Picture This

Becky completed the "Rediscover the Joy of Learning" Certification Training this last summer of 1999. The following is an article she wrote about her application of some of the Joy training.

Don

It’s time to throw away those boring, repetitive worksheets and get down to the business of teaching kids how to learn. Learning is supposed to be fun!

As a Montessori teacher I thought I had everything covered. I use materials to present concepts to the children and then allow them the freedom to choose their work, follow their interests, and work at their own pace. By following their interests, the children would be engaged. By working at their own pace, the children would be neither pushed ahead nor held back, and by using materials, the three pathways to the brain—visual, auditory, kinesthetic—were being utilized. However, for those times when this did not work, I was stumped. This occurred recently when I noticed several children who were forming numerals incorrectly.

My usual method of presenting numerals is to use the specially designed Montessori material called sandpaper numbers. The children look at the number, trace it and then say the name of the number symbol. To reinforce this activity, I have the students write the different numbers on prepared paper—10 times each, of course.

The boredom of this activity is enough to make a kindergartner want to drop out of school. It reminds me of the way some teachers require students to practice spelling words: see it, say it, write it—5 times. Both sound like they should be effective strategies for learning, but if the work is a mindless, meaningless activity for the child, learning will not take place.

In November, 1999, I accepted a position as a Montessori kindergarten teacher in the public school system. The class consists of 23 children five to six years of age. There are 15 boys and eight girls. The results from my initial assessment of their ability to write the numerals correctly indicated that four were successful and 19 of the children were forming at least one numeral backwards. During November, December and January they had lots of practice writing the number symbols over and over. At times I worked one-on-one with different students using the sandpaper numbers. I noticed, however, that there was little or no improvement.

At the end of January I assessed the students’ progress. The same four children were consistently forming the numerals correctly. Something had to be done to help the others. I decided to implement and adapt the steps of the learning strategies I had acquired from Dr.Don Blackerby, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner and author of Rediscover the Joy of Learning. During the summer of 1999, I took his "Joy of Learning" training in Oklahoma City. It’s an intensive two-week course which covers, among other things, how to help kids learn.

Dr. Blackerby says that we take for granted that kids know how to learn. We tend to focus on the content rather than on the process of learning. He goes on to say that the best way to learn is to store information visually and retrieve it auditorially. I thought I was doing that by having the children look at the sandpaper numerals, trace them, and then say the names of the numerals. Looking back, I see that I was going through the motions, but I was not drawing the students’ attention to the fact that they needed to make pictures in their minds. I assumed they were getting what they needed.

Before I go any further, let me briefly explain NLP. It was founded in the early 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. NLP is based on the study of how our behavior comes from our neurological processes. We take in information through our senses (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, gustatory, and the made-up sense of language). Then we use our language, both verbal and nonverbal, to code the incoming information into our brains. By doing this we behave in a certain way. We follow our programs. Those who are trained in NLP are able to elicit the subjective experience of another person and model it. When there is a problem, the trained NLP practitioner guides the client’s attention to "what to do" and "how to do" rather than focusing on "what’s wrong", "when did it happen", and "why". The goal of NLP is to empower the individual. (Hall, 1995)

By eliciting the subjective experience of successful learners, Dr. Blackerby has analyzed the learning process and has refined several learning strategies. I have taken the basic formula from these strategies and applied it to teaching kids how to write numbers correctly. The steps involved include the following:

Get a picture in your mind.
Check it to make sure it is clear.
Connect the picture to an auditory cue.
Practice over time.

The "Joy of Learning" training demonstrated that when we look up we are accessing visual information in our brain. Before Dr. Blackerby taught us the learning strategies, he drew our attention to the fact that we have pictures in our minds and that is how we know things. I used these same activities with the children.

I talked to the children about having pictures in our minds. As a student walked into the room, I asked who it was. They told me. I pointed out to them that they were able to identify that person because they have a picture of her in their minds. Then I asked them to pretend they have a place setting in front of them and told them that on their plates are slices of apple, banana, and pear. I asked them to eat a piece of apple. Then I asked them how they knew where the apple was on their plates. I told them that they knew because they had a picture of it in their minds.

Next, I worked with each student individually on the numbers they had written backwards. I used the sandpaper numerals. As I sat to the child’s right, I held the numeral up in front of the student with my right hand and asked him/her to look up and get a picture of it in his/her mind.

I then put the numeral face down and asked the child to look up and get that same picture in his/her mind, trace it in the air and say the name of the numeral. If the student made it correctly, I asked him/her to write it on paper. If it was still backwards when the child formed it in the air, we repeated the process. It took no more than two trials before all the children were able to write it on paper.

Four days later I checked to see how much they had retained. I asked them to write only the numerals we had practiced, the ones they missed from the baseline. All students showed improvement. Eleven out of the 15 students wrote all the numbers correctly. Eight numbers were missed altogether. I did not include four of the students because they were absent for the practice SN.

One week after the practice session I re-assessed the children on writing the numbers one-ten. All but one showed improvement. Seven students scored 100%, four scored 90%. Fifty numbers were missed on the baseline while just 15 numbers were missed on the final assessment. Of those fifteen, 7 had not been practiced because they were written correctly on the baseline. That tells me that the students’ pictures of those numbers were not as clear as I had thought. I am confident now that by drawing their attention to the picture of those numbers, they will be able to turn them around in no time—without writing them over and over and over. The success demonstrated in the final assessment is carrying over to the children’s math activities in the classroom and on their homework.

The last step in the learning process is to practice over time. I do this as the children are working on their math activities. Before they record their work, I ask them to get a picture of the number in their minds. If it is formed correctly, I know they have a clear picture of the numeral. If it is not formed correctly, we follow the steps in the learning strategy.

I’ve always felt that everyone wants to learn, everyone can learn, and everyone will learn if offered help in the right way. Implementing and adapting strategies from the "Joy" training into the classroom was like finding the key needed to help struggling students. I can have faith that students who need more time and practice will catch on soon. I also have a way of being more positive about a situation that is usually frustrating for both the children and for me. Instead of saying something like, "That’s backwards. You need to practice writing that number." and directing them to a boring, repetitive worksheet, I just ask them to clear up the pictures in their minds. Everyone can be successful. By showing students how to store information visually and retrieve it auditorially, we can truly help students discover the joy of learning.

And now on to those letters….b-d-p-q….

References