Some of you know that I am a schoolteacher--elementary music, to be more precise. So, I teach children between the ages of five and eleven the nuts and bolts of music.

I love my job! As I have told several of my friends, I go to work and play all day! (that's probably an overgeneralization, but some days it's not far off the mark)

We are getting ready to start the school year up again, and given all that I've learned this summer, I'm really chomping at the bit to be back working with the kids (which often has not normally been my situation this time of year--I guess that mode of thinking is gone for good).

So, in light of all of that, I am asking for information/advice from anyone who is willing to give it, professional educators or no. Here are some things that I'm looking for:

1) online resources that connect Education and NLP--Jay Budzynski was very kind to provide me with these two links already (thanks, Jay!):

NLP in Education

The Learning Web

2) Books applicable to the field

3) People here in the states, or abroad, that I can network with

4) Direct advice, suggestions, etc. from all of you--things I can do during instruction, for example, to maximize learning, etc.

I am looking forward to being certified in the near future, and am hoping that my local professional development committee will accept a Practitioner's License training to fulfill my continuing education requirement for state licensure. It makes perfect sense to me that further development of my skills in NLP will only improve the educational experience of my students.

By the way, I am currently perusing existing threads here, and there's a lot of information! Anything fresh, or that you might think would be good to highlight would be great.

Thank you in advance for all your help.

Cheers,

Phil

Hi Phil,

How wonderful, I was just saying to my sister today how important it is for children to be encouraged to love learning from an early age! Unfortunately here in Rome there are still a few teachers with old school methods! For instance she thinks that her 11 year old son was put off learning how to write stories by his teacher given that once he put extreme effort into writing his own fictional tale and his teacher dismissed it as being longwinded! She actually crossed it all out and that was the end of his creative story writing for the time being at least!

My sister is doing her best to make sure it's not 'permanent' damage so to speak. Anyway we were just discussing that we feel that it would be great to use NLP in schools and we have had a couple of chats with this teacher who seemed to be completely unaware of the need to, encourage the children with much praise and delight! However she did take our ideas and advice on board so it shows that so much could be done to encourage encouragement!"


Good Luck,

Violeta

Thank you for your words of encouragement, Violeta.

I want my students to enjoy music learning this year even more than ever!

I'm looking forward to more feedback from other members as well.

Phil

Hi, I'm sure they will!

Violeta

Phil,

I have seen so many kids having the time of their lives enjoying music lessons in school, I can imagine you do have lots of fun.

Is there a particular goal you would like to achieve with your little ones? If you found your perfect online resource, what would it do?

There is one game I like to play with younger students where you sit in a circle and clap to the beat of 4. Then every second 4th beat we leave blank and then introduce an instrument, them miss out more beats and add new sounds or silences.

I guess that is a pretty standard game but how to take it on from here? Maybe in this exercise (and others) by observing the group you can work out their dominant strategy for keeping in time. Some will watch and follow other peoples lead or maintain their own timing with some kind of jig, others will hear the rhythm and keep time quite easily. In understanding their strengths and weaknesses you can make them more able to partake (ie ask the kinaesthetics to create a dance follow the rhythm, blindfold the auditory dominant people so they can really listen in to the sounds, give the visuals flashing lights or visual promts to keep them going) or you can challenge them by denying them their main source of keeping in time (blindfold the visuals, give ear defenders to the auditory or get the kinaesthetics to lie down and stay still throughout)

I love to know about teaching styles and good practice so please do share what you are proud of lessons that you currently do!

Thanks

Matt

Matt,

Thank you so much for your post, because it is getting me to start thinking about things I already do, and things I have yet to do that I can add to make the learning more fun.

I have always used a variety of approaches in learning music, which mix up the VAK (we don't do the olfactory and gustatory too much in music!). For instance I use activities which move their bodies, direct them to look at things, and listen all at the same time. Boy, does THAT work well in teaching music literacy! They can't HELP but learn how to read and write music this way. For the younger ones, especially, literally touching the notes on the page seems to work very well. I tell some of them, "now I know that you don't really need to touch those notes on the page, but when you do, it shows me how well you read the music!" Also, "inner ear" exercises in which parts of a known song are omitted and they "hear it in their heads" on visual cue are very useful in developing music listening skills. Actually, the "inner ear" development is quite crucial in children's developing ability to match pitch independantly.

Some of these things I have learned from my Kodaly training, and other things I have just done from common sense. I am very proud of a couple of techniques that I have created to teach rhythm using math manipulatives, and a color-coded solfege system. Lots of color for the kids! They love it!

I also like to turn everything and anything into a game if possible, and after my life changing summer, I think I will be even more likely to do so more often. I love to let the students make up games to help them learn concepts too, and even the older ones like to "play like the little kids." Heck, I don't care, as long as they're learning!

So, I guess, I do a lot of things really well. I consider myself an effective teacher. I have very few management issues, and most of the time, all but the rarest few of my students are engaged during the lessons.

Things I would like to know more about, to make the learning "stick" as much as possible:

--a greater use of visual/spatial anchors in my instruction and in their activites

--helping my students get in the most positive, open learning state that they can, so that they are able to learn a lot, and fast!

any ideas to help me with this?

And here's one for you all: how could I present to children the notion of expansion of peripheral vision to maximize learning? I already have an idea or two, but I would love to hear about what magical notions you all could come up with!

Now, Matt, see what you've done???

Cheers,

Phil

Hi Phil

I am looking forward to being certified in the near future

I hope you mean in the context of becoming a NLP practitioner.

Best of luck with it my friend.

Frederic

Frederic, what a wicked sense of humor you have...

Who knows what I really meant...

Phil

If you do not already use them learning styles questionnaires - a good free one is:

Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire


Cheers.

Nick,

I am quite familiar with the Learning Styles framework, as it is an important part of any teacher's training.

This is a great little test, thank you for bringing it to our attention.

It was interesting to me that I was completely balanced (scoring a one) on every pairing except one--on the Sensing/Intuitive, I scored an ELEVEN--on the Intuitive side! Now, I wonder what that might mean...

I would love to give all 600 of my students a level-appropriate similar test, and then analyze the data, and reflect on how it might affect my teaching style. Or, I could just intuitively allow myself to be aware of how they are learning, and respond in the most elegant manner available to me, now, couldn't I?:cool:

Cheers,

Phil

Phil,

I would love to give all 600 of my students a level-appropriate similar test, and then analyze the data, and reflect on how it might affect my teaching style.

As a professional whos job is to prepare and deliver information that is to be retained then you MUST know this about your learners. Long gone are the days when you group students about what they dont know (rarely are they grouped by what they DO know) but you SHOULD be grouping them in their ability to take in knowledge.

I don't know how differentiation works in US schools but I often modify my explanation of activities, wording of worksheets and the learning activities themselves to cater specifically for a students preferred learning style. You can have a working group of 8 students of high ability of which 2 may struggle due to the delivery of the activity, you can mix ability but deliver your work according to their VAK strengths (or the opposite if you feel it is appropriate for the task). You MUST try this, it is amazing to watch how they manage and tackle tasks and communicate with each other when bonded by their subliminal understanding of each other. When students struggle to understand a topic desipte how hard you try and get it across, someone (normally another student) can explain it to them and working groups are awsome for that.

Don't underestimate the significance of their preferred learning style, understanding what makes them tick is essential in knowing how to then make them tock!

Thanks

Matt

Matt,

Just to give you a little background on my set-up:

I teach music to children in two buildings, a total of about 600 students. Children are ages five to eleven, and are grouped according to age only.

Class sizes are between 25 and 30 students.

I see students once a week for about 40 minutes.

Are you having a clearer picture of my situation? And I would love to know yours!

If I were a classroom teacher with the same 25 students all year, I would be investing BIG TIME in learning styles assessment at the beginning of the year. I'm not sure how that would be possible for me in my setting, but I'd love some suggestions!

As is, a strategy that I currently use is to do the following:

1) "mix it up" frequently, so everyone gets an opportunity to receive instruction in ways that are most useful to them

2) communicate with teachers in cases where I feel individual students are struggling

3) peruse IEP documents and other educational plans of special needs students

As is, I only have say in how my students are grouped within a class, and I often juggle those arrangements to suit the need at the time.

Are you beginning to see what a high level of flexibility is required of me in my work? This is one reason why NLP is so useful to me!

I look forward to your reply...

Phil

I'm new to NLP, but there are definite similarities with Alistair Smith's accelerated learning ideas which are aimed at classroom use. Using music to review and enhance recall is one that may resonate with you Phil. For those unfamiliar, Accelerated Learning by Alistair Smith, Network Educational Press, Stafford, 1996. Http://www.alite.co.uk/ is his website. He has some ideas about establishing learning styles - I have adapted these for children of around 9 - 10 years and younger to assess their own preferences according to Howard Gardner's 8 intelligences - they enjoy doing this and it makes a pretty circular graph which children will happily do in their own time. As the new school year approaches, I'm dusting it down right now.

I just checked in Smith's book; he is NLP trained to master practitioner level.

Scipio

I also use Alistair Smiths work when working with students in the post compulsory edcuation sector at both FE and University. It goes down well with all ages and you are right it has a lot of aspects of NLP within it.

Wendy

Thank you, Scipio and Wendy! I will look into it soon.

Phil

Your welcome. Hope you find them useful.

Wendy

scipio_collins wrote:

according to Howard Gardner's 8 intelligences

Scipio

I think they're upto 9 last time I checked, can't remember it off hand though!

Hello, everyone!

I can see that this thread is going to grow, now that I'm back with the children.

I just spent the whole morning working with five year olds, doing one-on-one baseline language processing assessments.

Going through that process was an amazing lesson in observing eye-accessing cues. I witnessed an abundance of auditory construction! It made the whole process even more interesting for me than usual. A couple of children had some kinesthetic connection (one girl was tickled by rhyming words), and one child continually processed language through auditory/visual kinesthesia, at least as near as I could tell (would that be the correlation with looking straight up?).

How much fun am I going to have this year!

phil

Maybe get them in rapport before ths start of the class, by getting them to stretch left right front back and breathe in and out at the same time for each one?

Are you famliar with the pygmalion effect?

If it's music I wonder what would happen if you break them up into V and A and K.

Maybe teach them to 'feel' the music?

This is my favorite link from the site you posted phil NLP In Education A Magnificent Opportunity

The book The Teachers Toolkit by Paul Ginnis is a good resource full of ideas to make learning fun and based on the principles of NLP.

Hope this helps.

Wendy