Ali's reflections

Reflection:

It is typical, after promising that I was going to write my reflection the moment I got home so as not to forget a thing, I didn’t! In fact I didn’t even do it this morning and instead have spent the day reading Philip Pullman and filling my head with Tennyson! Luckily, with the help of everyone else’s emails, the joys of the Red Headed Thief have returned.

After looking at the personal language history lessons, I was impressed with how engaging most of the activities were and the variety of skills they relied on. Jo and I spent some time thinking of different ways to do the activities to suit a variety of ages and I was impressed that she had already tried a few of these out! I enjoyed reading the poems about language, however spent half my time thinking about how I could read the Jamaican poem without sounding like a dodgy comedian! Whoever suggested using an audiotape – Thank you!

I absolutely loved having story time, despite feeling that it wasn’t as easy as I remembered to sit cross-legged! I was absolutely mesmerised and would happily spend time every class being read to. When we went back to recall the stories to our partners I was amazed at how much concentration was required. Jo‘s dramatic story telling was infectious, although I think I need a little more practice. I do feel quite relaxed talking in class, although I think I was having a bit of a quiet Alice day on Tuesday.

The whole exercise of considering the difference between speech and writing was something I had simply never considered before and when we saw the transcript from the class I was simply baffled that that speech doesn’t have punctuation (worrying obvious now!).

I loved the language acquisition game and felt that Jo and I were pretty incredible at it to be honest, despite any initial and unintentional cheating. I have realised how incredible the development of speech is and have found myself listening carefully to the ramblings of toddlers in the supermarket today.

I am really enjoying what we are doing and am desperately trying to remember all the great ideas for class activities as well as remembering the English! Looking forward to the next instalment.

All your posts are making me feel very optimistic and positive. I may even read to you all again...

Fiona Hardman
Reflective Diary
PM116
07.10.08

Finishing off language stories:

Although everyone had read some of the language stories online, it was good to have a chance to swap paper copies of the ones we had not yet read. Thinking about my own language highlighted my background and the influences which I had experienced. It was great to then read about people who had the same experiences but through another culture.

Pupil’s language history

The language tasks with which Stephen presented us where all very interesting. Pupil Sheet 1 names and naming, and Pupil Sheet 5 My Personal Language History would get a class active on the subject of background and language. I think that it is important that children explore their backgrounds with each other. Whilst working at a school in the borough of Harrow (Where Zadie Smith’s book White Teeth is set) There was an incident of racism between two girls of only 7 and 8 years old! In a multicultural society we should learn about each other’s heritage in order to value it and we should celebrate diversity.

In this particular primary school, our class had some PSHE lessons where we read a story about a girl of the children’s age who had lots of different friends whom she introduced by saying “ This is my friend Hiba, she has skin the colour of warm honey” This is my baby sitter Leslie, she has “cream and peaches skin.” The teacher asked the children to describe a friend with different colour skin in this way and also to paint them.

The Red-headed Thief

This was a wonderful activity! It reminded me of Irish stories that I would listen to on tape when I was a little girl. In the School I was working at in Harrow, we did an inset day on “Igniting Writing” Which is the idea of engaging children to remember a story by practicing accompanying movements. This engages kinetic, visual and audio parts of the brain. There are also repeated phrases to help one remember.
In The Red-headed Thief there were repeated phrases, most commonly: “The Red-headed Thief who was good at thinking fast and thinking on his feet”
In my recall of the poem I found that I was trying to attach physical movements to the poem to help me remember it.

Child Language Acquisition

This was really interesting and I find learning about research into child development fascinating. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the different theories as to how children develope language, e.g. Skinner claiming acquisition of language is purely mimicry. I hope we hear more about this