What do Black Lace and sentences have in common? Verbs, that’s what.
Teaching children how to use capital letters and full stops is not as easy as it sounds. Most of them already know that they go at the start and end of a sentence – the problem is that some of them don’t understand what a sentence is (see Why do they do that?).
A basic definition of a sentence is ‘a group of words that contain a verb and make sense on their own’. So far so good, but what if the children don’t understand what a verb is? That’s about where I was with my group, and that’s where Black Lace came in. We cancelled the English lesson, pushed the tables and chairs back and had a disco. We listened to Superman and joined in. We walked and we sneezed and we skied and we sprayed and we swam. And then we listed all the actions from the song with illustrations for each one to make a display of verbs. By now the children were able to suggest other words that they thought might be verbs – all of them correct – and we added them to the display.
Then we agreed that perhaps we should go back to the English lesson, so we sorted some groups of words into “Sentence” and “Not a sentence” by deciding whether or not they had verbs and whether or not they made sense. Now that they knew what verbs were they found this quite easy. Result!
Now that they knew what a sentence was, we were able to go back to the original LO of being able to use capital letters and full stops.
It’s been hard to look back over the whole of 2013 because the last quarter was dominated by two life-changing events: my mom died, and my husband was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. It hasn’t been easy to remember as far back as last January, when everything was ‘normal’, so I’ve given up on the idea of 13 things, and just decided to pick out the things that stand out in my mind.
This time last year I was looking forward to an exciting new experience – spending a week observing/volunteering in a school for deaf children. That week quickly turned into paid work as they were delighted to find a supply teacher who could sign, and I had fallen in love with the school – staff and pupils alike.
During the year I also had opportunities to do more of the work I love. I have been working 1:1 on maths and English skills with pupils who find learning difficult and I have really enjoyed seeing them blossom into confident, motivated individuals. I was also lucky enough to be invited for the 2nd year running to teach French at a local university. The chance to teach ‘my’ subject to a group of adults who really want to learn and who are prepared to put the effort in to practise in between lessons has been fantastic.
In 2013 I learnt the following:
- As a teacher I talk too much. This became apparent for obvious reasons at the school for deaf children. I have learnt to talk less and to let the children do more.
- I have some really supportive friends and they weren’t always the ones I expected them to be. I couldn’t have made it through the last few months without them.
- I had some really selfish friends who were happy with a friendship as long as it was me supporting them, but who were nowhere to be found when I needed help myself.
- I am more resilient than I thought. Even though the last few months have been tough, I haven’t fallen apart. I’ve managed to keep working and to support people around me who have needed help to survive their own tragedies.
My proudest achievement from 2013 has been helping a disaffected child discover such a passion for English that he now reads for pleasure and no longer disrupts his English lessons leading to zero detentions for a whole term and a happier school experience.
My biggest wishes for 2014 are to find some inner peace after losing my mom and to find a way for my husband and I to cope with his Aspergers. I’m still finding it difficult to look too far into the future, so my only plan for 2014 so far is to buy a hat. If you’ve read Ros Wilson’s article in Teach Primary you will understand why….if you haven’t I’ll explain in a blog post some time in the future when I have had chance to try it out.
I wish everyone the very best for 2014 and hope that it is your best year ever, both professionally and personally.