The Art of Teaching Children, page 33
Making is central to children’s learning. Not only does working with their hands help develop kids’ fine motor skills, but it also gives them the chance to explore and discover, think and problem solve. Making helps children develop resilience. When creating, kids get to argue with materials and wrestle with ideas. Making builds children’s confidence. It requires listening to your own thoughts and trusting your ideas. Making bolsters kids’ concentration and increases their attention spans. Your most wiggly student can become highly focused when given something to do with his hands. Making also empowers children by giving them freedom and choice. A child can choose his materials and mediums, as well as follow his own lead. And making fosters a sense of competence. Children feel gratified when seeing something they’ve made with their own hands.
There is something about the act of making that connects the heart, hands, eyes, and brain in a special way. I don’t remember my paper and pencil assignments from grade school, but I do remember everything I made. I remember the city I built out of milk cartons in second grade and the kimono I tie-dyed in third. I can recall the diorama of a general store I constructed in fourth grade and the Spanish mission I built out of sugar cubes too. I remember the plant hanger I macraméd in fifth and the purse I crocheted out of red school yarn for my mom in sixth. Thinking back, I’m sure that purse was pretty dang ugly, but my mom was a good sport. One night, when she was on her way out the door for a dinner party, she held that purse as if it were made by Louis Vuitton. Though I’m sure she switched it out in the car, I still remember how proud I felt when she kissed me good-bye.
At school, making things doesn’t require fancy equipment, and it needn’t take a lot of class time. One project I liked to have my students participate in was an Invention Convention. To have one, provide each child with a motor, alligator clips, and a battery, and let the children construct whatever they want. Have the kids work on their projects at home and give them about two weeks to complete the assignment. Before they start, ask the children to submit designs showing what they plan to make. Occasionally, a child will assign his invention a patent number.
On the day of the convention, the kids bring in their creations and share them with the class. You’ll see cars, carousels, boats, airplanes, Ferris wheels, and fans. One year one of my boys made a handheld fan and explained that it was for his mom’s hot flashes. Not all the inventions will work, and that’s okay. Tell your kids that it’s the process that is important. After your convention, let the children create advertising campaigns for their projects, including posters, radio spots, and videos. When they’re finished putting together their ad campaigns, invite the parents and a few other classes to a second convention. The key to a project like this is to give students the resources and adequate time. Then get out of the way.
When introducing the Invention Convention, I’d send a note home explaining the guidelines: (1) As much as possible, kids should build the inventions themselves; and (2) Children can get help from parents, but not a lot. The parents appreciated the guidelines. Generally, moms and dads don’t mind helping, but they do not want to do their kids’ work for them. As one mom told me: “I’ve already been to third grade.” Of course, you will always get some parents who help too much. It’s clear when Mom or Dad did the bulk of the work. Eight-year-olds cannot write in a straight line on foam core. When they mount their writing on trifold boards, it’s crooked. I always preferred the inventions obviously put together by young hands.
There’s no question that today’s children spend too much time on their devices. Hands were meant to do much more than just press keys and swipe screens. They were meant to feel and sense, mold and shape, build and create. We’ve all heard the saying “Busy hands are happy hands.” I am convinced that the more kids are forming and manipulating, building and tinkering, the happier they will be. So, when possible, have your students make stuff. Make a lot of stuff. It will make a world of difference. Do I hear an “Amen” to that?
The Steinway of Strategies
When riding the bus back to school after a field trip, I was sitting next to nine-year-old Kenny and his mom.
“What are you going to do this weekend?” I asked Kenny. “Play on your phone?” He had just gotten a new one. In class, I had already reminded him a couple of times to put it away.
“I can’t,” Kenny mumbled. I sensed that he didn’t want to talk about it.
Then Kenny’s mom opened her purse and pulled out a ziploc bag. In it was a phone and a charger. Written on the ziploc in big, black Sharpie letters were the words: “Phone Jail.”
I laughed.
“It’s a mom trick,” she said.
“Good idea.” I looked at Kenny. “I might have to make it a teacher trick too.”
Kenny turned to me with a surprised expression. “You have teacher tricks?”
I winked at his mom. “Lots of them.”
* * *
Teacher tricks are little maneuvers, practices, and strategies that make classrooms run smoother, get children more focused, and help to improve learning—our tricks of the trade. All teachers have sleeves full of them: (1) If a child is fooling around, stand close by. He’ll stop; (2) Give students directions before handing out papers; (3) When the room becomes noisy, start talking in a soft voice. Your students will quiet down to hear you; (4) Celebrate birthdays at the end of the day so that the parents have to deal with the sugar high, and not you; (5) When introducing measurement, teach kids that an inch is approximately the distance from the tip of your thumb to the knuckle, and a centimeter is about the length from one side of your pinky to the other; (6) When teaching children North, East, South, and West, tell them to “Never eat soggy waffles”; (7) Save the caps of used-up glue sticks and dried-out markers. You can use them again when other caps go missing; (8) Commas are on the ground and apostrophes fly; (9) To help kids remember that a period always goes inside the quotation mark, say: “The period is too little to play outside”; and—for the man teacher (10) When your shirt needs ironing, wear a sweater; (11) If the cuff on your sleeve is missing a button, roll it up; (12) When you have a spot on your tie, tuck it into your shirt. If your kids ask why your tie is tucked in, say it’s the new style.
Of all the tricks of the teacher trade, there’s one that tops the list. It’s the Steinway, the Waterford, the Mercedes of strategies. It is especially effective when kicking off a unit. Teachers begin units in many ways, of course. We pose questions, read picture books, and brainstorm what the children already know. We give previews and pretests. All these work, but the strategy I’m going to share with you right now is even more effective. And it is this: Tell your students a story related to the subject that you are about to teach. The use of story is one of the best ways to teach history, but it can be used to introduce science and math, art and music, biography and geography just as well.
Here’s how it works: Imagine you are about to begin a unit on the California Gold Rush. Once you have your kids’ attention, don’t announce what you’re about to do. Surprise them. Without any buildup, say, “Today, boys and girls, I am going to tell you a story. One day in 1848, a man named James Marshall was walking along the American River in California when something shiny in the water caught his eye.”
An amazing thing happens when you start telling a story like this. Children become instantly and completely immersed in it. Words told through story penetrate like no other. There’s something almost magical about it. We know how kids become riveted when teachers share stories from their own lives. The same is true when using story to teach the curriculum. We are all story listeners. In a way, we’re all like Peter Pan. As you may recall, James Barrie’s famous character from Neverland went to the nursery window every night for one reason only: to hear the stories.
You might wonder, Couldn’t I just read a story instead? Though reading aloud has great benefits, telling a story without a book casts a deeper spell on children. When reading from a book, a teacher is focused on the text, and usually the story isn’t memorized. But when telling a story without a book, you can look directly into your kids’ eyes. And this is the key. The meeting of eyes is what pulls in students. The more you look into children’s eyes when telling a story, the more captivated they become.
The stories you tell do not have to be true. You can make them up. When I was teaching, I created stories about a magical, wacky teacher named Mr. McDoogle. In a sense, Mr. McDoogle helped me teach. For example, when introducing multiplication, I told my kids about Mr. McDoogle’s magical multiplying mini-marshmallows. When teaching children how to tell time, I introduced them to Mr. McDoogle’s magic classroom clock. (When the teacher wasn’t looking, the clock would move its hands to give kids the answers during math.) When reviewing geography, I acquainted my students with Mr. McDoogle’s magic pull-down map that would suck children into it when you rolled it up. And every year, I always told my kids about the magic pencils that Mr. McDoogle would hand out to his students, especially those who didn’t like to write. When a child wrote with one of Mr. McDoogle’s magic pencils, he could not stop writing.
If you’d like to incorporate storytelling into your teaching, think of a unit you teach and create a story related to it. Make it as long or as short as you’d like. Write it down and practice it aloud until you’ve committed it to memory. On the day that you share it with your students, gather them on the reading rug. Keep an outline of the story on your lap in case you need to refer to it. After you’ve gotten your kids’ attention, don’t tell them what’s coming. Just begin: “Today, boys and girls, I’d like to tell you a story…” I guarantee that once you spin a yarn like this, you will want to tell another, and all of your little Peter Pans will want to hear more. Each year, add one or two stories to your repertoire, until you have a cache of them.
It takes time and energy to prepare a story, two things that teachers don’t have a lot of to spare. So to help you get started, I’ve included the story of Mr. McDoogle and his magical multiplying mini-marshmallows for you. I’m sure Mr. McDoogle would be happy to help you as well. If you teach elementary, share the story with your kids the next time you tackle multiplication. Modify it to your liking. Insert your students’ names in place of mine. After telling the story, be sure to give your kids some marshmallows. And, of course, tell them that their marshmallows are magic too.
Mr. McDoogle’s Magical Multiplying Mini-Marshmallows
Mr. McDoogle’s third-grade classroom looked like any other. The globe sat on the teacher’s desk. The backpacks hung in the cubbies. The class bunny slept in her cage. But sometimes things happened inside Mr. McDoogle’s classroom that could not be explained—like the morning Connie saw the water in the bunny’s bottle rise all by itself, or the day Lindsay witnessed the piano continue to play after Mr. McDoogle took his hands off the keys, or the time Troy stuck his crayon into the pencil sharpener, and after that it would sharpen everyone’s pencil except Troy’s. Whenever his students asked about these incidents, Mr. McDoogle would just laugh them off and act like he didn’t know what they were talking about.
One of Mr. McDoogle’s favorite subjects to teach was math. Sometimes during math time, he would sing silly songs, and sometimes he would wear silly ties with numbers on them. Mr. McDoogle wanted all of his students to love math too. But they didn’t.
One day Mr. McDoogle stood in front of the class in his times table tie and started teaching the math lesson. “Today, boys and girls,” he said, “we are going to learn about multiplication.” Melody threw herself onto her desk. Hudson put his hands around his neck and screamed.
But Mr. McDoogle continued. “Multiplication,” he explained, “is just groups of things. Like this…” He wrote a problem on the board and read it aloud. “There are two dogs. Each has three spots. How many spots in all?” Under the problem, Mr. McDoogle drew two funny-looking dogs. On each one, he added three big spots. “Now, does anyone know the answer?” No one did. Instead, Chelsea chewed on her pigtail, Timmy doodled on his name tag, and William tried to see how far back he could lean in his chair. “Well,” Mr. McDoogle said, “there are six spots in all. See?” And he counted the spots by himself.
Then Mr. McDoogle wrote a second problem on the board and read it out loud. “Okay, let’s say that there are five beach balls, and each one has five stripes. How many stripes altogether?” Mr. McDoogle turned to the class. Still no one was listening. Carl was launching erasers from his ruler. Jacquie was studying her fingernails. Valerie was trying to touch her nose with her tongue. Mr. McDoogle sighed. Then, once again, he solved the problem himself.
Soon the bell rang, and the class ran out to recess. Mr. McDoogle sat at his desk and rubbed his chin. This isn’t good, he thought. My students are not listening, and no one is interested in multiplication. Something has to be done.
Mr. McDoogle looked down at his desk. No child had ever seen the inside of it before. The drawers were always locked. Mr. McDoogle grabbed his keys, unlocked the bottom drawer, and opened it. Then he pulled out a glass goody jar and set it on the desk. Inside the jar were mini-marshmallows. But they weren’t ordinary marshmallows. They were magical multiplying mini-marshmallows. Mr. McDoogle grinned. Now they’ll learn about multiplication.
When the school day was over, Mr. McDoogle counted out five marshmallows into each child’s hand, and the children gobbled them up. As the kids raced out the door, suddenly Troy pointed to the bike racks and shouted, “Look! I see three bike racks, and there are six bicycles in each rack. That’s eighteen bicycles in all!” As Lindsay walked home with her friends, she announced, “Hey! I’ve seen eight cars, and each one has four wheels. That makes thirty-two wheels!” While Connie was doing her homework at the kitchen table, she jumped onto the floor and started counting the legs of the furniture. “Mom!” she cried. “There are four chairs. Each one has four legs. That’s sixteen legs!” Connie’s mom replied, “Uh… that’s nice dear.”
Before long, all the students in Mr. McDoogle’s class were running around their homes seeing multiplication in everything! Sally noticed multiplication in the dishwasher—two rows of dishes, five plates in each row. Hudson spotted multiplication on his dresser—seven drawers, two handles on each. And Chelsea discovered multiplication on her kittens! Three kitties. Each has four paws. Twelve paws in all.
That night, when Jacquie went to bed, she lined up all her stuffed animals and said, “I have eight stuffed animals, and each has two ears. That’s a total of sixteen ears.” When Valerie’s mom and dad kissed her good night, she looked at them and smiled. “Two parents. Each gave me one kiss. That’s two times one.” When William got into bed, he shouted for his parents, and they came rushing into the room. “Look!” he exclaimed, staring at his pajamas. “I counted ten trees on my PJs. There are five monkeys in each tree. Each monkey has two bananas. I have one hundred bananas on me!” William’s parents looked at him like he’d gone bananas.
The following morning, when it was time for math, Mr. McDoogle stood in front of the class and began the lesson. “Okay, boys and girls, let’s review our multiplication, shall we? Hopefully today will go better than yesterday. Now, can anyone give me an example of multiplication?” Immediately every hand shot up, and all the children started talking at once. Mr. McDoogle tried not to smile too noticeably. “My goodness,” he said, pretending to be surprised. “Yesterday you couldn’t give me any multiplication problems. I can’t imagine what made the difference.” No one suspected it was his magical multiplying mini-marshmallows.
Teaching Truths
In teaching, there are certain things that are always true, no matter what grade level you teach, no matter where you work, no matter how long you’ve been teaching. Teaching truths, I call them—those laws of the classroom that never change. If you’ve been teaching for any length of time, most likely you’ll soon be nodding and saying “Hear! Hear!” as you read the truths that follow:
Teachers refer to their students as their “kids.” Moving students around on a seating chart is like playing a game of Sudoku. No matter how you set up the chart, you still end up with children who should be separated. You have a desk but rarely sit at it. Rainy days usually begin when kids arrive at school and end when they leave. Looking at your class list for the first time is like pulling your first set of tiles in a game of Scrabble. You don’t know what you’re going to get. You hope it’s a good mix. When you wait in line for ten minutes to make copies, the machine will jam once it’s your turn. Every classroom has a Bermuda Triangle: that mysterious place where pencils and papers are never seen again. No two teaching days are ever the same: One day you’re changing the world, and the next you’re hunched over your desk eating all the candy left over from the math lesson. If the teacher points out a lowercase letter on a child’s paper that should be capitalized, it is faster for the child to write the capital letter over the lowercase one than to turn the pencil and use the eraser. When you begin teaching, you think that you teach a certain grade level or subject, but eventually you realize that what you really teach is children. Over your career, there will be hard years and harder ones, but none of them lasts forever.
The most important things you teach children won’t come from a textbook. Teachers’ classrooms are their castles. For primary teachers, the first day of school is a success if no one cries. Teachers count going to the bathroom as taking a break. Field trips are like giant games of duck-duck goose. You are constantly counting heads. At times, teaching kids can feel like living in a frat house: It’s loud, and things break. The second year is easier than the first. When you’re going to be out for the day, you “sticky note” everything. Teaching is like an iceberg: Those who don’t teach see only a small part of what teachers do. When working with children, sometimes you’ll see the results in minutes; other times you won’t see them for years. Teaching is a dance. You change your style and movements depending on your partner. When you ask kids to weigh one object on a balance scale, they will stack as many things as they can onto it to make the arrow go all the way to the right. Sometimes the biggest learner in the room is the teacher. On days when you have a fire drill, a birthday party, and an assembly, you will wonder if your students learned anything at all.
