Baby Signing – does it delay speech?
This post may be a little controversial (and I welcome your feedback) but I really don’t agree with the concept of “baby signing” which has become very fashionable these days. This is for one reason only – I genuinely think it delays children’s speech development.
Years ago, when I first started Mini Ps, I spent a few minutes of each class on baby signing. After a while, I started to realise that the children who were most proficient in signing were often those who were least advanced in speaking. The crunch came when one of the Mums said to me that she’d much prefer me to be accelerating her child’s speech through vocal exercises than trying to teach her child alternative means of communication. I did some more research, compared it with my own experience and dropped it from the curriculum. Read more »
Drama Teachers Wanted!
When I first started Perform, one of my friends told me that “staff would be my biggest problem”. She had her own business and said that finding the right people was her main challenge.
In many ways, she was right. It is continual challenge to keep recruiting brilliant people and over the years we have experimented with different ways of finding our teachers. Nevertheless, the one thing I am resolute about is to use working professional actor-singer-dancers as Perform Teachers. We’ve tried qualified school teachers, child psychologists and those with childcare qualifications but realised quite quickly that it is only actors who have trained in the performing arts and worked in “the business” who have the skills and energy to deliver Perform classes. Read more »
Hello – helping children develop good communication skills
If you read my blogs regularly, you’ll know that I like to talk about communication skills and how important it is that we make children confident communicators from an early age.
As you might expect, this is something that we are passionate about at Perform. In fact, the central section of each workshop is called Listen, Speak & Sing and we focus entirely on helping children with their listening and speaking skills through fun exercises where they learn to project their voices, use eye contact when they speak and be confident when talking whether to one person or to an audience. I sincerely believe that if you teach a child skills such as how to project and talk in front of an audience at the age of 4, they will retain these for life – it is quite simply all about practice and repetition. Read more »
Make some space for Drama, Mr Gove
Yes, I know I’m always harping on about confidence and its importance, but I just don’t think that there is enough emphasis on this vital contributor to lifelong success in our children’s Early Years education.
Drama, which is a proven way of helping children develop confidence, concentration and all manner of social skills for their future lives, is still appallingly low on the National Curriculum’s agenda. One example of this is the fact that Drama is still being treated as part of English rather than a subject in its own right
Anyone who has experienced Drama classes themselves or seen their child transform during Drama, will know that the difference it makes cannot be underestimated. It really is high time that this was addressed by the Department for Education.
Thanks to our amazing drama teachers
The last 3 weeks have been extremely busy for me because I’ve been contracting all our teachers for next term. As you can imagine, with over 200 schools and currently 208 teachers working for Perform, this is no easy task. It also demands quite a lot of concentration, so the mince pies and gingerbread lattes have been helping with this too!
Because we now have quite a few schools, many people think that Perform is franchised like most other drama, dance and singing organisations. But we aren’t. Everything is centrally run and we are very specific about the sort of teacher who works for us – specifically, we only pick the fabulous sort. Which is why I actually really enjoy the contracting part of my job, because it means that I get to talk to them all. Read more »
A Baby for all Seasons
A good friend of mine was told last week that her five-year-old daughter would always be at a disadvantage educationally because she had been born in July. This advice was given to her by an experienced teacher at a well-known secondary school who said that this was such a well-known phenomenon as to almost go without saying.
I must admit that, as an August baby myself, I was slightly taken aback at the suggestion! It’s also not something that I have ever worried about in all my years of working with young children. However, five minutes with Professor Google suggests that there is at least some science to support the theory.
Are you confident when speaking in public?
Because of my background as an actress, I’ve always mixed with people who are pretty confident speaking on their own in front of large groups of people. It wasn’t until I started Perform and attended courses in Child Protection, First Aid and various other childcare-related subjects that I realised how many people find speaking in front of others frankly terrifying.
Yes, I realised that not everyone was the all singing-all dancing type like most of my friends, but it was still a bit of a shock to me that there were clever and articulate adults out there who were frightened to speak out on their own. We’d go around the circle asking for contributions and it was amazing how quietly people spoke. I remember one course when an attendee actually left half way through the session because she found it too intimidating. Read more »
Discovering your “fun” and “firm” voices
When we train our teachers for Perform classes, one of the sections we spend the longest time working on is their voices. I’m not talking about their singing voices here; they are, after all, trained actors and singers and wouldn’t get to the training stage if they didn’t have a great instrument. What we work on is teaching them how to effectively use their voice to inspire and control children.
At Perform, we encourage our teachers to have two different types of voices for effective teaching: their energised, fun and inspiring voice for the majority of the time; and a low and firm no nonsense voice to use to ensure control when necessary. Read more »
Just Say No!
No, this blog post is not about the toe-curling anti-drugs eighties-fest that is the Grange Hill Just Say No video (though it’s worth having a look if you fancy a nostalgia-based giggle). It’s about a much more prevalent problem in primary school at least – bullying.
I was bullied a bit at school when I was a child. Not obviously and not aggressively. I never had lunch money taken but there were a few bigger girls in the class who picked on me by leaving me out of games and playdates and teased me because I was smaller than them. Read more »
Separation anxiety: How to leave your child for the first time
It’s nearly back-to-school time and that means that some children will be starting school for the first time, others will be moving to new schools and most will be moving up an academic year to new classroom surroundings and a new teacher.
Now, I’m a confident thirty-something woman but even I get a bit apprehensive when I try something new. It’s normal for even the most outgoing of people so it must be incredibly scary for a young child entering a completely new environment.
Luckily, most teachers are very used to dealing with separation anxiety and they have time-tested procedures to allow children to adapt as easily as possible and integrate into the class successfully. But what about us mums? Read more »
