Today was a college day (we're on the "one day per fortnight" routine, now) with a fascinating lecture on counting (and how hard it is to teach) from KD in the morning and then another fun and interesting one on how children learn DR in the afternoon.
Apparently counting is actually rather hard to teach, because it's hard to imagine not being able to count. So, for example, how can you imagine how a pupil feels who struggles to remember which way around to draw a "3"? Well, it turns out that a reasonable way is to have someone make you learn a new set of (patternless) names and symbols for representing the digits 0 through 9 in about two minutes, then test you on them. I, for one, got at least one symbol upside down... which does engender some form of sympathy with children having similar problems learning our own (patternless) numerical symbology.
The afternoon kicked off in a most depressing way - with a video from a Panorama report of 1999 regarding children who have, to all intents and purposes, disappeared from the educational system. There was a happy ending, though, as we considered just how important it was (in terms of learning, at least) to have safe, stable relationships with adults (read: teachers, at least).
A great day of lectures - I'm really starting to feel like I'm getting a handle on things.
*sigh*
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