Tuesday, November 10, 2009

K-W-L

At all stages of development the brain learns best when it can associate new information with previously learned or KNOWN information. So start now and this strategy will serve your child well for the rest of his/her life.  It's the past , present and future of learning:
What I know
What I want to know
What I learned
When faced with something new, for instance identifying the first letter of your child's name;
K (know) start with what he knows.  Maybe that is the a-b-c song.
W (want) identify the written symbol of the first letter of name
L (learn) start by singing the a-b-c's , then point to the the letters as you sing them.  Pay particular attention to that letter, maybe even make it larger than the rest. Review and play it into the brain, but always leave them wanting more.  Practice often, but in small chunks, at the first sign of fatigue or overload, back off.

Cradle to grave a great strategy for learning.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Harvard and Cambridge here we come...

Researchers at Harvard and Cambridge found that "Simple activities such as singing to music or playing a drum in time with the stressed syllables in nursery rhymes (HUMP-ty DUMP-ty SAT on a WALL) may have previously unsuspected benefits for the development of language, phonology and literacy."

Kathleen H. Corriveaua and Usha Goswamia
Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge, UK
Harvard University Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA, USA

Do you think they were spying on us?