Roots of Learning » frustration with writing

Word Processing and Formatting for Youngsters?

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:00:56 +0000

I was talking with a parent of a fifth grader who is attending our local “gifted zone center” program. Her daughter was assigned a paper that needed to be two pages, double spaced. Her daughter does not type well, so this assignment was taking a while. At one juncture, the parent noticed that her daughter was not double-spacing the paper. “Oh yes, I am,” responded the student. “I am putting two spaces between each word.” Clearly, this student had not learned about basic formatting in a word processing program.

So this got me thinking – there are plenty of great typing programs out there for students, such as the BBC’s Dance Mat Typing, but are there resources (books, software programs, etc.?) that help teach word processing conventions and formatting ‘rules?’ If you know of any, I’d love to hear from you! If I come across any, I may do some field-testing and review them for you here.

- Heather

Trip Trepidation

admin — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:30:49 +0000

For a summer trip, my family is going on a two week road trip to Canada. I painstakingly planned all aspects of this trip, which I know will provide an invaluable experiential learning opportunity for our three kids - now it is less than a week away. Needless to say, we are all getting excited. However, I have a few trepidations. I made a few deliberate decisions in my trip planning that, in theory, I believe in firmly. However, in reality, I’m not quite as confident. I’m sticking to my guns, but I thought I’d use this space to discuss my concerns, and report back after the trip to tell how it all went…..

1. We are driving 9 hours with three kids, and we have decided to leave all electronic devices at home. We are going “unplugged” for two weeks. For me, this is wonderful. I work from home and am attached to a laptop more than I’d like. My husband, who is in IT, feels the same. But on the long ‘legs’ of our trip with the kids, will we regret the lack of Leapster, the dearth of DVD’s? In theory, I want them to stay ‘in the now’ and find new ways to entertain themselves. Everyone got a new book last week for the trip, and I bought three portable white boards. I’m also going to invest in some pipecleaners (kids love to make stuff from pipecleaners, and I’ve found them to be ‘magic’ during any long trip). These, plus games they make up (the latest is called “MINE!” where they look for yellow cars and whoever sees them first gets points), are all I have in my bag of tricks. I may regret this. I may not. We’ll see. (Don’t get me wrong, my kids do not spend a lot of time ‘plugged in’ at home; I just wonder if the bickering will get to me, or whether the forced time together will elicit “greater sibling to sibling tolerance” – is this a pipe (cleaner) dream?)

2. We are cutting costs and making the trip one that is ‘closer to nature’ by camping. We’re not camping the entire two weeks, I have combined camping stays with hotel stays so that we all have a break (and laundry, and a bed) every couple of days. I have camped plenty, but never with my three young kids. Our last camping plans got rained out by a hurricane. Before then, we only had two kids and one was in the tent in a pack-and-play. So needless to say, this will be a new experience. Will I crawl into the car at night? Will my third be scared if we have a thunderstorm (YES)? Will I generally regret this seemingly-sound decision?

I’d love to hear from brave parents who have underaken this type of endeavor. I know that the trip will offer unbounded opportunities for my kids to learn about different cultures, languages, foreign money, city life, the outdoors, and more. The kids always have developmental (intellectual) ‘growth spurts’ after trips and experiences that are so new to them – that is probably the single most motivating factor for me – the chance to witness that.

- Heather

Alleviating “The Fear” that sometimes accompanies writing…

admin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:07:48 +0000

The worst case of this “fear” that I’ve ever witnessed: a fourth grader who would actually pull his hair out when given a writing prompt. The child was an otherwise strong student – and particularly verbal – so I could not imagine that he had nothing to say (everyone has something to say). The ‘format,’ the physical act of writing (which he found uncomfortable), the blank page, was just too stressful for this kid. This was before we all had recording devices on our phones, ipods, laptops, etc. But we did have cassette recorders. As a pre-writing strategy, I used a cassette recorder so that he could record all sorts of ideas and thoughts, play them back, re-record, etc. until he came upon “THE” idea that merited his writing. This took so much of the ‘edge’ off of the writing task for this one student that he became one of the better writers in my class, all without going bald. If you have an auditory learner, try this method. I’d love to hear from others who have tried it!
– Heather