back to school
I retired from teaching nearly six years now. Every school holiday and often in between I really enjoy catching up with some colleagues from the last three schools where I worked. These lunches tend to involve discussions about the changes and resulting frustrations in many government schools. Our Minister for Education is confident every class will have a teacher at the beginning of the term following an overseas recruitment program and employing student teachers who are not yet qualified. Many relief teachers have also been offered full time jobs.
Image Pixabay
We often follow the changes in education adopted overseas. I was interested to read in The Weekend Australian Magazine, January 27-28th, 2024, that schools in California are going to teach children joined up writing again. Abandoned in 2010 in most of America as part of the Learning Standards introduced by the Obama White House, the decision was based on the assumption that students did most of their learning digitally.
Recognising the benefits of cursive writing in brain development and fine motor skills, California is one of 23 states in America which advocates reintroducing joined up writing. It is now obligatory for students aged between six and twelve to learn how to write.
Image Pixabay
The rest of this item by Kieran Southern is about comments by an associate professor of education at the University of Southern California. He refers to chronic absenteeism doubling during this period, achievement has ‘fallen off a cliff’ and refers to ‘other crises and culture wars in schools’. He then says the thing ‘… we can all agree on is that we must mandate cursive (writing)’.
The West Australian Curriculum dictates students must produce’…legible, correctly formed letters by hand.’ The goal is for children to write with ease, speed and legibility.
Image Pixabay
Some quick research for recent information on the benefits of teaching cursive writing led to the Western Kids Health site (here). A summary of the their site looks at three aspects achieved by confident cursive writers.
HOLD pincer grip strength, finger isolation skills, fine motor control, fine motor control, finger opposition control
COPYING visual perception, visual planning, motor and planning control, problem solving
WRITING A SENTENCE postural control, fine motor endurance, attention, motivation, concentration, resilience, creativity and imagination.
I also remember being taught that forming letters and writing them reinforced the learners’ ability to remember sounds and their relationship to other letters.
grow
The last lot of small tomatoes I bought from the supermarket tasted a bit like kerosene! Well, the first one I tried did, so the rest went into the worm motel. I’m so pleased with the wonderful tomatoes on my bushes now. Not too big, not too small each truss has between six and seven delicious tomatoes.
The seeds came from my Mother. She kept two tomatoes for me and I squeezed the seeds onto paper towel, spread them out and left them to dry. Later I cut the paper towel into six equal squares and planted them. Up came a forest of little tomato plants except in one pot which surprised some time later by also producing a fine collection of seedlings.
Planted them out at different times to ensure fresh tomatoes over a few months. I have over 30 bushes supported by 2m stakes. I also have a tomato bush in a pot nowhere near the others; it just appeared one day and is strong with healthy trusses developing. I don’t usually grow this many tomatoes as I’ve had to cover them in cages in the past due to water rats! No rats apparent this year, but I do check every morning when I get up. Interestingly, our dear neighbour is sharing passion fruit with us as this is also the first year they haven’t been obliterated by rats.
Planted in good quality potting mix and watered regularly until they were established, some of these bushes are nearly two metres tall now.
Eventually realised I didn’t need the rat proof the tomatoes so removed the frames. Just as well, because some of the plants are very tall.
I don’t know what breed of tomatoes I am growing but my Mother has grown them for many, many years. They taste delicious!
These tomatoes have never made it onto a plate; we eat then fresh from the vine!