprisingly loud “thunk”, onto the worn carpet below.”

So, what are we to conclude? If the child writes,
RING! Or RRRINGGGG! There is no need to use quotation marks. Capital letters are optional too. But if there is a danger that the sound is going to be confused with the main narrative, using quotation marks can help.

If the sound is made by an object like in this example from Spider Boys,

The clock tower not far away strikes, “Tong…! Tong…! Tong…!” clearly nine times…

quotation marks are clearly needed.

Not satisfied with this, I even wrote to two of my editors from Marshall Cavendish to ask what their house rules are for punctuating such words. They didn’t have one, but both suggested no quotation marks.

Ultimately, I don’t think it makes any difference whether one uses the quotation marks or not. Readers can infer that the sound is made by an alarm clock or a buzzer. However, it’s good to be consistent in writing and stay with one style, whatever it is. Teachers are often concerned that PSLE markers will deduct marks for what they perceive to be the wrong punctuation. But if so many teachers are confused by this, don’t you think it’s unfair to penalise twelve-year olds on such a small technicality?

Slow down the lesson...

I’ve always been fascinated by the slow food movement. You know, where people sit down to a meal which takes several hours to complete. You’re meant to savour and enjoy each morsel instead of merely stuffing your mouth and swallowing the food in a couple of gulps. I’ve never been to such an event although on good days, I remind myself to chew more than a dozen times before swallowing. And when I see people rushing through their sun salutation during yoga, I am again reminded that we never get off the giant treadmill of life.

Slow teaching and learning is another interesting concept to explore in class. I have always been very suspicious of concepts like accelerated learning and speed reading although I am sure they have their own principles and followers. But is it always beneficial for pupils to be put on the express train of learning? I believe firmly that all pupils can learn, although some take longer than others and being on a fast train won’t help them.

It does not help too to have a fixed timetable that says you’ve only one hour for comprehension, essay writing and other fixed allotments of time for other subjects. Come, come. Can we always teach within these one-hour slots or do we just shut down when the time is near and ignore other possible topics that have arisen from the lesson? The latter cannot be a sound educational decision but often that is the case.

So it’s with great pleasure that I read Thomas Newkirk’s article on slowing down the reading. I always joke that children have only one speed for reading – fast! (Come to think of it, the same speed applies to many other facets in their lives!) In fact, one serious lesson young learners should learn is to vary their reading rate to fit the type of reading they are doing, and in school, slow reading is often essential to get details from a text. Newkirk’s article published in Reading to Learn, Vol 87, Number 6 is entitled “The Case for Slow Reading”. He suggests that slowing down our reading will allow us to reclaim the acoustical properties of written language- we can hear the way sentences unfold. Here are some of his suggestions, many of which should be familiar to those of us who went to school in the sixties.

1. Memorising – memorising helps us to own texts. We used to memorise poems, lines from Shakespeare and my friend S recently told me how well she still recalls the lines from the Shakespeare play she studied in school thirty some years ago -The Tempest. Well, if not anything else, it always impresses people no end if you can quote several lines from Shakespeare or a poem! My question for you is what can pupils be asked to memorise?

2. Reading aloud – Some texts are just meant to be read aloud and it’s true that hearing the words make much more of an impact than just reading them. I once listened to an audio version of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, where the characters and story came alive for me in a whole new way.

3. Attending to beginnings- Here Newkirk suggests reading carefully constructed introductions in books to understand the roadmap the writer has provided for us for the
rest of the book.

4. Annotating a page – I tell teachers to make students do this to stop them from rushing through the words. Annotating slows down the reading pace and forces students to attend to the writer’s words and phrases and think about their meanings. Newkirk also suggests having students copy down particularly meaningful and interesting lines and passages and reread them. I do this myself quite often.

5. Reading poetry – Poetry demands a slower pace of reading and reading a poem aloud is the best way to savour it. Poetry contains rhyme and rhythm. Poetry also contains images that help us see things in a new way. Listening to a poem is a good slow way to help students appreciate the many ways writers can communicate a message or an emotion.

Newkirk also asked for a rethinking of time limit on reading tests. I think we also need a rethink of the time limit on reading lessons. As it is, does it not feel like we are all trying to get through a text rather than really delighting in it and thinking about it?

Finally, do a slow rereading of Newkirk’s suggestions, now that you’ve skimmed through this text. Perhaps this will help you reconsider the usefulness of some of his suggestions.
And remember: smile, breathe, and go slowly.