The following is a list of pointers that I noted down, as I
read the book.
Thought of sharing it with the community.
B P Sundar
1.What does the child see you doing, that she thinks, feels, that this is
a pretty serious activity, well worth doing?
2.Invented spellings – start from the assumption that they can figure
things out for themselves.
3.Children's errors are not accidental but reflect their systems of
knowledge.
4.A dictionary is a collection of people's opinions about what words mean,
as other people use them.
5.What we get out of a piece of reading depends in large part on the
experience we bring to it.
6.Figuring out, what you don't know or aren't sure of is the greatest
intellectual skill of all.
7.They don't think about anything they hear in school.
8.Children have to live with an idea or insight for a while, turn it
around in some part of their minds, before they can in a very real sense,
discover it, take possession of the idea and make it their own.
9.If we read and write, the children will want to; if we don't, they
won't.
10.Children want, need and like to read books that have meaning for them.
11.Any teaching that the learner has not asked for is likely to impede and
prevent learning.
12.The best way to spell better is to read a lot and write a lot.
13.When not sure of how to spell a word, spell it several ways and pick
the one that looks best.
14.There could be no greater waste of time than asking children to learn
to spell words that they are not using.
1.Our minds are much more powerful when discovering than memorizing,
because discovering is more fun.
2.Children would learn arithmetic and learn it better, if it were illegal.
1.The process by which children turn experience into knowledge is exactly
the same, point for point, as the process by which those whom we call
scientists make scientific knowledge.
2.Children observe, they wonder, they speculate and they ask themselves
questions. They think up possible answers, they make theories, they
hypothesize and then they test theories by asking questions or by further
observations or experiments or reading. Then they modify the theories as
needed, or reject them and the process continues. If we attempt to
control, manipulate or divert this process, we disturb it. If we continue
this long enough, the process stops.
3.Think about what understanding, or the lack of it, actually means.
4.Real learning is a process of discovery and if we want to happen, we
must create the kinds of conditions in which discoveries are made. They
include time, leisure, freedom and lack of pressure.
5.Children do not acquire knowledge, but make it. They create knowledge.
1.Kids are more interested in the things that adults really use, than in
the little things we buy especially for them.
2.“This book tells me more about the Penguins than I want to know”- book
review by a kid.
3.Not only is it the case that uninvited teaching does not make learning,
but for the most part such teaching prevents learning.
4.What young children need is the opportunity to see older children and
adults choosing and undertaking various tasks and working on them over a
period of time until they are completed.
5.It is always without exception, better for a child to figure out
something on his own than to be told. What he figures out he remembers
better and far more important, every time he figures something out, he
gains confidence in his ability to figure things out.
6.It is true, in a way, and misleading, in a way, to say that children
want to learn. Yes, they do, but in the way that they want to breathe. It
is in their nature to look about them, to take the world in with their
senses, and to make sense of it, without knowing at all how they do it or
even that they are doing it.
One of the greatest mistakes we make with children is to make them
self-conscious about their learning. The truth is that anyone who is
really living, exploring himself or herself to life and meeting it with
energy and enthusiasm, is at the same time learning.
7.The trouble with any kind of external motivation, whether it be negative
or positive, is that it displaces or submerges internal motivation.
8.What children want and need from us is thoughtful attention. They want
us to notice them and pay some kind of attention to what they do, to take
them seriously, to trust and respect them as human beings.
9.There doesn't have to be and shouldn't be, a lesson in everything.
1.The easily observable fact is that children are passionately eager to
make as much sense as they can of the world around them, are extremely
good at it, and do it as scientists do, by creating knowledge out of
experience.
2.When a child is doing something she is passionately interested in, she
grows like a tree, in all directions. This is how children learn, how
children grow.
3.Children are philosophers at work. We should give them time to think.
4.Living is learning. It is impossible to be alive and conscious without
constantly learning things.
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