Skip to main content

Show and Tell

A few weeks back, the little one had a show and tell. Now, I am of the firm belief that a show and tell should not be mugged - or rote learnt. Then how to get the child to say what he is supposed to say flawlessly?

Here is what worked for me. I gave him the object - in this case a huge envelope look alike on a cardpaper with illustrated stamp, to and from address. And using the prop as a mnemonic, he had to say just a sentence or two on each point.

So,he started off from the letter, then came from the top left to bottom right - starting at the stamp, followed by to address and then the from address. It went off like a dream.

This was followed by something where he had to speak for a minute on the family. So, we got our points and asked him what would he like to talk on. His thought was a simple one. First about the family as a whole, then its components and what we like to do together.

In both the cases, using his thought process made us give him a script that he can never forget - because it is his thought converted into a script. Very often, we impose our script on the child with the result that the child has to stop his natural thought process and imbibe a newer one.

This is exactly the same thing that would have happened at our first speech or elocution. We would ask someone else to write - which is a reflection of their thought process - and we try to superimpose that on our own thought process. And in a situation that we are familiar with, our thought process gives in to the strain of remembering that is not its own. End result -we "forgot" our speech. Well, we forgot it because it was not ours in the first place!

I still have to figure out how to make it work if the show and tell is a longer one, but this will perhaps be the broad guideline! Be Natural!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

No conferences

Decided not to attend any conferences this year. Atleast not the typical ones I have often ranted about here. Will be both choosy and intentional about which ones to attend.  The ones to attend are the ones put up by practitioners of a craft. The rest is marketing one way or other. 

And the unconference happened

 Most conferences have an agenda. No, not the stated agenda, but an agenda of marketing, airtime to sponsors, ensuring the past and future customers are invited, of ensuring that the "stars" of the industry are invited and attention showered of them. All in all it is a your scratch my back, I scratch your back syndrome. Some of these become cliques and claques and therefore the real point behind a conference is lost. And then there is the unconference - organised and run by the alumni of the ISABS ODCP program. And as the name suggests, this is truly an un-conference organised by the alumni, for the alumni. No funders - except the alumni themselves. No sponsors. Just the team.  I havent seen a more tastefully organised conference (yes, its an unconference).  To begin with - the location - not a typical star hotel, but an outdoorsy place. The food - simple. The welcome - personal. It was like a homecoming. The setting was warm and welcoming. It was a smaller conference. Ju...

The power of jotting down ideas

 Long long ago, I always used to carry a small letterpad with me. To jot down ideas that might occur. Over the years, it has changed from a notepad to evernote to google keep, but the power of jotting down ideas is immense.  Small ideas go into keep.  Anything to be quickly typed goes into whatsapp as a self message.  Bigger or better formed ideas go into Google docs A few are still written, but I manage to copy them into a digital format sooner rather than later.  But the power of jotting down is immense. My google keep is an encyclopedia of ideas - most of which may never get implemented.