The prettiest little squiggles of black

"Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light, and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart." 

H.G.Wells, The History of Mr Polly

The font that we choose can have a huge impact on our resource and how it is received by our students.  Are the letters too big or too small ?  Are they too grown-up looking or too babyish ?  What does the font tell them about the tone and subject matter of the resource?  There are many very good-looking fonts around these days (I should know - I spend long enough browsing them when I should be doing something else!) but are they just "the prettiest little squiggles of black" or do they really help us to say what we want to say?

I participated in a conversation about this on Twitter a couple of evenings ago.  @littlejessw and I were discussing which fonts to use in PowerPoints and other resources, in particular those intended for students with special educational needs.  The stimulus of this conversation was "is it OK to use Comic Sans for resources or should I use something more 'grown-up'?"

At one time, Comic Sans was my default font. Then I moved on to Arial Rounded MT Bold.  Now it's ordinary Arial.  However, the difference now is that I choose my font carefully depending on who the resource is for.  For PowerPoints I use Comic Sans for primary (have to use one that the school system will recognise, which narrows the choice considerably) and Arial or Verdana for everything else.  

In 1999, the SEN department at my school gave everyone a document called "Working with children with learning difficulties".   I found the sections on Legibility, Attractiveness/Layout, Instructions and Readability incredibly useful, and they informed and continue to inform my current practice when I am making resources.   Here are my favourite tips for producing resources for students with SEN or for primary school children:

•  Choose a Sans Serif font with a "rounded a".  (This is why Comic Sans is useful.)
•  DON'T WRITE THINGS IN CAPITAL LETTERS.  Lower case letters are much easier to read as they have rounder, more easily recognised shapes.  Capitals have more straight lines.
• Choose a font size of at least 14pt.
• Leave adequate space between lines and paragraphs - don't try to cram too much onto a page.
• Include images and diagrams which are close to the relevant text.
• Make headings stand out.  Use bold, a different font or a different size.
• Make instructions clearly distinct from the rest of the worksheet.
• Try to give a working example for clarity.
• Produce a glossary of vocabulary.
• Restrict the amount of information to be absorbed at any one time.

I have since found this document, which has been produced for teachers and parents who prepare texts for children with reading difficulties, particularly dyslexic children, and which has similar tips.

I have mentioned before that sharing resources is my thing.  Well my favourite part of the whole process is creating the resources in the first place.  I would say that I spend a disproportionate amount of time creating them, making sure that they look just right.  Over the last 16 years my style has changed and evolved, and I more or less have a template now:

• Worksheets can be Portrait or Landscape.  Bear in mind that it's best to have text at the top (Portrait) or, because most pupils are right-handed, on the left (Landscape) and the space to write at the bottom or on the right respectively.
• Put an eye-catching title at the top.  I often use a simple Word Art image for this.  I usually put the title at the top, but sometimes down the side.  In addition I often use a picture font to put a partial border on the top or down the side, or to add some images.
• Put a box in the top right-hand corner for students to put their name.  Get them into the habit of naming their work!!  I put "Je m'appelle" on the French ones and "Me llamo" on the Spanish ones, just to drip-drip-drip how to say your name into them.
• Fill in one of the answers for them as an example.  I use a handwriting font to do this to make it clear that it's a completed answer.  I often use my own handwriting font which I rashly paid for a few years ago.
• Make sure that you give the students enough space to write their answers in.  Younger children in particular have big writing and they get frustrated when they can't put their answers where they're supposed to go.  1.5space or even double-space the lines for them to write on.
• A new part of my template is the assessment box, which is inspired the system used by my daughter's ICT teacher.  There is an "I can" statement for the sheet to start with.  The children tick the appropriate face to tell me how they found it.  Then when I've marked it I put a face in the blank circle to show how they've done, and write a brief comment.  Hopefully this will encourage me to mark more (!) and enable me to assess more easily.

On the subject of fonts, these are the ones that I use the most for my resources:

For more information about the above pangrams, by the way, and examples of pangrams in lots of languages, have a look here.

Here are some other things about fonts that you might enjoy reading:

Typography for MFL teachers and learners - an excellent blogpost by Fiona Joyce

Do typefaces really matter? - an article from the BBC

What's so wrong with Comic Sans? - another from the BBC

Fantastic Fonts and where to find them - a very helpful presentation by Jackie Berry

Guatemala

During the summer term of 2010 the World Cup provided me with weeks of intercultural lessons.  However, it wasn't something that I could replicate in 2011.  This posed a problem with, among others, Year 2's scheme of work.


I decided to replace the World Cup with a similarly intercultural unit, about Guatemala.  I've mentioned it on Twitter a few times and thought I'd describe it in more detail here.


It lasted 6 weeks in total (45 minute lessons each time).  Here are the steps:


1.  We revised the 6 main colours (red, blue, yellow, green, black, white) and then the children completed a worksheet where they had to colour in the flags of the countries of Central America correctly. 


2.  We looked at a map of Central America and located each of the countries whose flags we had coloured.


3.  We looked at a map of the world and located Central America.


4.  We looked at some photographs of Guatemala, like this one and this one, and talked about what kind of country it is and what the weather is like.


5.  We looked at some photographs of Guatemalan fabrics and found out about traditional back-strap looms.  In particular, we noticed the shapes that are used traditionally in the woven fabrics - diamonds, triangles, zig-zags, stripes and squares.


6.  We made our own Guatemala bags, using this template, felt-tip pens and a lot of care and time.  Here is the one that I made and used as my model, to give you an idea:

This is the part of the unit that took the time!  Three lessons of very careful colouring followed by tricky cutting and sticking.

7.  I read "Silly Billy" by Anthony Browne to the class.  This beautifully illustrated book introduces the Guatemalan tradition of making worry dolls.

8.  I showed the class some real worry dolls (which are tiny) and then we made our own worry dolls.  You can download the instructions here if you want to have a go yourself.  Y2 were very taken with the idea behind worry dolls and were very proud of the dolls that they made.  We put them in their Guatemala bags and they took them home.  Some of them have since told me that they told their worries to their dolls and that it did help.  You can see the fruits of their labours on the school blog.

I was pleased with the outcome of this unit of work.  The children had furthered their knowledge of the Spanish-speaking world, as well as gaining specific intercultural knowledge of one country in particular, and we crossed the curriculum with the bags and the worry dolls.  It's definitely something I'll be repeating.

I haven't got a bean

We have a rule in our house:  the person who doesn't cook the tea has to wash up.  Today I wasn't quite quick enough off the mark, and the sausages, potato wedges and beans were cooked by my husband.  So while the children were upstairs "brushing their teeth" it fell to me to do the washing up.  To keep me company I turned on the radio, choosing Radio 2 and Simon Mayo.  


If you're a regular listener to Simon Mayo's programme, you'll know that every evening each member of the team prepares a quiz question based on sport, business and financial affairs or general trivia.  Today the question posed by Simon himself went along the lines of "In Mexico in Aztec times, cocoa beans were used as currency.  If a turkey cost 100 cocoa beans, what could you get for 3 beans?  Was it (a) an avocado (b) a wife or (c) a tomato?"  The two other members of the team, with much giggling, pleaded for it to be answer b, and were disappointed when it turned out to be answer a.


There I was, washing the pots and pans, thinking "What a neat idea to use when you're teaching numbers in Spanish!"


I've had a little look around the old Internet, and have found out the following info:


The Aztecs were using cocoa beans as currency when the Spaniards first arrived, and continued to do so until as late as 1858.  An Aztec document from 1545 gives a list of what you could buy for your beans.


1 small rabbit - 30 beans
1 turkey egg - 3 beans
1 large tomato - 1 bean
1 slave - 100 beans
1 male turkey - 300 beans
1 female turkey - 100 beans
1 newly picked avocado - 3 beans
1 fully ripe avocado - 1 bean
20 small tomatoes - 1 bean
5 long green chili peppers - 1 bean
1 large strip of pine bark for kindling - 5 beans
And finally (maybe not one to share with KS2) the services of 1 prostitute - 10 beans


Cocoa beans were small change.  For your bigger purchases you would need mantles (capes or cloaks), copper axe blades or quills of gold dust.  1 cotton cape would set you back 300 beans.  A string of jade beans would cost you 600 capes.  How many beans is that?


There are lots of possibilities here for some number work in the foreign language using the beans exchange rate.  For example:
¿Cuántos granos de cacao para dos conejos? 
Tengo veinte granos de cacao.  ¿Cuántos huevos de pavo puedo comprar?


There is also plenty of opportunity for intercultural work.  How many of the children will know that chocolate, tomatoes, avocados and turkeys come from the Americas?  And of course they can find out more about the Aztecs.  I've found the Aztecs pages of the Mexicolore site interesting and am going to have another scout around it to see what I can find.


My next-year's-Y3 have already done two years of Spanish with me, and know the numbers 1-15 well.  This will give me a good way to revise them without being repetitive.


Getting an international dimension into Numeracy and Maths was already in my mind after someone tweeted a link to this blog post about "McDonald's Menu Items From Around The World" yesterday.  You can learn a lot about different countries and cultures from their McDonald's menu, and of course it's something that our students know all about.  I've looked at other countries' McDonald's menus before, and my ideas for using the information in schemes of work formed part of a presentation I gave to local headteachers a few years ago.  If you would like to have a look at the presentation, you'll find it here.


UPDATE 11.8.11
I've just purchased this book as part of my ever-increasing library of intercultural materials.  It refers to the cocoa-bean currency and suggests getting children to draw up their own system of currency using foods, counters or other classroom materials like pens and pencils.  They can say, for example, that a red counter is worth 1p or that a pencil is worth €1, and work out how much they would charge in their new currency for groceries, clothes, toys or magazines.  There is nothing to stop them doing this work in another language.


I have also created a worksheet for Primary Spanish practising numbers and using cocoa beans, and you can download it here.

Take a walk around the world

I expect lots of people are going to be looking for Olympics-related ideas for their lessons next year, me included.  Today I found out about the Global Children's Challenge.  Teachers of Y4, Y5 and Y6 and their classes are invited to apply to take part (applications close on 31st July, so you'll need to act quickly).  The idea is that teachers and the children in their classes wear a pedometer every day for the 50 days of the challenge, which runs from 15th September until 3rd November.  They work as a team to accumulate and log actual physical steps, which then enable them to take virtual steps around the world via the Challenge website.  There is the possibility of visiting 50 different countries.  The Challenge is an initiative designed to get children more active, but of course is also an excellent global and intercultural opportunity.  Full information is on the Challenge website, and you can download the flyer here.


Admittedly time isn't on most schools' side with both holidays and the application deadline looming, so many schools who want to take part may not be able to.  But there's nothing stopping you from adapting the Challenge and putting your own spin on it.  Pick a French-speaking or Spanish-speaking country and find out the distance from its capital to ours.  Will they be able to walk enough steps to get to London in time for the Olympics?  Where will they pass on the way?   Give yourself a time limit and see how many countries you can walk to in that time.  Can you do a tour of Africa or of South America?  There are all sorts of possibilities.


If you reckon on 2000 steps to a mile, you and your class will soon be able to rack up the miles.  The cheapest pedometers are available for about £3 from places like Argos and Amazon.  You'll be able to watch your class tearing around the playground, getting lots of exercise and enabling you to tell them about lots of fascinating countries and cultures.




*Image by the brilliant @bevevans22

The Birth of a Nation

I have been following with interest over the last few days the news coverage of the beginnings of the Republic of South Sudan.  It was this BBC news article which first captured my attention.  It talks about all the things that the new nation will have had to sort out in advance of its official "birth" yesterday, such as its political border, its flag, stamps, currency and its country-level internet domain.  South Sudan had an X-Factor style competition for its new national anthem.


It struck me that this would make a good school project.  Tell the children that your region - the north-east in my case - has decided to become an independent state.  They have to decide on its capital city (Newcastle?  Sunderland?  Durham?  Controversial!), a flag, currency and so on.  What they choose will depend on the cultural identity and heritage of where they live.  This could also work in language lessons.  Instead of their own region, you could choose a region of one of the target-language countries.  For example, tell them that Castilla y León is going to become an independent state.  They will have to do some research to find out more about it if they are going to create a meaningful profile for it.  And then of course they can practise their presentation skills by introducing their new country to the rest of the class.


Just an idea.