The kinaesthetic anchor for this category is with the thumb on their noses and three wiggling fingers in the air; the words with eer, aar, oor, uur are making fun of you, but we know we have to spell them with three characters! And by using the three fingers it is made into a visual and kinaesthetic anchor.
Picture strategy list:
Impact
The children loved the new way and are still very enthusiastic. I was very surprised at the motivation of the children. They are studying without me telling them, because they like to. They want to be better, they motivate others and they are inventing new games and ways of practising.
In the longer term, I have continued with this strategy. The children are happy with the yellow strategy form and they use it when necessary. Even if they are sick on day 10, the test day, they want to make the test when they are back at school!
Because we trained on the picture-making technique for a lot of weeks, it is now into the system of most children. When they encounter a difficult word they will make a big picture of the word on the computer or in their “thinking book”.
After 10 weeks we had a standard spelling test. 21 children did the test and
- 19 children got an A score!
- 2 children scored B. These two are diagnosed with dyslexia.
I danced on the table (I really did!) and bought them some sweets because they did an excellent job! In February there will be another test and my children are learning and studying of their own free will!
My Director was happy. Now he wants to know more about NLP. He was not very interested, now he wants me to give a workshop on NLP and teaching. My colleagues are asking a lot of questions and are applying NLP techniques in their classes too. It is contagious! Even the academy for teachers wants to know more!
So the improvement is overwhelming; 21 children did great, that is 100%.
Spreading the strategy across the school
Naina demonstrates that managers have a vital role to play in passing on NLP techniques to staff.
Naina Chauhan is Deputy Head/SENCO (Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator) at West Thornton Primary Academy, Croydon, London
Research plan
I began my journey of introducing NLP to my school in the back of my mind (or the forefront…). Kate’s words played back again and again: ‘NLP is about elegance … it’s the smallest intervention that makes the biggest change’.
Action
The set up of a new SEN (special educational needs) learning zone in the school in the autumn term brought with it new opportunities. I had asked the teacher in the room to try out the NLP spelling strategy on C, a Year 6 (age 10-11) child who was experiencing difficulty with reading and writing and was displaying dyslexic symptoms. After going through the Durham Project findings with her, the teacher set off enthusiastically. She was to see this child each afternoon and spend 20 minutes with him on spellings and reading.
Impact
His Salford Reading score(1) at the beginning of term (Sept) was 6.1 years. As the weeks went by, I was kept informed of his progress and of the fact that not only did he seem to be improving in spellings and reading, but he had grown in confidence as a consequence of his successes. His reading score increased by 1.7 years in just 5 weeks! The strategy was working and now was being introduced to others by this teacher… Bingo!
References
(1) Salford Reading Score: A reading test widely used in UK schools, which calculates the reading age of a child.
Comfort and fun to improve reading
Helen recognises the importance of reading for the ability to access subjects students love to learn.
Helen Keay provides SEN (special educational needs) learning support at Framwellgate Moor Primary School, Durham
Project plan
The focus for the teaching project was my work with a Year 6 [age 10- 11] pupil with a Statement of Special Educational Needs.
The pupil had reading difficulties and no interest in learning to read. The pupil showed an interest and ability in Science and Numeracy, but the amount of progress she could make in these areas was considerably restricted by her difficulties in reading. The pupil is dependent upon another individual to verbalise the written text. The aims of my project were to find a more effective and positive approach to reading with pupils throughout the school and to implement a more consistent approach enabling pupils to learn and enjoy. I planned to work for 3 weeks on an individual reading programme based on the Year 6 pupil’s stage and interests.
Action
I withdrew the pupil from the class to work in a small room used as a story room for Nursery age pupils. The room was decorated with the Nursery children’s paintings of zoo animals. Comfortable rocking chairs and music to aid accelerated learning, chosen by the pupil, playing in the background created a relaxed atmosphere. The pupil remarked how it was “just like home”.
I implemented this for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon for 3 weeks over a 4-week period (due to a holiday week). I used the Oxford Fuzz Buzz reading scheme introduced to the pupil in September 2005. These books are enjoyed by a large number of pupils throughout the class.
The annual assessment carried out in May 2006 using the Salford Reading Test gave the pupil’s reading age as 5.7 years. After the 4 week project period the assessment was repeated and the pupil’s reading age had increased to 6.1 years. The pupil’s interest in reading had also increased dramatically and is now at the stage where she is asking to read.
Impact
Employing new strategies has been beneficial to me, giving me a greater awareness of the environment in which children learn and its impact on the learning achieved. The result from this reading project has been shared throughout the school. I feel I will be able to continue using this approach throughout the school with all pupils showing reading difficulties. This will enable those children to develop stronger reading skills and increased confidence and ability whilst learning in a relaxed, calming and soothing environment.
Teaching Reading – eye accessing study of different reading strategies
Zoe highlights an important lesson in flexibility for teachers teaching reading.
Zoe Ryan is a Foundation Stage teacher at Bedlington West End First School, Bedlington, Northumberland
Research Plan
I decided to look at how young children develop their early reading skills. As a teacher working with young children, it is very noticeable how some children can be stronger at developing their reading skills using phonetic strategies, whereas others may find it easier to learn a ‘sight vocabulary’ and a look-and-say technique. Through the NLP training we were given an insight into how people’s eye movements can give an indication as to their thought processes. It was emphasised that the model given would not apply to everyone in the same way but could possibly give an insight into which memories or skills people were using. I decided to try to use the eye accessing cues with children demonstrating a significant strength in either phonics or look-and-say reading strategies.
Action
I highlighted six children who had a strength in either using a phonetic approach when reading/writing or who used a look-and-say-approach, focusing on using words they had previously memorised. I ensured there was a mix of boys and girls so that I could observe any differences between genders. I worked one-to one with each child, observing their eye accessing cues to see if any patterns emerged. I needed to position myself so that I could observe while still interacting with the child. I gave each child a set of pictures for CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. Initially we talked about what the pictures might represent and I then encouraged the children to write the words beneath the pictures.
A is a child who employs a mainly look-and-say approach.
When selecting the letters she needed to write, A was observed to look upwards to her right for the majority of the letters, and she also closed her eyes at times. These eye accessing cues seemed to indicate that she was
visualising the letters before writing them. She needed no help in remembering the letter shapes.
B is a child who employs a mainly look-and-say approach and has an excellent sight vocabulary.
When selecting the letters she needed to write, B was observed to look directly upwards, while for some of the words she did not stop to think, just writing the words straight away. These eye accessing cues seemed to indicate that she was visualising words she was unsure of and writing others from memory without having to visualise individual letters.
C is a child who employs a mainly look-and-say approach, with a reluctance to attempt to use sounds to blend words.
After deciding what each picture represented, C was reluctant to attempt to write and needed encouragement to write anything. He was observed to look directly upwards and then, with encouragement, would write the appropriate letters. When unsure he could be observed to look upwards and then immediately downwards and to his left as though he was searching for reassurance.
D is a child who employs a mainly phonetic approach.
When selecting the letters to write, D was very confident and wrote many without hesitation. For the few sounds he was unsure of, D was observed to move his eyes directly to his left and then down to the left. These eye accessing cues would suggest that he was auditorily remembering the sounds and self-talking.
E is a child who employs a mainly phonetic approach.
When selecting the letters to write, it was observed that E made very clear, almost exaggerated eye movements. He would initially move his eyes directly to the right and then immediately to the left. This pattern continued throughout, with him looking down to the left on one occasion. These eye accessing cues would suggest that he was mainly auditorily remembering the sounds and occasionally self-talking.
F is a very confident child employing a mainly phonetic approach.
F was able to write all the relevant sounds without giving any eye accessing cues. She could have been using strategies, but was very confident and wrote the words without hesitation.
On reviewing the results there seemed to be a clear indication that the children who had a strength using look-and-say were visually constructing the words. They could ‘see’ the letters and were then able to write them down. The children who have a strength phonetically were hearing the sounds or remembering the sound and then transferring the sounds to the letter shapes.
This would seem to strengthen the argument for a varied approach when helping children learn to read, using a combination of strategies encompassing visual, auditory and kinesthetic. So children can see, hear and physically manipulate the words we are helping them to learn.
Impact
The findings from this research have influenced my approach to teaching reading. It has shown how important it is to use a variety of techniques to include all learners. Using a primarily phonetic approach may not work for our visual learners looking at the shapes of words, and a look-and-say approach doesn’t necessarily give the auditory learner the stimuli needed for them to progress.
Creativity and confidence in French Language whole class teaching
David Hicks is a peripatetic French and Music teacher working in a
number of schools in South East England
Research plan
To work with a Year 6 class (age 10-11), helping pupils become more creative and confident to spell and understand French words, so they achieve with more ease.
A measurable goal of either improved scores in the test, or evidence of more interest and excitement about using the new strategy.
Use of sensory-based material, including submodalities of the visual, auditory and kinaesthetic representation systems.
Action
Using the Milton Model, I began by using truisms and inoculation to introduce the exercise:
‘Ok folks, today we are going to look at a great way to learn how to spell some new French words really easily’ [Here I also used analogue marking with the embedded command of spelling words really easily]
I used presuppositions and more embedded commands as I carried on:
‘Now as you get more used to using this technique you will find that it becomes so easy to use and it’s also a fun way to learn new spellings so you’ll get really good.’
I gave each pupil in the class a list of 8 French words to learn:
souris / cinquante / haricots / poisson / étagères / araignée / imperméable / chemisier
I used submodalities of the representational systems to help pupils create a powerful visual anchor:
‘Now let’s take the first word – souris. I want you to - in your mind - give each letter a different colour, perhaps make it bright and really vibrant… It can even sparkle. Now I want you to make the letters 10 times bigger… and now double the size again… Now I want you to project these letters onto a huge cinema screen… and then [using voice inflection to further induce an hypnotic state] imagine a mouse rock and roll group playing your favourite song… Now listen to the music for a few moments… and now let go of this image and file it away in your head [as I used my arms to indicate ‘visual construct’ up to the right].’
I used the same technique for the next word – cinquante. In addition to the visual cue of the word on the cinema screen I suggested they imagine 50 of any things they liked. I suggested they could be still or moving about - like 50 peas rolling all over the screen, or 50 stick insects, etc. For this word I also have a physical prompt that I use with the pupils, so in addition to the visual submodalities - colour / shape / size / brightness - I introduced a kinaesthetic element into the exercise.
I then gave pupils time to carry out the same process for all the other 6 words.
I changed focus for the next part of the lesson, and worked on sports using the verb faire - to do, where we used movement to perform the sport and then we sang my ‘sport song’. Before I ended the lesson I reminded pupils of the exercise for their homework task, and told them to replay the process at home before the next lesson (a couple of days later).
Spelling test
At the start of this lesson, before I tested the pupils on the 8 words, I helped the pupils access the visual anchor by saying: ‘Ok so now we are going to do the spelling test as usual, but this time I want you to look up to where you stored the picture in your head [but this time I pointed up and to pupils’ left] and you’ll see how easy it is to see the picture back in the cinema…
Number 1: ‘souris ’
Number 2: ‘cinquante ’
etc
Impact
I logged two separate results from these tests:
Number of errors in the word spelling
The meaning of the word in English
The results were very interesting: In comparing previous spelling test scores across the class, there was a small but clear decrease in the number of spelling mistakes with the words, but a massive improvement in comprehension of the words:
6 pupils - the scores were generally unaltered
2 pupils - the scores were worse
23 pupils showed a 2 or 3 point improvement in their scores
For comprehension marks, most pupils returned 100% full marks, incomparison to an average of 40%.
Pupil feedback from the exercise:
It was really fun to imagine all the pictures
I kept seeing different things on the cinema screen
I felt I got better
I knew I was getting the right answer
It was a different way of learning stuff
It was a bit difficult at first – I didn’t know what was going on
Once I got into it, it was cool
I was able to shut my eyes
I liked making pictures
Creative use of NLP for Creative Writing
This project focused on using NLP for story writing for 8-9-year-old children. There are many ideas to try out from this project.
Riejan Smits from The Netherlands completed this fascinatin
g project for her Teaching Excellence certificate
Research plan
In the language textbook we use, the children must write stories, and they don’t normally like this assignment. They find it hard, they don’t know how to start or how to end. I wanted them to write a short story, to enjoy writing it, and to read it in the classroom. One of the goals this school year is writing a short text using core words. The core words are - sun, storm, raindrop, lightning. I wanted the children to write a short story in which they had to imagine that they were a raindrop, a storm, thunder or the Sun. The story must have a beginning, a middle and an end.
I also wanted the children to experience that writing a short story could be done in a short period of time and that it was fun to do. One of the new rules in this assignment was - you can help each other for 10 minutes and then you will have 3 more minutes to finish your story. I wanted to find out for myself how the results would be if I used a completely different approach to this, using the techniques learned on the Teaching Excellence course. So, instead of writing in a book, the children were given coloured paper filled with shapes. There were no long instructions; instead, there was a short list on the whiteboard of what to do, using words as well as drawings. In circles on the whiteboard I wrote:
…’You can start with a mind map while the music is playing’
[it was hip hop, so they could think quickly!]
‘You can write a few words for a short sentence, you can use adjectives and
nouns to make a longer sentence.’
Action
In order to inoculate against failure, I told them that I had developed a beautiful form with a lot of shapes so it would be easier to write a few sentences, and that they could determine for themselves in which direction they wanted to write. Because there were no lines on the sheet of paper, their creativity would get bigger, so the story would flow easier out of their heads onto the paper. For a relaxing state I put on our Mozart CD. In previous lessons we had worked with Mozart and the children knew that his music helped them to concentrate on their projects. I read a study about classical music used in education, and one of the findings was that when listening to Mozart, your brain will become smarter! I told this to the children and they were willing to try it; at first there was a lot of giggling, but they now really love working with classical music.
Teaching Excellence Page 28