This is a follow up to Sir Ken Robinson's animated talk that we watched a few months ago .. enjoy.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Lower Elem. Classroom Immersion
rememberings from the 2011 Charlotte Mason Educational Conference held at Gardner Webb in North Carolina -
What I learned from Nicolle Hutchinson's Lower Level Classroom Immersion Group, covering grades one to three, I want to share. I am hoping to remember as much as possible, because it was a rich experience I implement every day in our beings and doings. It may be an awkward narration, but it's my narration anyway. :0)
This did not include kindergarten. Kindergarten looks like nature. stories. play. nature. play. stories. nature. :0) Read Mason's Home Education (volume 1 of her series) to learn specifics of nature. play. stories. in kindergarten.
Nicolle attempted to soften the atmosphere with beautiful books, baskets of things, dried flowers, an antique globe. . .
To begin our time together, she first took us all to the library, wanting to gather everyone together on the floor to read a short poem. (she mentioned that in a home school setting this might be a verse or two instead) What I remember is that nobody's answer was wrong. When there were children talking, instead of managing them she asked if they wanted to share or if they were ready to read more. She asked very basic questions like, "what did you hear? can you think of a small animal?", and instead of each time everyone just sharing their answer, she had us share with a partner and then share what our partner said. *nice listening development.
For math she grouped pencils by a rubberband and held up the sets of pencils as if they were her fingers, so she would have 3 groups of 3 pencils each. At one point she put them on her fingers, which brought chuckles. We did drill, which was nice to see, because I wondered how Charlotte Mason would teach math facts.
We sat on the floor again to read a portion of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. We each took turns reading, then she had us turn the book over, narrate, the next child read, we turned our books over, and we narrated. . .
For geography, we had a 30 second picture study. We read and narrated a couple paragraphs. We re-looked at the picture we studied earlier, as it accompanied the reading, and then she had sand trays where we created what we had learned. The topic was landforms such as lakes, mountains, inlets, . . . then we read and narrated about islands . . . proceeded to create islands in our sand. Very nice mix of it all.
Nicolle talked about occasionally drawing narration in place of speaking it and the parent writing it. I believe narration is primarily verbal and transcribed until 4th grade.
In processing the experience as a group, quite a few people commented on the lack of praise. Some felt freed by it. Others felt like it gave them courage to share. Nicolle encouraged us to note that praise can stop the learning. When a child feels he/she has satisfied the teacher with his/her knowledge or length of oration, he/she may stop receiving.
Types of activities that get their own notebooks:
*copywork
*handwriting
*narration journal
**maybe someone can comment and share distinguishing characteristics between these three activities. I'm having a difficult time pulling them each apart from one another.
Anyone else who was at this immersion session, please share your own take-aways. It was such a full time.
Marissa, you had received some wisdom in the math session concerning right and wrong answers not necessarily being corrected. I appreciated the wisdom in the approach. Would you be willing to share a bit about that piece of your session? or perhaps you are already planning to and I'm jumping the gun.
For everyone who was there, the sooner you find 10 minutes to share what you learned, the more you'll remember. Time passes . . .
What I learned from Nicolle Hutchinson's Lower Level Classroom Immersion Group, covering grades one to three, I want to share. I am hoping to remember as much as possible, because it was a rich experience I implement every day in our beings and doings. It may be an awkward narration, but it's my narration anyway. :0)
This did not include kindergarten. Kindergarten looks like nature. stories. play. nature. play. stories. nature. :0) Read Mason's Home Education (volume 1 of her series) to learn specifics of nature. play. stories. in kindergarten.
Nicolle attempted to soften the atmosphere with beautiful books, baskets of things, dried flowers, an antique globe. . .
To begin our time together, she first took us all to the library, wanting to gather everyone together on the floor to read a short poem. (she mentioned that in a home school setting this might be a verse or two instead) What I remember is that nobody's answer was wrong. When there were children talking, instead of managing them she asked if they wanted to share or if they were ready to read more. She asked very basic questions like, "what did you hear? can you think of a small animal?", and instead of each time everyone just sharing their answer, she had us share with a partner and then share what our partner said. *nice listening development.
For math she grouped pencils by a rubberband and held up the sets of pencils as if they were her fingers, so she would have 3 groups of 3 pencils each. At one point she put them on her fingers, which brought chuckles. We did drill, which was nice to see, because I wondered how Charlotte Mason would teach math facts.
We sat on the floor again to read a portion of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. We each took turns reading, then she had us turn the book over, narrate, the next child read, we turned our books over, and we narrated. . .
For geography, we had a 30 second picture study. We read and narrated a couple paragraphs. We re-looked at the picture we studied earlier, as it accompanied the reading, and then she had sand trays where we created what we had learned. The topic was landforms such as lakes, mountains, inlets, . . . then we read and narrated about islands . . . proceeded to create islands in our sand. Very nice mix of it all.
Nicolle talked about occasionally drawing narration in place of speaking it and the parent writing it. I believe narration is primarily verbal and transcribed until 4th grade.
In processing the experience as a group, quite a few people commented on the lack of praise. Some felt freed by it. Others felt like it gave them courage to share. Nicolle encouraged us to note that praise can stop the learning. When a child feels he/she has satisfied the teacher with his/her knowledge or length of oration, he/she may stop receiving.
Types of activities that get their own notebooks:
*copywork
*handwriting
*narration journal
**maybe someone can comment and share distinguishing characteristics between these three activities. I'm having a difficult time pulling them each apart from one another.
Anyone else who was at this immersion session, please share your own take-aways. It was such a full time.
Marissa, you had received some wisdom in the math session concerning right and wrong answers not necessarily being corrected. I appreciated the wisdom in the approach. Would you be willing to share a bit about that piece of your session? or perhaps you are already planning to and I'm jumping the gun.
For everyone who was there, the sooner you find 10 minutes to share what you learned, the more you'll remember. Time passes . . .
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
CM co-op
I'm very interested in co-op idea although I'm not sure how it would work, what you are picturing, etc. But every other week feels much more do-able than weekly.
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