June 27, 2013
A WordWorks Update for the Summertime
Headlines
Special Post: Inspiring new TEDEd talk on Teboho Trust by Jose Bright
Real Spellers Posts: See a great new resource of teaching ideas for the lower
grades from Lyn Anderson and a number of great new investigations recently posted
on Real Spellers
Improved on-line workshop capabilities: Read about a new video conferencing
tool that offers new exciting possibilities for on-line work people may want to take
advantage of this tool for small group workshops, tutoring and classroom lessons.
Teboho Trust TEDx Talk
Click here to see the truly inspiring TEDx talk by Jose Bright in which he shares the
story of how the amazing Teboho Trust school he started in Soweto came to be.
Prepare to feel angry, moved, and in awe of what people can accomplish all at once.
Obviously this is not about spelling, but I really encourage you to see the work that Jose
has been doing. I am excited about our plans to do some on-line structured word inquiry
work in the near future.
Jose Bright, founder of Teboho Trust speaks at
TEDx Grand Rapids, Michigan on 9 May 2013.
Shots from my visit to Teboho Trust in 2007.
In the picture above, you can just make out a
matrix on the chalk board behind me and
Jose observing from the left.
After doing my little intro of the matrix and
word sums with words I chose, I asked if
there were any words they wanted to
investigate. One of the first words a student
suggested was <etymology>! I’d never
investigated that one before. Thankfully I had
my Kennedy Word Stems with me to discover
the true sense and meaning of of that one.
Read more about that visit here.
www.WordWorksKingston.com
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The theme of my last WW Newsletter built on my on-going learning from my visit to
Teboho Trust when I was in South Africa to conduct workshops at the American
International School of Johannesburg in 2007.
During that visit, Jose made a point that has never left me. Everyone knows the African
saying that it takes a village to raise a child. Jose pointed out that while this is a
wonderful idea, the population with which he is working comes from from a village that
is too broken to do the necessary job properly. Thus he decided the only option left to
him was to turn that saying on its head and find a way to help the children raise their
village. The students he works with continue to attend their community school and
provide healthy role models that their village needs so badly. His success is staggering.
If you slide half-way down my old post at this link, you’ll see that I was very privileged to
work with and learn from Jose and his students even for just one afternoon, and have
been pointing people to Teboho Trust ever since. This TEDx talk provides a particularly
compelling way to share what is so special about their work. I hope people visit his
website, share it on Facebook etc. If any schools or individuals are looking for a
trustworthy organization that is doing spectacular work with children in difficult
circumstances, I can recommend Jose’s project unreservedly.
Given the state Nelson Mandela’s health at the moment, Jose’s work at a school at a
school that happens to be in a school across the street from Mandela’s childhood home
seems even more poignant and important. I’ll never forget my tour of Mandela’s house
with one of Jose’s bright-eyed students during my visit.
And now for the spelling links and resources…
1) Lyn Anderson’s new 7 page document with ideas and resources for teaching
with Real Spelling and structured word inquiry in the youngest grades
With Lyn’s permission, I have posted
her new document on Real Spellers at
this link. In case you have not
encountered Lyn’s work before, here is
an excerpt from my introduction of the
document:
“Lyn is an exceptional primary teacher
who has been refining her
understanding of the workings of the
written English word and how to bring
its study to life for children from ages
3-8 years for over a decade now. This
document builds on her own
experiences from working with young
students in schools for all that time.”
www.WordWorksKingston.com
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Lyn initially shared her document with myself and a few others including Skot Caldwell,
who many of you know as the Grade 1 teacher blogger for “Smallhumansthinkbig”. As
part of Skot’s glowing email response to Lyn’s work, he includes a story from the last
days of this year’s Grade 1 class that I just had to share here.
Three days ago, I was absent from school, and my class attended a little talk on
"sun safety". Yesterday, we were lining up to go home for the day and Ahmed
comes to me and says through the significant din, such that it took me a
moment to even know what he was talking about.
"Mr. Caldwell! <-ty> is a suffix! Because in <safety> it is a suffix on <safe>!" I laughed, and of course said, "It certainly looks like it. Can we think of any
other examples?" (I couldn't at that moment). Off he went to add it to our wall. Imagine any child, in any grade level, thinking about words like this without the
work we are doing. And then I imagine where this child might go having begun
this thinking at age 6. I find it inspiring. I think this will become one of those
anecdotes that I share often.
Well, I know it didn’t take long for me to start sharing this anecdote. It is this kind of
learning that Lyn’s document helps teachers facilitate with their young students.
Click here to investigate Lyn’s work now!
Also, keep your eyes peeled for what’s coming soon on Skot’s blog.
2) The Homophone Project Update!
Emily and Caroline, Grade 1 teachers from the Nueva
School in San Francisco, were inspired by student interest to
start a “Homophone Project” that went on all year. There was
a lovely development in this story as their year came to a
close. Read the post to read the story of how the students
and teachers decided to continue their journey next year. I
highly encourage you to read their story at this link, and
explore the 315 homophone (pairs, triplets and quadruplets)
that they found over the course of the year.
3) Skyler helps uncover the surprising bases of
<condiment> and <antidisestablishmentarianism>
My son who is about to finish Grade 4 asked me recently what the base of <condiment>
was. Our investigation led to the identification of a diminutive base that I have posted
here on Real Spellers. That investigation also sparked Skyler’s desire to to start work on
a matrix for the popular “super long word” <antidisestablishmentarianism>.
I think these analyses (and those in the comments that follow) may surprise many. In
case you are unconvinced with our conclusions, I want to be clear that our analysis
uses the definition of the term “base” as presented on page 50 of the 6th edition of
David Crystal’s A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics which describes it as “...the
part of the word remaining when all affixes have been removed.”
www.WordWorksKingston.com
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4) Video conference lessons with Grade 6 classes in Melbourne
You may remember Robyn Dalrymple from the last
Newsletter in which I shared this picture of Robyn and
her son Hugo showing off his folder of matrices he’s
made with the Mini-Matrix-Maker.
Robyn is one of the teachers that has been leading the
charge of structured word inquiry in Melbourne. She
attended the workshops hosted by Wesley College and
has been supporting teachers at her own school to get
going with this work. As part of that effort she had me
video conference into some Grade 6 classes to do some investigations together. Here is
an example of the response from the students as described in an email from Robyn:
The first class you Skyped have written some great comments about the Skype
experience…
Another student from the same class showed me his <nate> word matrix. He had
the word <originate> in the matrix. Before he showed me he had figured out it didn't
belong. I asked him if he could think of any other words with <origin> as the base. I
told him about <aboriginal> and you should have seen his eyes light up! The other two year 6 classes worked so enthusiastically after your Skype session.
They paired off and made a <vace> word web. The discussions were fantastic. The
kids were so excited.
A couple of interesting questions came up from this work that has not been posted on
Real Spellers that I want to direct to all of you.
a) The spelling of <holiday> (Click here for the Real Spellers post.)
Robyn posted a question that came up in one of the classes about why we have the
spelling <holiday> instead of <holyday>. This is one of those questions comes up a
lot once people start to learn about the spelling conventions for <y> / <i> changes
and the conventions for the spelling of compound words. The question itself is a
powerful assessment of the learning that Robyn is
inspiring. The Old Grouch has already posted a
response I recommend for everyone. If you haven’t
asked this question yourself yet, I am sure it will
come up soon.
a) The structure of <morphology> and words of the
<fine> family (Click here for the Real Spellers post.)
Robyn also shared images and stories of excellent
work these classes did investigating the word
<morphology> and using the Mini-Matrix-Maker to
help in the search for morphological relatives of the
base <fine>. I’m sure many will be surprised at
some of the discoveries they made.
www.WordWorksKingston.com
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In addition, their investigation of the <fine> family raised a question for me about a
few suffixes. In my post I explain my question and what my current working theory is,
but I’m still looking for help from the community.
Improved on-line workshop capabilities
I am excited to share news for those who may be interested in on-line workshops,
tutoring or classroom lessons. I have been experimenting with a video conferencing tool
called Zoom.us. So far this tool appears to have many crucial advantages over Skype,
which I have been using in the past. Just some of those advantages include the
following:
- Excellent video and audio connection
- No degradation in connection when I switch to “screen sharing”
- The ability to connect with multiple computers at once. I have tested with 4 people in
one session with no degradation of the connection. (It claims to allow for 25!)
As a result of this new superior technology I am interested in conducting more on-line
sessions with schools (teacher workshops or leading classroom lessons) and one-onone tutoring. (See fees and services here.)
As well, I am preparing to conduct a new type of on-line workshops via Zoom. Once I
have a confirmed group of 3 or 4 educators interested in a workshop, I can publicize
that date and time, so that other teams could join from anywhere in the world. This
could be a 1-2 hour introduction, or series of 1-2 hours sessions over weeks. I’m
imagining working with groups of teachers and tutors to help them design and conduct
lessons with their students. Then we meet again to debrief and share ideas about those
sessions and help guide the next steps. With an effective share screen function and the
ability to meet with more than one site at a time, I imagine each location acting like a
small group at a table in one of my workshops. Each group could then effectively share
their work with the other groups. If time zones worked, I could even moderate such
sharing of work between classes with students presenting their learning to each other.
Contact me if you are interested in pursuing such an on-line learning opportunities.
With that, I am pleased to wish those of you starting your holidays a happy summer
break. My first summer group arrives next week. It’s going to be great. There is now one
room that is available at Shanti Retreat for the July 16-18 course. Let me know if
anyone is interested in joining at the last minute!
Cheers,
Pete Bowers
www.wordworkskingston.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/WordWorksKingston
www.WordWorksKingston.com
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