Analogy crosswords, for struggling spellers and others…

I remembered the other day that Mindware makes a book of analogy crosswords (several books, actually, at different levels of complexity).

Like anything else, these crosswords are no good when forced on unwilling doers, but for kids who have asked for help with spelling or those who enjoy tasks that bend the mind, inviting the formation of new neural connections, they’re quite effective and even enjoyable. (What makes them a relatively fun way to work on spelling is that they offer the hint of how many letters the word has, and occasional letters from other words.  For struggling spellers with agile minds (which is most of them, I find), the job of figuring out which letters are involved is rendered less arduous by that of figuring out which word it is in the first place.  Then the hint offered by the number of spaces and intersecting words acts as a bit of scaffolding.  It’s a little interim boost  – makes the task more manageable in the short term so it isn’t abandoned all together for being too much to handle.)

Here they are on amazon.  Sample pages at mindware.com.

Because they’re crosswords, you’ll have to forgive the makers for (what I would consider) an occasional… stretch… in the name of fitting an answer into both an analogy and a particular configuration of letters. It’s worth it, though.  Even the ones that seem slightly off invite useful mental gymnastics, in my opinion…

Invitations to read, write, spell

In much the same way a set of tiles on the fridge can quietly alleviate fraction woes, a set of Bananagrams* tiles can introduce a lightness to the realm of spelling, writing, and reading for kids who are timid about any or all.  There are many ways to use these and other letter tiles beyond the rules that come with the game.  (Bananagrams is like Scrabble, but without the turn-taking and the points.  It can be played competitively or not.  According to the rules of the competitive game, players work on their own crossword array while others work on theirs so it’s easy to level the playing field when players have highly divergent skill levels.)

Here are a few ways to use the tiles (all of which I’ve seen enjoyed by kids at one point or another):

• Arrange groups of letters in funny sayings or family in-jokes on a shelf or ledge somewhere.

• Leave notes written in tiles.

• Spell nonsense words or extremely long or short sentences.

When we use something like letter tiles as an instrument of connection between people, we offer kids an appealing invitation into the realm of words.  There’s no pressure to GET anything, just an example of what’s available in participating.  It’s the kind of invitation that’s possible for kids to accept on its own merit, independent of shame or fear of failure or, probably most salient of all, disappointing us.

*The tiles from an old Scrabble game can do the same trick, or any other game with letter tiles.  I will say, however, that the combination of the tactilely pleasant Bananagrams tiles and the zippered cloth banana that houses them has a certain allure.

Kids and their technology

We think that the way we’re used to doing things must be the way things should be done.  We don’t tend to think “Is it possible that there might be some benefit or use to what kids are doing that we never did?”

I’m reading Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.  It’s about how technology makes use of human talent and generosity in ways that haven’t been possible in the past.  It’s a pretty significant departure from the technology-is-ruining-us, especially-the-kids rhetoric.  Here’s an interesting passage, which reminded me of the piece I linked to a few weeks ago about how kids are reading more than before, even while we agonize about the screen time:

“…young populations with access to fast, interactive media are shifting their behavior away from media that presupposes pure consumption.  Even when they watch video online, seemingly pure analog to TV, they have opportunities to comment on the material, to share it with their friends, to label, rate, or rank it, and of course, to discuss it with other viewers around the world… Even when they are engaged in watching TV, in other words, many members of the networked population are engaged with one another, and this engagement correlates with behaviors other than passive consumption.”

And a few pages later:

“It’s also easy to assume that the world as it currently exists represents some sort of ideal expression of society, and that all deviations from this sacred tradition are both shocking and bad.”

It’s this assumption that has us tend to jump to conclusions about kids’ technology use.  We think that the way we’re used to doing things must be the way things should be done.  We don’t tend to think “Is it possible that there might be some benefit or use to what kids are doing that we never did?”  Shirky’s suggesting that we look a little more closely.  This is not to say that just by virtue of being looked at more closely what kids are up to with their technology will seem more worthwhile.  It’s only to say that we don’t have the foggiest notion what kids do and don’t get out of what they’re doing.  It isn’t necessarily bad for them just because we didn’t have it when we were young.  And as Shirky suggests, it’s possible that it’s leading us to a place of even more social engagement, connection, and potential contribution than was possible when we were growing up.  Maybe more than has ever been possible.

If you’re interested in more on this topic, I highly recommend the book.  It’s unusual in that the thinking is dense, deep, innovative, but the writing makes it very accessible. You can also get a taste for the content from Shirky’s TED talk on the topic.

The censorship question

In case you haven’t heard or read about what’s going on with internet copyright legislation, have a look at Clay Shirky’s TED talk.  Regardless of where you stand on the issue, I think you’ll find the questions and the historical context interesting.  Especially as it bears on learning and access.  Here’s the link.

Assortment

The backlog of things to post/comment on is looming large, so here are a bunch of posts in one with not much comment.  Otherwise, stuff gets away from me…

From McSweeney’s, a piece about how kids are reading more than before.  Yes, MORE!

I’ve been meaning to read Blake Boles’ College Without High School, but I haven’t yet, so I’m not yet qualified to write about the book.  I will say that I find the Table of Contents useful in its own right, so I feel qualified to recommend that much.  Once I’ve read it, I’ll be back to say more.

From Salon.com, an interview with author Diana Senechal about kids’ need for solitude.  I did read this one, and while it bothers me (as many such conversations do) for its attempt to figure out what’s going to work for “kids” as though it’s one thing, I’m glad to hear the call for making more space for young people to actually think. Senechal advocates for being generally more thoughtful about how we teach what we teach.

And one anecdote.  Yesterday, I was doing some fraction work with an 11 year-old.  He loves math, and hasn’t learned it the old-fashioned way.  He figured out about adding and subtracting intuitively, watching the world go by, and he prefers doing his computation in his head in the course of various problem solving efforts to anything that involves shuffling numbers around on paper.  But he also likes to know how other people are doing their math, so from time to time we show him – what algorithms they’re using, what kind of terminology, etc.  The thing is, every time we do it, I’m reminded of how silly much of it is, and how much better it could be.  Yesterday we were multiplying fractions and I heard him say under his breath as he was figuring his way through something “it’s going to be a big-on-top answer.”  He didn’t say it so I could hear it.  He knows that’s not what it’s called.

I couldn’t help wondering, again, how much more fun and pleasant things might be if kids could make up their own names for things as they were getting acquainted with numbers.  Not to mention that it’d be much easier for them to communicate with each other about them.  Also not to mention that, in the case of the big-on-top fractions, there’d be opportunity for less value judgement; who’s really to say that a big numerator is any less proper than a big denominator?

Love and utility

I often hear parents say “I want my child to love reading – I want her to find the same joy in it that I do.”  I also hear “He has to be able to read – to get by in the world!  He’ll need reading for everything!” And then there are the inspiring declarations that fly around in the education world, about raising lifelong readers, teaching all children to love books, etc.  We think that this is what it takes to get kids reading.  Make a big scene about it; instill (insist on) a love of it.

But not everyone loves reading. And when we’re too attached to getting kids to love things we love, we often undermine our own intentions with respect to getting them to learn what we think it will be helpful for them to know.  With something as potentially useful as reading, it’s a good idea to disentangle our wish that children might hold it as precious as some of us do from our wish that they know how to do it.  If we didn’t despair when a child finished a book and shrugged – “Yeah, it was OK.  Can I go outside now?” – when reading was just another thing to do, something useful but not necessarily that enticing or enthralling, we wouldn’t face as much resistance to it. And many kids would take to it more quickly and easily.  They wouldn’t have to try to pretend to like something they don’t.  They wouldn’t have to worry about disappointing us.  They could just learn how to do the thing, for whatever they might be able to use it for.

And, of course, the more space we give kids to have their own relationships with something like reading, the more possible it becomes for them to be inspired to love it in its own right, for their own reasons.

See also Alan Jacobs’ piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed…

Both, and; Milo

Two either-or traditions in education – that one must identify with one discipline over another, and must choose between learning for practical reasons and learning for its “own sake” – can really undermine progress toward the secure livelihood and fulfilled life most people want for their children.  

In Adam Gopnik’s recent New Yorker piece about the 50^th anniversary of The Phantom Tollbooth, Gopnik writes that author Norton Juster’s story of young Milo’s journey was an argument “for the love of knowledge, against narrow specialization… for learning, against usefulness.”

How do I get my child to…

How do I get my child to __________?

I hear this question a lot, with varying contents filling in the blank.  For example,

…hold her pencil right?

…read more?

…practice his violin?

…keep her room clean?

…spell better?

In some ways these are all really different questions.  The bedroom and violin and the spelling are very different kinds of tasks.  But when kids aren’t complying with adult wishes, regardless of the nature of the task at hand, it’s often for very similar reasons.  And you can resolve this How do I get my child to… question with one approach for many different kinds of tasks.

You can start by checking with yourself about why you think it’s important.  Often we decide that kids should be doing various things because we had to, or because other kids are, or otherwise out of habit and popular mandate.  Upon closer inspection we may well find that the things we’re insisting upon are not actually in keeping with our goals and intentions for children.  We may even be sabotaging our own efforts.

Take the pencil-holding as an example.  If you’re paying enough attention to how your child is holding her pencil to be upset about it, chances are you are committed to her becoming a proficient writer.  Tradition and habit compel us to make children do things whichever way we’ve decided is the best way. We settle on the best way, and then we insist that children adopt that way. 

Not only is this a sure-fire way to teach young people not to innovate, it doesn’t usually work as a way of getting them to do the thing we’re trying to get them to do and in fact discourages them from getting on board.  A good question to ask yourself is Is it getting in the way?  Is the way she holds the pencil getting in the way of anything?  Is it slowing her down?  Is it frustrating her because it’s slowing her down?  If it isn’t, then you might want to let it go.  There are likely other battles where the thing you’re trying to influence is getting in the way of something, so if this one isn’t, give yourself and your child a break from the battle of it.

But if you’ve determined that her grip is actually getting in her way, there are ways to address the problem that don’t alienate her or otherwise make the problem less likely to resolve.  A lot of it lives in the language.  If you say to your child “Don’t hold your pencil like that.  Hold it like this,” you’re really just being bossy.  I know we think that we’re entitled to boss kids around because we’re old and they’re not and people bossed us around when we were young.  (Imagine too what it would be like if every time a freshman got picked on just for being a freshman, he decided that when he became an upperclassman he wouldn’t pick on freshmen.  Soon the tradition would end, and we could move on to more interesting problems.)

I don’t bother to try to talk anyone out of bossing kids around, if it’s really getting them what they want.  But it’s usually not.  It’s usually getting them recalcitrant kids who do the very least they can to get by, which undermines the kids’ own ambitions as well as their parents’ and other adults’ ambitions for them.  You can shift everything by shifting the language you use to address your concern:

“I noticed you’ve got your pencil between your first and second fingers.  I know you’ve complained that writing is hard, and you hate to have to do it; I’m wondering if it might be more comfortable if you tried it a different way.”

Or “I noticed something about your writing that I think might help speed up the process a little bit for you.  If you want me to show you, I can.”

It’s old news that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.  There’s a little more to it than that here because it’s not enough to just be nicer with your bossing. If you say “Please hold your pencil like this,” you may feel like you’re being nice, like honey, but it’s the mandate that lands like vinegar.  This message curls the tongue and turns the stomach: “I know what’s best and I’m going to tell it to you and you should be grateful that I’m looking out for you.”  Kids don’t like being bossed around any more than adults do, and when you stop bossing them around they become available for receiving input, suggestion, recommendation.

Tens and ones, left to right

One of the kids I work with doesn’t like to carry digits the old-fashioned way when he’s adding multi-digit numbers.  He has his own method.  It frustrates and confuses his parents and invites correction by his teachers, but he still does it, and he doesn’t usually make mistakes.  The first time I watched him do it I was very impressed.

He was adding 74 and 18.  He started by adding the 7 and the 1 (hence the adult dismay).  He wrote an 8 in the tens column of the total (more adult dismay; how were we to know that he knew it might be only a temporary 8?) Then he moved over to the ones, realized that 4 and 8 are 12, and thus couldn’t be recorded in a single column.  So he returned to the tens column, changed the 8 to a 9, and recorded the remaining 2 in the ones column where they belonged.

If those of us who learned to carry tried to do it this way, we’d likely make mistakes, get confused, call it difficult, and beg to go back to the old way.  But what he’s doing makes sense to him, and it demonstrates an understanding of what’s happening: you can’t record anything more than 9 in a single column, so as soon as you hit ten, you have to add to the next column over.  He completely understands what he’s doing, which is more than you can say for many a child (many an adult for that matter) who dutifully memorizes the system of carrying but hasn’t much of a clue why it works.

It’s a good reminder that a child’s apparent inability to perform a task as directed is not necessarily the whole story.  This child understands perfectly well about tens and ones – there’s no way he’d be able to pull off his method if he didn’t.  He’d end up with missing tens or extra digits all over the place.

And who can blame him for wanting to devise a system consistent with the left-to-right progression he’s been used to since he began to learn to read?  To suddenly have to start moving from right to left probably felt awkward. The carrying system is undeniably clean, but if it confuses you because it feels backwards, why not find another way that works but doesn’t feel backwards? This child came up with a way to keep track of things that not only works but demonstrates that he actually understands what he’s doing.  Pretty great.

Addendum: One reader points out that if this child sticks with his homegrown approach when he’s adding bigger and bigger numbers requiring hundreds, thousands, etc., it’ll be an awful lot of work to keep erasing and revising.  To be sure, it will.  I didn’t mean to suggest that his method would be efficient long term; only that it’s providing a helpful entry into an otherwise (for him, at least at this point) confounding system.  If he has a lot of pencil and paper arithmetic ahead of him, which he may or may not; I don’t see anyone doing much by hand anymore, he’ll likely want to switch over at some point to the old-fashioned way or something similarly efficient. In my experience, having the grounding in any method that is based in understanding – however inefficient it may be – can make other methods more accessible.

I’ll also add that I don’t recommend withholding traditional methods from kids just because they might find their own methods early on.  Whether or not a child decides to use a traditional or otherwise well-known approach to something, it’s helpful to know that it’s there, to have knowledge of and access to its potential advantages, and to realize that others may expect it to be done that way.  It’s possible to allow for constructed methods that increase early understanding and to let kids know what else is possible.

The eyes have it

In the fall of 2007, in a dentist’s office, I reluctantly picked up an issue of Time magazine with a picture of a first generation amazon Kindle on the cover.  If I’d had anything else to read, I’d have read something else. I wanted to pretend that the electronic reader wasn’t happening.  I read the cover story with great fear and sadness.

I’m still not crazy about it, but I own a Kindle now. I read a lot and I discovered that the Kindle’s e-ink is easier on my eyes than all but the largest of print books.  It took me many months to convince myself it was worth it, though, and I continue to miss books even as I tear through file after file on my non-book.

No matter your opinions, beliefs, sentiments about electronic publishing, here’s something to consider.  If you know a child who wants very much to be able to read longer denser books than she can so far, and if her struggle has to do with losing track of where the words are on the page, which line comes next, or a feeling of overwhelm at the length, it may be worth trying an electronic reader with e-ink.  (One can read on an iPad or other tablet too, of course, but if the vision and tracking part of reading is at all an issue, the e-ink will likely be more effective. Also, for those of us who are easily distracted, a reader that’s just a reader, free of potentially sidetracking apps, is likely a better choice for this particular purpose.)

With an electronic reader, you can have as many words as you like on the screen at once.  This means less to manage in the way of visual input.  This feature may also help make it possible for young people to listen to audio books and follow along in the printed text (because it’s harder to get lost when there are fewer words on the “page”).  And if you lose your place you can run a search on a particular phrase from the audio and pick up where you left off or got lost in the “print” version. The issue of overwhelm at a book’s length obviously disappears when you only see a bit of it at a time.

I’m not saying  I like it.  I’m just saying it’s worth a look for your struggling reader, if the features offered by such a device might make a difference…