By Kathy Suerken
It always brings me such joy to share in people's good decisions
and never more so than when they are created by those connected to all of us
through TOC For Education. On behalf of
the TOCFE family, I extend congratulations and best wishes to Cheryl (Baugh)
and Bob Edwards, married October 15. Cheryl
will maintain her baughca@aol.com screen name for transition and
add a new one in her married name by next TACTics. From now on, our TOCFE, USA director is
known as Cheryl Edwards!
Elementary/
Secondary TACTICS
By Judy Holder, teacher, Shining Eyes and Busy
Minds School, Enfield, London
Target population: Ages
4-7, depending on the children!
Lesson time: 35
minutes, but there is scope for extending or for cutting.
OBJECTIVES
1. To help the children develop their
awareness of a range of feelings, and the facial expressions that go with them,
in themselves and in others.
2. To give the children a chance to think about
the connection between conflict and sad or angry feelings.
3. To introduce the idea of weather as a
metaphor for our own internal feelings: sunshine, lightening, rain, storm,
clouds.
4. To
introduce the idea that a cloud is a tool for thinking about problems.
5. To
learn key TOC conceptual vocabulary: want, need, common goal, win-win
6. To
develop a conflict cloud based on a simple story.
YOU WILL NEED
1. A cloud big enough for the group to sit
around (on the floor, sadly for my poor back).
The one I have used consists of a large blue plastic mat with rounded
edges.
We can construct a conflict cloud
outline on top of this mat by using:
• two small green
rectangular (WANTS) mats; just big enough for one child to sit or stand on
• two beige (NEEDS)
mats; the same size as the green ones
• a round bright yellow (COMMON OBJECTIVE) mat with a smiley face on
it
• a photograph of
big lightening bolts to put between the want mat
(CONFLICT ARROW)
The
colours are an easy way to mark the differences between the different elements
of the cloud. The bright smiley face
provides a basic non-verbal way for young children to grasp what we might mean
by a common objective. Having need
mats, that are close in colour to the common objective and contrasting want
mats, is also an easy way to emphasise without complicated words that when we
only know what we want we are a long way from
the
smiley face, but when we know our needs we get closer to it.
2. A simple song repertoire, and the
willingness to do a bit of singing. If
you don't know a tune for the song you can always borrow any simple well known
tune that fits the words- the simpler the tune the better, a sense of
pitch
develops quite late in most children!
3. An
umbrella.
4. A
copy of HOT HIPPO by Mwenye Hadithi and Adrienne Kennaway, (1992)
LONDON,
Hodder. ISBN 0-340-41391-3
5. Four largish photographs,
pictures, or cartoons to show:
• a hippo in the water,
• water with no hippo in it,
• water with happy
looking fish in it,
• a hot looking
hippo, the sun, or some other way of representing "too hot" (it might
help to have an "X" somewhere on this representation, though I did
without).
6. A
sheet that says "I promise not to eat the fish."
A
sheet that says, "You must open your mouth, and lift up your tail."
SESSION OUTLINE
1. Sing:
"If you're happy and you know it..."
Instead
of clapping your hands, sing about some facial expression or bodily
reaction,
e.g. give a smile, grin like mad, chuckle and laugh. Do the action
as
you sing. Get contributions from the
children. “X” can you think of some
other way we
could show we were happy?" Choose another feeling to sing about: angry,
cross, furious, sad, scared.. Get
contributions from the children.
2. Sing:
“I
want to be happy
But
I can't be happy
Till
I make you happy, too.
Ice
cream makes me happy
Does
it make you happy?
Clap
if it makes you happy, too.”
You
can vary the action for showing that you are happy: if it does not make
the
child happy, they don't do the action.
You can suggest a variety of things
that
make you happy, or that don't make you happy.
Get the children to
suggest
different things that make them happy/unhappy for singing about. Draw their
attention to the fact that some things make some of us happy but not others.
3. Say,
"I didn't feel happy this morning"
Sing:
“I
had a fight this morning. (3 times)
I
had a terrible day.
I
had a fight with my brother,
A
fight with my brother,
A
fight with my brother,
It
wasn't a very nice day.
I
made up with my brother. (3 times)
And
it was a sunshiny day.”
Ask
the children whom they have had fights with, then sing about them.
Ask
them for other words we can use instead of "fight".
4. Say, "When I have a fight with
someone, I feel as if there is a great big storm me, with thunder and lightening."
Sing
“I
hear thunder (2 times)
Hark,
don't you? (2 times)
Pitter
patter raindrops (2 times)
I'm
wet through
So
are you.”
Say," I
don't like feeling all wet and horrible.
Is there a way for me to go out in the rain without getting
wet?" They will probably give lots
of ideas, but someone is likely to think of an umbrella. Produce the umbrella. Say, “This is a tool that helps me to go out
in the rain without getting wet."
Sing,
“I'm
singing in the rain,
I'm
singing in the rain.
What
a glorious feeling,
I'm
happy again!
I
know the storm won't last long.
My
umbrella's along
I'm
singing and dancing in the rain.”
Depending on the
age, number, and sophistication of the children, they may enjoy putting actions to the words, huddling under the
umbrella, or doing a dance.
5. Say, "The umbrella is a tool for
keeping dry when there is bad weather.
I have a tool to show you. It is
a special tool. It's a tool for
thinking and solving problems-like when we fight with each other. It's called a cloud. Here it is." Unfold the blue cloud mat and put it on the floor.
6. Say,
“But, before I can show you how it works we need a problem to solve.
This
story is about two creatures that don't agree.
They both want different
things. Let's find out about their problem.”
7. Read Hot Hippo. The story tells in direct accessible
language and pictures about the hippo who wants to get into the cool water,
because he is too hot, and Ngai, the god of everything and everywhere, who does
not want the hippo in the water, because s/he needs to keep her/his fishes safe
from being eaten. Stop before the end.
Ask
the questions: "What did Hippo want?" and "What did Ngai
want?"
When you have an
acceptable answer, give a child hippo's want mat, get them to place the mat
appropriately on the cloud, and get them to put a picture of a hippo in the
water on the mat, as a reminder.
Repeat for
Ngai's want. Do the needs the same
way. Ask, "Is there something they
both wanted?" When you have an
acceptable answer, produce the smiling face mat, and ask a child to help you
place it appropriately, saying, "And this shows us what they both
wanted."
8. Ask
why Ngai thought there would be a problem if hippo got into the
water. (He thought hippo would eat the fish!) Then ask if they can think of any way of
solving the problem so that both Ngai and Hippo could be happy. The way this develops will depend very
heavily on the specifics of the group.
I got to "Assumption" with some surprisingly young children!
9. Read to the end of the story, and ask the
children if hippo and Ngai were both happy at the end. Ask what Ngai did to get to the happy
ending. Ask what hippo did to get to
the happy ending. (Hippo promises not to eat the fish. Ngai makes him agree to go in the water at
night, and to open his mouth, and lift his tail so that Ngai can check for
stolen fish).
Help a volunteer
put the sheets with printing in the appropriate place on the cloud. (Somewhere between the want and the need mats!) It is easy to show that Hippo and Ngai both
get what they need and hippo gets what he wants. Ngai, the powerful god of
everything and everywhere, is prepared to let hippo get what he wants, because
Ngai has another way to make sure the fish are safe.
10. Revise
by asking children to volunteer to be Ngai and the hippo. Ngai
stands
on the mat and says "I wanted..."
Hippo stands on the mat and says "I
wanted..." Next, volunteers can stand on the need mat
and say what they
needed. Finally, volunteers can put the printed
solutions in the correct
places. (This can be a good way of beginning a
follow up session, revising
what
was done last time before going on.)
I
try to finish with some sort of game ....more about this on request.
By Jim Trimble, Seattle,
Washington, USA
Jackie
came home with a story I had to share with you. She was having a horrible time with one of her classes and came
home almost in tears. We talked for a
bit and she finally decided that she would give the students one more chance to
shape up or she would lower the boom.
She created a cloud that explained how their terrible behavior was
making her life hell. She did all the
prep steps and then took it to the class for communicating. She explained that she was upset and that
she was going to use a tool to work through the problem. She explained that she was upset and was
going to use a tool to work through the problem. As Jackie started drawing the cloud on the board ,several of the
students piped up and said, "Oh, you mean the cloud. We saw this in Mr. McCracken's
class." Then others added that
they had seen it in Mrs. Pearson's and in Mrs. McFarland's classes, too!
How
many training sessions have you gone to and never used the new knowledge
presented? TOC is different. These teachers were trained just before school started and were able to immediately
put the tools to work in their classrooms.
Epilog:
Jackie finished the cloud with the students and, as you can probably guess, it
worked. The students solved the
behavior problem and even created an environment that is better than Jackie
could have hoped for.
I
saw Bruce McCracken, one of the teachers from Stevens who was trained in TACT
this summer, and he made the comment of how much he appreciated learning the
"tools.” TOCFE on the move!
Editor's Note:
The
Stevens teachers who were trained earned credits from the local university. As
part of the university requirements, they had to do homework. For this requirement each teacher created
lesson plans using each of the tools.
If [The student doesn’t know the material for the test.] and (in a banana) if [The student doesn’t learn in class or at home.] then [There is a high chance that the
student fails the test.]
An Answer to Rami's quiz: No, it
should read: If ( the student doesn't
learn in class or at home.) and (The student doesn't know the material for the
test.) then (There is a high chance that the student fails the test.)— Mary
Ellen Bourbeau
Rami’s Answer: The answer is
"No.” When entities are tied
together in a banana, it means that there is no causal connection between
them. In other words, a change in one entity
will not effect the other at all. Let's
check the example: one entity is 'The student doesn't know the material for the
test.'; the other is 'The student doesn't learn in class or at home.' If they are in a banana it means that
changing one will not impact the other.
As we can see, if the student learns in class or at home it will impact
the other entity- he will know the
material better.
The
connection should read as follows: If (the student doesn't learn in class or at
home) then (the student doesn't know the material for the test). If (the student doesn't learn in class or at
home) then (there is a high chance that the student fails the test). The Banana is used to connect two or more
entities that each one of them is necessary to make the other cause the
result. For example: I (the student
doesn't know the material for the test) and if (the student can't understand
the materials from the questions in the test) and If ( the student can't copy
from others during the test) then (there is a high chance that the student
fails the test).
Each one of the entities connected in a banana is necessary for
the others to cause the result. If the
student can copy during the test from others, then the fact that he doesn't
know the material will not cause him to fail the test. If the student can understand the material
from the questions in the test then the fact that he doesn't know the material
is not sufficient to cause him to fail the test.
Hi,
TOCFE family! Cheryl has not only changed her last name, but now she’s living
in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. How’s
that for the good life! Therefore,
snail mail must now be sent to:
Cheryl
A. Edwards
2253
S. Hill Island Rd.
Cedarville,
MI 49719 USA
If
you’d like, you can also send snail mail to me:
Kay Buckner-Seal
10230 Dartmouth
Oak Park, MI
48237 USA
Send
hyperlink mail to: baughca
@aol.com and/or
bucknek@resa.net
Many
can be touched by our shared experiences.
This is to say that contributions from all are appreciated!