What did you read as a child?

This course has led me to reflect on my own (pre-teen) childhood reading. What effect did it have on me, if any? Do you have memories of your childhood reading?

I have an appalling memory but I really don’t think I read any classic children’s books in my childhood. I know when I went to University I was nonplussed by other girls who joked about Pooh, Peter Rabbit, or Alice (ah, simpler times).

My school readers were Janet and John.  I read some Blyton – Fives and Sevens – not obsessively, and not the school stories. The cute pictures in My Naughty Little Sister stand out for me (I don’t even recall any other picture books).

At home I read weekly girls’ comics – sometimes one, sometimes two.  What on earth was in them? I rarely opened my brothers’ comics (Dennis the Menace seemed bizarre rather than an anti-hero to me).  There was one bookshelf – with an allotment gardener’s guide (relic of WW2?), and otherwise I remember only  White Fang, (which I loved once I got over the old-fashioned nature of the book itself) and the bewildering  The Oxford Book of English Verse with its mysterious ‘Q’ on the spine. Perhaps it was on that shelf I found Andersens’ Fairy Tales, which safely alarmed me.  I am sure there would have been a Bible  but I remember more the studious, and wholly competitive, effort I put into winning an illustrated copy, by answering a written question on each chapter. How disappointing then that the illustrations turned out to be so few in number.

We didn’t buy books but we had library tickets and I read my way around the children’s shelves, taking out my full allowance of four books each Friday night. There was a period when I went for ballet books. I remember being  moved by only one book, where a starving Chinese family sold their daughter into slavery. And when I couldn’t find a book to read, I daringly ventured round the corner from the children’s section of the library to the reference shelves, and found the blue-bound  Arden Shakespeare and started on that.

So my feeling is that as an avid reader, I peeped through a few windows, but the main benefit must have been to develop my reading speed, as well as the habit of reading.  I touched on English poetry, the Bible and Shakespeare,  without (apart from a few poems, or some memorable phrases) making them my own. So some foundations were there, but it was a very different experience from being an engaged, adult reader.

Tutorials and tutor groups

The course has been developed centrally, by the Arts and Education faculties based at Walton Hall. However the course is run more locally, and I work within Region 5 (East Midlands) who have been organising a tutorial venue for me and agreeing tutorial dates and times. I expect these will be confirmed very shortly.

Meanwhile my focus is now on the wait for my student group. As soon as I know who my students are, I can get in contact with them – I’ll start with email and ask students to reply;  if that doesn’t work I will try to get in touch via post or (given possible postal strikes) perhaps phone.  It’s sometimes very difficult to get in touch with my Level 1 students who are very often new to Open University study. Surely it will be much easier to be in contact those who have signed up for a Level 3 course?

Also I’ll be watching my online desktop closely: I want to get into my tutor group forum as soon as it appears, and set it up before the students arrive. It may be online, but still there’s all that furniture to arrange, and the posters to put on the wall

Course briefing

It was an intense and valuable day last Saturday, meeting the course team and other tutors, and sharing ideas and experience.  It may be the only time we actually see, face to face, people we will be in touch with by email over the next few years.

I was particularly struck by the strategies aimed to make the schedule manageable for students: no substitution, but instead a reading-free week in which to write each assignment, two ‘holiday’ weeks (Christmas and Easter time), and – of course – study materials that have the great good fortune to build on a subject we all find deeply engaging.

It was great fun to watch some of the professional storytelling on the course DVD; also, to name a fairy tale by looking at an image which was just thick vertical black stripes, with a small red triangle peeping out.*

It is a very popular course. Student numbers have been capped by the University at 1700 this year. The numbers studying OU courses always surprise me, with the University having something like 210,000 current students. Staggering.

*Little Red Riding Hood, for most of us.

Getting warmer

People can still register for this course up until Friday. I’ll get my list of students some time after that; get in contact with them, and meet up at our first tutorial (to be confirmed) on course start date of 3 October.

So what am I doing now, to prepare?

• reading ahead in the course material
• reading around (for example via my zetoc alert,  some children’s literature email forums)
• messing around (obviously, with this blog)
• exploring the course website (including playing on the wikis)
• following the OUSA EA300 forum (great tips!)
• planning tutorial activities
• marking assignments (a standardisation exercise)
• drafting my introductory  letter to students
• listing questions for the course briefing.

What have I forgotten?

Ah, yes:  digging a pit for all the gold I’ll be able to hoard once I start getting paid

Death, jollity, and offal

I’ve been enjoying (re)discovering some little aspects of our set books.  Like Katherine, who commented on my last posting, I wonder how I’ll feel about some of these  ‘old friends’  by the end of this course.

But I would admit that for my part I’m not always the most mindful friend – as an avid but sometimes over-speedy reader I can miss, and certainly forget, a lot. It’s been a delight to notice more details on a re-reading.

It was a comment by Peter Hunt ( “there is even a death joke on the second page” , in our course reader) that sent me back to The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Then I noticed that we have an edition which highlights this ‘joke’ because it gives it an extra page all of its own, with a picture I’d never seen before. (A slightly disappointing one, I think – Potter’s people often aren’t as entrancing, to my eyes, as her other drawings.)

Surely I’d noticed before that Peter has a blue coat, while his more compliant siblings have the red ones of  ‘good little bunnies’? But I’ve only just noticed that the red coats are sensibly taken off  (p17)  for blackberrying.

I’d forgotten the obvious (child-focused?) humour of Harry Potter.  Dumbledore says “a few words” at the start of the new school year, and they are literally a few words: “Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!” (p92).

And in comparison with the magical feasts at Hogwarts, Lyra (the accomplished Liar) in Northern Lights relishes calves’ liver, sweetbreads,  rank dried reindeer meat and steaming raw kidney.

Are there any little details that strike you afresh?

It’s getting real

Today the course website opened to tutors.

I’ve taken a quick look – how lucky that this is a Bank Holiday weekend and I’ve a bit of extra time coming up. I  have a big grin on my face. I now know that the course is going to live up to my hopes. And there are even what I think are some fun (optional) extras that weren’t mentioned in the course description.

That’s all I’m going to say about that just now – I don’t mean to tantalise, but I can’t jump the gun

So instead I’ve racked my brains for something I can share with you.   Maybe not as exciting but very practical.  I also tutor A172 Start Writing Essays so here are a few websites that might be useful reference even if you are an experienced OU student:

Time management tips here. I particularly like the one about writing out your assignment question as a bookmark and keeping it in front of you while you’re reading.

Grammar and punctuation explanations and exercises here (needs your OU login). For a different approach, here is a video on commas. For broader questions about English for learning, see here.

Word processing interactive video demonstrations  here . These show MS Word 1997-2003, so not the latest version; but at least useful as a list of valuable skills.

Assignment editing and proof reading checklist here .

Referencing: The course itself will explain what is wanted but for a brief outline of what referencing is about see the OU Library page here and if you want a little more background there are OU Library teaching sessions on citing references and producing a references list .

Now I don’t mean to gloat but I’ve got other things to be getting on with now..

Are you sitting comfortably?

How many hours are we going to spend in front of our computer screens? I’ve just made myself read through tips on using your computer safely and comfortably . IBM’s Healthy Computing website has some neat little graphics about sitting comfortably.

For me, it’s the simplest tips that are the hardest to follow. Here’s my rhyme (I’m sure you can do better):

1,2 adjust the view

3,4 feet flat on floor

5,6 don’t get ‘fixed’

7,8 sit up straight

9,10 move again

Meanwhile I’m glued to my chair, leaning towards the screen and with my legs crossed …

A magic wand

It’s a popular magic device – at one flick the toys are sent back to the cupboard, the crockery arranged on the shelves, and the spells-gone-wrong are righted.

My Spells book (aka the OU Library) has introduced me to a brilliant way to marshall all those journal articles and webpages. The offputting title of ‘bibliographic management software’ hides a magic wand to collect, manage and cite* research sources.

The OU Library outlines the software options here. Some may prefer Endnote (costs money) or Refworks (costs money when you are no longer associated with the OU); I’ve started  using Zotero (install the Firefox browser, install Zotero and then its word processor plugin).  Now I can easily capture publication data for anything I see on-screen. And then I can go to my word processor, put the cursor in the right place, and just click for in-text references and the end References list to appear.  Here’s an example of  output in Harvard format:

(Hade 2002)

Hade, D., 2002. Storyselling: Are Publishers Changing the Way Children Read? Horn Book Magazine, 78(5), 509-517.

It almost makes me wish I had an essay to write.

* Note dated 21 October 2009: Oh dear I got a bit carried away here.   It does ‘collect and manage’ but not ‘cite’ quite so easily. I’m sorry. It doesn’t readily provide Harvard-style citations from all webpages. The best I can suggest with Zotero for TMAs is  that you use it as far as you can then edit what it has provided so that you match the examples given in our Assignment guidance, and via http://library.open.ac.uk/help/howto/citeref/index.cfm (click on the ‘Harvard’ link under ‘Step 1′).

For instance, here’s an example of what Zotero provides for a Harvard full citation, compared with our guidance:

Zotero:

Anon. Oxbridge trainee teachers ‘twice as likely to get jobs’ | Education | Education Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/aug/03/schools.uk1.

OU Library helpsheet:

MacLeod, D. (2007) ‘Oxbridge trainee teachers twice as likely to get jobs’, Education Guardian, 3^rd August, [online] Available from http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2140513,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=8 (Accessed 3 August 2007)

Cleared a bookshelf

The set books are looking a bit lonely on the newly-cleared shelf at the moment.

These are old copies, and unfortunately they just won’t do. Others are available on-line (Little Women, Treasure Island, Peter Rabbit) but these won’t do either. I need to buy all the course-required versions I guess so that students and I have the same text, same page numbering, same introductions.

I’ve ordered some and will order the rest in a later batch. Apart from having to part with some money, there are lots of feel-good factors about buying new books, aren’t there?  Some people are able to support their local / independent bookshops. If you are ordering from Amazon you could consider clicking there via the University’s Online Bookstore which gives a small percentage of purchase money back to the fundraising charity, the  OU Foundation .

And then there’s the childlike pleasure of opening a parcel, and opening up those fresh clean pages. Even if you know what’s in the parcel, even if you’ve read the books before, it’s still a gift.

If I were going to buy a children’s book for someone else right now, I think I’d go for Dogs by Emily Gravett. What would be top of your list?

What’s new in the journals?

I suspect we’ll be busy enough with course-directed reading, but if you want to dip your toe into further resources, you might enjoy a simple email alerting service.

Set up  Zetoc Alert and you get an email with clickable links to newly-published articles. Even better, the links may well give you access to the article’s full text.

The Open University Library has produced a friendly introduction and how-to-sign-up leaflet .

Here are the  journals I’ve selected for my alert. Have I missed any?

• CANADIAN CHILDRENS LITERATURE
• CHILDRENS LITERATURE
• CHILDRENS LITERATURE IN EDUCATION
• HORN BOOK MAGAZINE
• LION AND THE UNICORN
• NEW REVIEW OF CHILDRENS LITERATURE AND LIBRARIANSHIP
• PAPERS EXPLORATIONS INTO CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
• QUARTERLY- CHILDRENS LITERATURE ASSOCIATION
• SCHOOL LIBRARIAN
• SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

Meanwhile, I enjoyed reading a NY Times article about the endless curiosity of the young mind; in particular

In fact, our mature brain seems to be programmed by our childhood experiences — we plan based on what we’ve learned as children. Very young children imagine and explore a vast array of possibilities. As they grow older and absorb more evidence, certain possibilities become much more likely and more useful. They then make decisions based on this selective information and become increasingly reluctant to give those ideas up and try something new.

Here’s hoping that study helps to keep some plasticity in our ‘mature’ brains.