Mr Ferguson’s Classroom

I watched the results of yesterday’s election from the office computer at a nursery school, making intermittent pauses for English lessons, all of which contained discussion about the election. I did more talking about the electoral college than education with my teachers as well. I watched Obama’s victory speech with 3 five year old’s during their private lesson, who occasionally recognized words like “tomorrow” “people” and “yes we can”, but seemed engaged nonetheless. Apparently one of the children noticed a spectator eating, and another one with his eyes closed, and was angry that they would go out to hear Obama speak and just eat or sleep, so said the teachers who were laughing about it. This wasn’t the way I ever anticipated celebrating Election Day, but I’ll take it. 

To all my family and friends in America, my thoughts are with you. 

In Australia, I picked up a few books I thought I could use for my English lessons. I had no expectations, but Monkey and Me by Emily Gravett, turned out to be quite a worthwhile purchase. 

The book, mostly told through the illustrations, is about a girl who imagines seeing different animals, with her monkey doll as her companion. The text mostly repeats the same chant:

Monkey and me, 

monkey and me, 

monkey and me, 

we went to see, 

we went to see some… [page turn]

and on the next page an animal appears - penguins, kangaroos, bats - as if from her imagination, with the animal name used to finish the chant. 

I first read the book with the MIdori 5-year olds during my first lesson back from traveling. I had a natural lead-in to this book with pictures of kangaroos, bats, and monkeys from Australia, so I knew I could introduce most of the words in the book before reading it. The text provides the readers with some anticipation putting a page turn between the chant and the animal name, which I had intended to play on. 

It came as a big surprise, however, when the Midori children were predicting the animal correctly on each page before I turned it. I had not noticed that the girl and her toy monkey were pantomiming the animals before they appeared on the next page, but the children did, and after a couple pages, I was no longer leading the read-aloud. 

The next day we read the book, I had the children “turn and talk” to a partner and think of animals they liked. A couple of children not only chose an animal but pantomimed it, just like in the story, so I pulled out my camera and let them have at it. We spent the rest of the lesson translating animal names…

a kangaroo, 

kiwi birds, 

an octopus. 

I was really surprised at how many animals the kids chose that were not from the story. Some choices we had to translate to get the English, but some children threw out animal names from another book or story done weeks ago. I decided to try the same book with the Hikari 5-year class, and found even more unique responses…

a white lion, 

a fish, 

a giraffe.

The next week we used the pictures to make parallel books of Monkey and Me. For example, the text would read, 

Kae and me,

Ryoh and me,

We went to see a 

FOX!

With a Parent’s day approaching at Hikari, where I needed to demonstrate some of my lessons, I let the children and their teacher help me plan, and we decided to read and act out our parallel book (which they named Animals) to the parents.

After a good performance, we decided to take our show on the road, i.e. the 4-year old class, after I read the book to them. We spent another lesson practicing, and the kids really took over, down to who turns each page. They worked out each part of the show so well that I was left free to video tape.  Unfortunately, the file is too large to post, but I do have some photos of the 4-year old’s animal pantomimes made after the show…

uhhh, not sure…

oh, a turtle.

Right now I’m in the process of finishing our parallel book with the Midori class, and perhaps performing to the 4-year class as well (they were still coming up with new ideas for pictures during the last lesson). I had expected the children would lose interest by now, but that little book I found in Australia is still at it. Books like that seem to do most of the teaching for you, and I feel good about being the kind of teacher that just stays on the lookout for those books, songs, games, etc., introduces them to kids, then takes a back seat (maybe the edge of a back seat), or stands behind a camera. 

centipede.

During the last few weeks, the schools have been preparing for their annual Sports Festival. Practices have gradually been extending into my English lesson time, which fortunately has given me some space to reflect on the first month. 

So far, I have been able to try out a lot of activities with all my groups of children. There are many games that I’ve gained new respect for after receiving great success using them in lessons (I Spy, Guess Who, and Twister, to name a few). I’ve also really enjoyed reading (or having students read, rather) the same book with several groups of children, various ages. One book in particular I’ve read with at least a dozen groups of children, and it has been really enlightening to see how each group reacts to it, what words they pick up on, and what they notice in the pictures. 

 

 Listen and Move part one: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Listen and Move part two: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I rarely get tired of singing and dancing. 

But the challenge is in determining what activities are actually meaningful, and authentic, and engaging. One English story may be engaging for a 5-year-old, but not for a 4-year-old. Or, maybe reading a story is meaningful when focusing on English language but not English literacy. And what I may have considered authentic reading experiences for children speaking English might be inauthentic for Japanese children hearing them in English. 

The number of variables to consider each day is daunting, but daily discussions with principals and teachers helps me think through everything. And the most reassuring advice I’ve been given came from two different principals,

“Daniel, the most important thing you do here is get children to enjoy English”.

Nonetheless, I’ve become very engaged in the questions raised by our practice, which has recently led me to learn about Japanese children’s books, and the Japanese language, more than I originally intended.

There are many exciting projects in the works, which I hope to write more about soon. Unfortunately, school activities, traveling, a little sickness, an American politics relapse, and my own disorganization has kept me from blogging about them yet (for those interested, McCain’s VP pick may be good for Japan’s economy). 

I’d like to share more details about the activities the children and I are doing, hopefully sooner than later. 

Shortly after landing in Sydney, I was met by my friend and native Aussie, Alan and his partner Lauren, who gave Tara and I a proper welcome to Australia. Dinner and a long walk was enough to convince me that we had arrived in a fine city: incredibly diverse, unique sights, and plenty to do. Alan and Lauren equipped us with an extensive list of essential Aussie experiences, from Mrs. Mac’s Meat Pies to Mambo T-shirts. I was especially impressed when they both mentioned Possum Magic as quintessential Australian children’s reading, written by Mem Fox who is a friend of one of our scheduled authors to meet.

After two days of sightseeing and, most notably, visiting with Brian Cambourne in Sydney, we flew to Brisbane to meet Brenda Parkes and observe classes at Sunnybanks Elementary School. I wished for more time in Sydney, but Brisbane warmed up to me after an epic night of salsa dancing at the outdoor Queen Street Mall, and an impromptu dash through downtown to catch the River Festival fireworks show. Cardboard shells from the fireworks literally rained on us from the tops of every skyscraper. 

Lunch with Brian Cambourne

Brian Cambourne’s “Conditions of Learning” are widely referenced in education books, and while I was somewhat familiar with them, it wasn’t till our trip to Wollongong University that I heard the whole story. Here’s how I recall it… 

Cambourne, after years of teaching children in Australia, was perplexed by his classroom experience. How is it some of his students, who are capable of highly complex thinking outside of school, struggle with reading and writing inside school? And how is it that virtually all children can learn language, an act of utmost complex thinking? What theory of learning can explain how people learn language and literacy, while reconciling the difficulty many children face in classrooms?

Thanks to a group of willing families, some wireless microphones and a pair of binoculars, Cambourne was able to research this topic by listening in on the conversations and interactions of toddlers with family, adults, children, and themselves. After collecting three years of data, he posited that seven conditions always seemed to be present when language was learned, for instance, children were immersed in spoken and written language, were provided demonstrations of language in everyday conversations, and were allowed to approximate, or “have a go” at speaking while they are learning. Wondering if these conditions could be relevant to pedagogy, he spent the next four years observing teachers who applied the conditions to literacy learning in their classrooms. They were. 

For post-doctoral work, Cambourne took a Fulbright visiting-scholar fellowship at Harvard, where he furthered his work on his conditions, studied linguistics with Noam Chomsky, and was once given a bus ticket by Jeanne Chall (of all people) to visit a guy with his own theory of learning to read, another hero of mine,  Ken Goodman. I can only imagine what it felt like to meet someone whose life’s work is so complementary to your own. Since then he’s been teaching, writing, and continuing to refine his conditions for various contexts of learning. 

The rest of our conversation will have to be dealt with in another post, but it left me charged for the rest of the week. After our talk, we had a lovely lunch, also with Phil Phitzsimmons and Jan Turbill, another two incredibly talented researchers. The professors gave us two of their books on reading and writing, which I gladly took the responsibility of reading and annotating for our Japanese group. This trip has sent my “Books to Read” list through the roof. 

Shared Reading with Brenda Parkes

I was probably least familiar with Brenda Parkes out of our four people to visit, yet most pleasantly surprised. We were given a tour of Sunnybanks Elementary school in Brisbane, before an impromptu shared-reading session with Brenda and 3 of her brand new books. She was lovely, always carried herself with a smile, was charming around children, literally on the edge of her seat ready to interact with them. She’s also a meticulous and incredibly thoughtful children’s writer, which we were able to discuss thoroughly during an after-lunch Q&A. 

Brenda Parkes has rewritten several folk tales (Gingerbread Man, The Little Red Hen) into versions more suitable for shared reading. One of the most promising ideas that came out of our discussion was the possibility of our Japanese principals and teachers using her books as a model for rewriting Japanese folk tales for shared reading. Many of the teachers also shared pictures of projects done in the nursery schools using her books, and Brenda graciously invited them to send the pictures and stories to her email, where she can post them on her upcoming website devoted to teachers and students in classrooms around the world. 

And I must say a few things about Sunnybanks. This was a large elementary school of students ages 5-12, representing 60 nationalities (if I remember correctly). The teachers we met were very impressive, engaging students in very rich authentic literacy activities. For example, one 1st grade teacher shared with us a reading/writing/math project that came about after reading the latest Australian children’s book award winners. The class read each book together and discussed what they liked about each one. Then after voting on their favorite, the teacher helped the children draft a letter to the 5th place book author to let her know that the class thought her book was the best. The teacher had just gotten a response from the author when we were there. The kindergarten used a play-centered curriculum, reminding me of Gretchen Owocki’s Literacy Through Play.

There was a rugged, almost summer camp quality to the whole school. When I first saw the students I thought their school clothes looked like scout uniforms. Children were often outside, even to eat lunch, and we saw several outdoor classrooms and craft centers and pagodas, one with a checkerboard painted on the floor. I even spotted some wildlife on the campus, first an ibis, then what I believed to be a large snake. I took a picture with the farthest range of my zoom lens and showed the principal, but after a closer inspection I was reassured, “Oh no worries, that’s just a big lizard.” 

While we were in Sydney, a story ran in The Australian. Australia’s Prime Minister has called for an “education revolution”, one that holds schools accountable by publishing student and school performances relative to each other, labeling failing schools and even firing administrators. Sound familiar?

Another story appeared, reporting on the teacher’s union opposition to the education plan. Kevin Rudd is actually quoted saying, “We are concerned that (there is) a group of communities, a group of young Australians who are in a grave, grave danger of being left behind“. It was disheartening, to say the least, to read about this while in Australia celebrating Australian educators, not they are responsible for this. We got the inside scoop while at Wollongong from Brian and Jan Turbill. Apparently, the Education Minister, Julia Gillard, has become BFF’s with NYC school chancellor Joel Klein, and all the talk about ranking schools by performance is coming from him. 

Fortunately, Australian teachers have established a very strong union that does well at combating these political stunts. Brian explained how teachers in Australia have benefited from what’s referred to in many contexts as the “tyranny of distance”. In terms of education, because Australia is just geographically too far away from the Western world for many companies, such as textbook and curriculum publishers, to have an interest in distributing to them, teachers have fostered an independent, DIY mindset to curriculum. So in general, many Aussie teachers are comfortable thinking for themselves, and raise a fuss when they feel like that right is being infringed. 

Unfortunately, the Op-Eds in the papers ran the gamut on who’s to blame: parents, teachers, administrators, students… I told Brenda Parkes that Australians should just use the U.S. as the canary in the coal mine, now 7 years into NCLB, and hopefully they can just learn from our mistakes and not have to experience it themselves. It would be a shame to see any of what we saw on our trip dismantled by a misguided “revolution”. 

New Zealand is both foreign and familiar, modern and pastoral (more sheep than people), relaxed and adventurous (home of bungee jumping, which is available on more street corners and bridges than you can imagine). Auckland was somewhat typical of a big city (3 Burger Kings within a mile of our hotel), but Wellington was full of personality. The food everywhere was spectacular, for instance at the Kermadec Brasserie, overlooking a harbor and the Pacific, where we shared lavish platters of sushi and sashimi, oysters, mussels, softshell crabs, kingfish, squid, eel, giant prawns, and something called sea turkey, all fresh and all delicious. 

The next night I ate the infamous New Zealand grass-fed beef, at least infamous for me from hearing Michael Pollan critique how you can buy grass-fed beef from New York state at the market in Union Square, NYC, and from New Zealand at the Whole Foods next door. Since I happened to be in New Zealand, I felt ethically validated in buying a fillet, and oh was it worth it. 

Our schedule ran pretty tight in NZ. Our group goals were to discuss literacy and pedagogy with leading New Zealand educators and authors, observe the literacy block in a recommended elementary school, and discuss the possibility of getting some children’s books popular in NZ translated into Japanese. What follows are my impressions of our meetings, tidied up from my trip notes. 

 Meeting Margaret Mooney

Reading To, With, and By Children, probably Margaret Mooney’s most revered work, is like reading a hundred other books about literacy distilled into their simplest logic and prose. Our meeting at her home in Auckland reaffirmed my impressions of her as a writer. She speaks with an indifference to technical jargon and theory, instead just common sense and care for children. When she described shared reading, she discussed the importance of sitting close to children, having them on your lap if possible, and inviting them into the story, as if teaching reading is more about the relationship between people, reader and writer or two readers, than it is about the text itself (In her book, she does define reading as “the sharing of meaning”). Her mentor on shared reading was Don Holdaway, who she described as a non-conformist, not afraid to sing and dance when teaching, and who “made books alive”.

Her work has been embraced in New Zealand, so much that even McDonald’s printed a drawing of her classroom on the back of their placemats. 

A Joy Cowley Read Aloud Experience

Joy Cowley said she began writing children’s books when her own son needed good books to read. She cut pictures out of magazines, and made up stories that her son could relate to. She’s now written over 400 books for children, many of which the New Zealand government publishes and gives to all of their schools.

In her Wellington flat, we sat on the floor around her as she read new and old books to us. To those of us who have read many of her books to (and with) children, this was as good as it gets. However, I found her statements on writing to be most profound. As much as teachers love using her books, I asked her if she thought all teachers should write for their children. She said “of course”. She also advocated getting students’ own stories on paper to share with others. She told us about a child who once gave her an incredible story of what happened to his backpack (I don’t quite remember the details, but they included aliens and the police), to which she responded “That’s such a lovely story! Let’s write it down and then you can tell me what really happened.”

New Zealand Ministry of Education, and Learning Media

I would describe educators in New Zealand as masters of common sense. Although many of the same debates about the teaching of reading exist in their schools and universities, it seems as if everyone in NZ, teachers, administrators and policy makers, can agree on some basic premises. Here’s a short list I compiled during my stay:

1. Education should be centered around the needs, interests and abilities of children.
2. Teachers are the best authority on what constitutes the needs, interests, and abilities of children. The government should involve teachers in policy decisions, but not interfere with teachers in their classroom.
3. If you want to teach reading, the best resource is good children’s books.

The NZ Ministry of Education seems to strike a careful balance between being involved in education while respecting the autonomy of teachers. Since everyone agrees that good books are necessary for teaching reading, the government provides them. They have contracted Learning Media, a children’s book publisher, to make several sets of children’s books for New Zealand schools. Learning Media, then, hires authors (most notably Joy Cowley) and illustrators to write their books. Drafts are then sent to various schools to make sure teachers and students approve. The stories are then edited based on the notes of teachers (and children). Once they are published, the Ministry purchases and distributes to every school in New Zealand.

In Wellington, Learning Media hosted our group, along with Joy Cowley, for a reception. We listened to an audio recording of the latest Cowley book they had published. Smooth jazz played in the background, recorded with a live orchestra, we were told. When the story’s setting changed to Christmas Day, the orchestra subtly riffed on Jingle Bells, and everyone laughed. It is important for me to mention these details, to show how thoughtfully produced these materials are, and that their government is responsible for it, and every child in elementary school has access to it.

In form, there are similarities to draw from the United States. Our government has spent billions of dollars in the name of promoting literacy  and contracted this work to select companies. Our difference with NZ lies mostly in ideology. Since we aren’t all in agreement that education should be child centered, nor do we all agree that good books are the best tool for teaching reading, nor do we agree on the value of the teacher’s perspective, our government has operated on a different set of paradigms,  one’s that accept scripted curriculum, “teacher-proof” assessments, and standardized testing (by the way, although I distrust the validity of international standardized tests, it should be noted that New Zealand consistently places in the top 5 worldwide on int’l tests to the U.S’s 20th, and yet their schools do not use standardized testing of any kind until around 8th grade; more on int’l tests here).  I’d like to think research will set us straight someday, but I’m afraid shifting paradigms is a long and complicated process. 

What’s so refreshing about teaching literacy in New Zealand is how simple they make it. 

I’m back in Japan, and right into a full week of teaching. There’s too much to say about the trip, but I aim to post about it very soon. 

Today I’m leaving for a 10 day trip with a group of principals and teachers to meet some reading researchers and children’s book authors. We’ll stay in Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand, and Sydney and Brisbane, Australia, and meet with Margaret Mooney, Joy Cowley, Brian Cambourne, and Brenda Parkes, as well as visit some elementary schools. This is something that I’ve been looking forward to. These are some heroes of mine in the field, so I’m very thankful to have been invited for the ride. 

The end of this week is the Obon festival (a holiday to visit family and remember deceased ancestors). Schools are off on Friday, but many families began early, so at Hikari Nursery School today, there were only 8 children (a 1-year old, two 2-year olds, two 3-year olds, one 4-year old, and two 5-year olds). We spent most of the day together.  I first joined a group of children doing origami, and they taught me how to make a turtle, a wallet, and a tanuki. We used books that gave instructions on the folds, but many children knew them by heart.

I wanted to find out how the children learned so many origami shapes, but was drawn away to join a play dinner table. I offered two girls my notepad, and had another teacher explain that they could use it to take my order. Several courses later, they figured up my tab, with a little encouragement from another teacher. 

The total was 115, which the girls wrote as “100 10 5″ (In Japanese, 115 is literally spoken as hundred, ten, five, so their logic in adding, I’m guessing, is based on their language knowledge). I used my origami wallet and a fashioned restaurant coupon (made by the students) to pay for my meal. 

A teacher asked me to read a big book to the kids, The Gingerbread Man, retold by Brenda Parkes (who a group of us will meet in Brisbane in two weeks). One child saw the front cover and said “cookie”, so I tried to refer to him as the “cookie man” through most of the book. 

By then it was time for lunch, so we all sat together and shared sandwiches and milk. About halfway through, a child spotted praying mantis that had crawled into our classroom. I let it crawl onto my hand to show the kids, then put it back on where he was to resume lunch. Just then, an ant appeared, crawling by on a nearby wall. Like dinner theater, we watched as the praying mantis spotted the ant, captured it in one fell swoop, and carried on eating as we finished our sandwiches. 

On my break, I found a picture of a praying mantis I took at my old house, and showed the children when I returned. One child had found a plastic terrarium for the mantis, and another found a picture of one in an insect classification book. I’m wondering if any of the kids would be interested in writing about our experience so we can tell the others about it next week. 

A lot of teaching feels like being a director, so it felt refreshing, and I’ll even say more natural, to play the role of participant, or kidwatcher, today. My most uncomfortable moments actually came when I was directing or talking too much. In my teacher lessons, I sometimes get on a soapbox about something, and forget that the other teachers may have other interests, or just not understand my English. Good kids, and a good environment serve as a good reminder, though. 

Here’s a rather enjoyable moment in a lesson last week. I’m kinda worried about my voice, though. 

 

 Futaba- Hello/Goodbye: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download