Listen to Plato

Close up of Plato from School of Athens, a fresco by Raffaello Zanzio, 1509.

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”- Plato

This is just so plain and simple, but the bureaucracy will get in the way of seeing what we are doing to these bright children that just need the right methods to bring out their brilliance.

How to teach math? How to teach science?

It was Wednesday night, Theo and I decided to play cup stacking. It is a great fine motor skill task and it is fun. Just stack up the cups as fast as you can without letting it toppled over. You learn about strategy since we have two different kinds of cups, he has to decide whether to put the small cups on the bottoms or the bigger cups. You learn about gravity. You learn to count to make things even out.

Just so happened we have a basket of marbles. Marbles are always so much fun. I decided to grab some and put it in the cups. And then an idea came to me that I had grabbed my mini food scales down. I asked him which cup do you think weights more. I taught him how to use the mini scale. And something so simple as playing turns into teaching and that could be applied to many things.

Now he is weighing everything in sight. And he learns about numbers and the higher the number correlates to heavy. And also not everything that looks big is heavy. It is so much fun to see him light up.

Orton-Gillingham training in Hong Kong

I finally contacted the Orton-Gillingham Centre in Hong Kong. The course is a bit pricey, but then if I have the power to teach others then I see it has a good investment.

The trainer is Ronald Yoshimoto and he has more than 25 years of experience in training in O-G methods and trained parents and teachers working with dyslexics.

http://www.msl-orton.com.hk/training/accredit.htm

Date: 28th Aug to 1st Sept 2012
Venue: Singapore International School,
23 Nam Long Shan Road,
Aberdeen, Hong Kong.
Time: 9am - 4:30pm

Registration fee: HKD$3,000 (non-refundable)
Course fee : HKD$18,500 (includes materials)
Total Fees Payable : HKD$21,500

Phonological awareness and Phonemic Awareness

I have been reading on the topic of phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. What are the differences between those two terms in reference to the English language?

Phonological is an umbrella terms that covers all sounds awareness. Sounds of instruments, you listen to the beats and sounds of words you also listen to the beats refer to as syllables, onset and rimes, and phonemes.

Syllables are speech sounds.
Examples: clean has one beat = one syllables, eleven has 3 beats = 3 syllables divided into e / le / ven
If you have written haikus before you will remember the rules of 17 syllables divided into 3 phrases of 5 syllables, 7 syllables and 5 again

Onset and Rimes are description of syllables.
Examples: bag is a one syllable or monosyllabic word, b is the onset consonant sound and ag is the rime vowel and the rest that follows.
Not all words have onsets.

Phonemes are the basic sounds in the smallest possible unit.
In English (American) there are 44 phonemes.
long vowels, short vowels, 2 letter vowels, consonant sounds, diphthongs (ai, aw, oy etc)

Phonological awareness is the ability to distinguish sounds.
Phonemic awareness is the understanding of sound and manipulating of sound in order to make it into words.

The foundation of language would be phonological awareness that a child can tell the differences between sounds of the words three vs free, lice vs rice etc.

Clapping to syllables help with phonological awareness. 

And for phonemic awareness, games like rhyming words, stories by Dr Suess, or making up silly words.