6. Spatial awareness

Spatial awareness

Students need to process visual messages and make physical responses. It includes motor skills, hand eye co-ordination, visual perception and sensory processing.
The problem is with training students to actually see what’s there and it’s not about learning difficulties, dyslexia or serious problems with eyesight.
Understanding Visual Processing Issues gives eight types of problems.
 
I taught in several secondary schools where the new year 7 pupils were given Cognitive Ability Tests. (11 to 12 year olds) We found that 50% had little spatial ability such as matching shapes.
Our Design Technology department gave pupils a simple test to make a paper bag with a logo so we could set the groups into abilities. What we found was that many could not cut, fold or stick paper accurately, let alone draw a logo.
 
What is Art?
Duchamp’s Urinal or is it “Fountain”? A sound play 45mins.

Photography

Covering Art lessons shows up how few students can draw or recognise shapes and colours. Their time spent in the lesson is wasted. How many are colour blind?
It would be very simple to teach students to take photos with their mobile phones and download the images on to a large screen device. Software offers many different ways to manipulate the images into black & white, pointillism etc.
Using digital images is highly motivational to today’s students. It can lead on to art recognisable to academics.
 
Mobile phone pictures for the Sony World Photography Awards

Handwriting

Writing is a classic point where schools are failing pupils. Writing is a very difficult physical skill requiring a high level of brain, visual and hand coordination.
 
It is taught as academic rote forcing pupils to blindly copy letters. They then have to learn to punctuate, use capital letters and spelling. It’s all too much for many. They cannot keep up as they are not given sufficient time or help. They eventually give up trying.
If the teacher asks the pupil to tell their story to the class, it’s difficult to stop them talking.
 
It is not difficult to train pupils to draw the lower case alphabet as it consists of 26 letters which can be grouped into 7 shapes of which 4 are basic shapes modified, rotated and flipped.
 
a b d g p q       c e o s x       f i j l t       h m n r u w y           k       v       z
 
Start the pupils off by drawing the elements of the shapes in fun pictures to develop their motor control. Gradually morph the shapes into letters. Pupils will not realise that they have learnt to write. Writing is simply drawing pictures.
Introduce commas and full stops gradually and capital letters much later.
Get the pupils to express themselves first so gaining confidence. Forget spelling mistakes.
 
I showed this concept to a primary teacher and she was surprised as she had never realised that letters are graphic symbols.
 
Since writing this page, I have come across articles on how Finland and some US states are replacing joined up writing by keyboard typing.
Ms Harmanen from the Finish board of education says. “Fluent typing skills are an important national competence, and the switch will be a major cultural change”.
Again, it is the establishment saying words are more important than motor control hand skills.
 

Sources

Typing takes over as handwriting lessons end: Finland
The Death of Handwriting by Victoria Woollaston for MailOnline

Cultural Literacy by E. D. Hirsch Jr.

Critical Importance of Early Schooling.

Based on Pages 26 - 31
 
Reading is the last skill a child learns before writing. It requires complex skills in relating visual symbols to spoken words. Recognition of individual words is the easy part, but it is the breaking up of words into vocal parts that is the problem. Calling out names for a class register is problematic with most foreign names. Most accept my feeble attempts.
 
Hirsch is pointing out that readers not only decode the words but supply additional information from their stored “background knowledge” which puts the word into a context expanding its meaning. As each individual person has a different quantity/quality of stored knowledge, their comprehension of the text could well be different to others.
 
The Title of his book “Cultural Literacy” refers to all children being taught a common body of knowledge before they are nine (grade 4, Y5) as those who do not will be left permanently behind.
 

Rise of the Fragmented Curriculum.

Based on Pages 110 - 121
 
To cater for individuality, the curriculum has been divided into ability groups and subjects. Class setting and material differentiation, upper and lower exam grades, academic and vocational courses.
 
The “background knowledge” need becomes so diluted that ”Cultural Literacy“ disintegrates.
Hirsch calls this the “Shopping Mall School”.