I’m reading a speech book to help me improve my communication skills. And I learned a couple of interesting things. The book suggests that you use, for the most part, small words in your presentation so that your message can be understood by a wider audience.
Second, is to verify your facts before you share them.
Third, when you’re talking to a big crowd, use bigger body expressions, so that those in the back can view you easily.
Just a couple of ideas to share.
When I see this word I think of a small class or series of classes compared to a course in college. Semi being part of a greater whole or compressed information. And I just pronounce the second half nar. SEMI-nar.
This information is from a panel I listened to a year or so ago. I took notes while attending a wonderful SF/F symposium called Life The Universe and Everything. The panels are very educational. The panelists were: Jaleta Clegg, James Dashner, Tracy Hickman, Brad R. Torgensen, Dan Wells.
– When authors create ‘bad’ characters sometimes the friends and family have a hard time not seeing the bad of the character coming from the author. Readers seem to be okay in being able to separate the motives and actions of a character from the author.
– No villain believes himself to be a villain. He feels what he/she is doing is the right thing to do.
– The story represents a human working out a problem and is a reflection of the thought process.
– Characters have conflicts in opinions, treat them honestly. Don’t have an idea you personally oppose be easily defeated just because you disagree with it. Displaying legitimate reasons as to why someone might feel a certain way will give the story a reality. An opposite options may not be understandable to you but it is believable to that character who has that opinion. Present those ideas fairly.
– If you are uncomfortable with writing about an evil character then maybe write a story where a bunch of normal people share a common catastrophe/problem and the story is about how they each react to that problem.
– Round out a villain by giving them a trait that readers can relate to.
– Make characters distinct by giving them an opinion that the author may not agree with.
– Don’t overlook internal conflicts. They can add depth.
– Book: Even tide by Tracy Hickman
A dog can be a wonderful pet, but they can even be better when he will obey your commands, and maybe even performed a couple of tricks. The following links show some ways of training your dog.
http://animal.discovery.com/video-topics/pet-care/dog-training-videos/superfetch-cool-dog-tricks.htm
http://www.idiotsguides.com/static/quickguides/pets/teach-your-dog-how-to-sit-and-stay.html
http://animal.discovery.com/video-topics/pet-care/dog-training-videos/dog-training-videos.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vlXqT13AVc
http://www.thedogtrainingsecret.com/DogObedienceTraining/
http://www.dog-obedience-training-review.com/
http://animal.discovery.com/video-topics/pet-care/dog-training-videos/dog-training-videos.htm
http://www.trainyourdogmonth.com/tips/
http://animal.discovery.com/pets/how-to-train-a-dog.htm
http://www.loveyourdog.com/tricks.html
http://www.perfectpaws.com/whytr.html
http://dogs.about.com/od/basiccommands/tp/fun_dog_tricks.htm
http://www.humanesociety.org/animals/dogs/tips/dog_training_positive_reinforcement.html
In honor of Easter weekend, I thought I’d provide a short lesson on the resurrection. I hope this can be of use to youth ministries, family counselors, family devotionals and family home evenings.
Objects needed for lesson: a bowl, an egg, and a glove.
One way to teach about the resurrection to a child might be the following. First, you might want to begin telling a simple version of God’s plan for mankind. He wants us to come to earth to grow and learn and to follow his commandments. After we have lived a righteous life, he wants us to return to his presence.
Now we can discuss the concept of the body and soul. One way to discuss this topic is to show the child. How one object can exist inside another. You let the child hold an egg. Then take the egg and break it and pour the yoke into a bowl. Let the child touch the broken shell and maybe touch the egg yolk. Discuss how the yoke was contained inside the shell.
Next, place a transparent bowl on top of your hand and wiggle your fingers. Ask the child what they see? They see your hand under the bowl. You show the child how the bowl is one object and your hand is another.
Now we began to discuss the concept of a body and spirit. Just like the egg yolk is inside the shell, so our bodies are control what was called a spirit. Our spirit or life energy is the same thing. Our father and mother are the parents on our physical bodies; but as spirits came from God. We call God our Heavenly Father because he’s a Dad about spirits.
Now, as we discuss with the child, the reason why we’re on earth, we might begin with. When we are born we are each a baby. When you’re born, your body is small. Put your hand in the crook of your arm rock it like a baby.
Your hand moves the glove. At conception, your spiritual body is placed inside your physical body. Just like, your spirit can make your body move and controls the body throughout our lives. At the end of our lives, our bodies stop working and our spirits return back to God. Take the gloves off and rest it on the table.
This concept might be able to be simplified by discussing how a car takes you to the grocery store. You start at the house and go to the store to buy food and then come back home again.
So each of us are born in the baby, we live our lives and learn to follow God and obey his commandments, and at the end of our lives. We return home to God.
God promises that when we follow him. We can have the chance to have spirits, and bodies reunited with. Put the gloves on the hand. This is called the resurrection.
If you has a successful way on teaching about spiritual bodies and the resurrection, please feel free to share your ideas in the comment section this blog.
With the tv series the Bible as a great reminder, I just wanted to state how much I appreciate the plan of salvation.
I wanted to thank God the Father for his blessings and his son, Jesus Christ for the attonement and the resurrection.
Short message today.
For this spelling I think of the musical, les Miserables, that contains Mayhem, Injury and Sorrow and the citizens of France not being ABLE to do anything about it.
MISer ABLE
Do you have any tricks on remembering this word?
This information is from a panel I listened to a year or so ago. I took notes while attending a wonderful SF/F symposium called Life The Universe and Everything. The panels are very educational. The panelists were: Micha3elbrent Collings, David Farland, Lynn Kurland, Angie Lofthouse, Tyler Whitsides.
– Use of ‘said’. It is invisible. Some authors use excessive huffed, hissed, clipped etc and it diverts attention from the story. One way to distinguish between characters is the manner of their speech patterns.
– Overuse of ‘said’ can also be obnoxious.
– There is a time and place to use alternatives to ‘said’. One good way is to use the beat instead of a tag. For example the original text might be “That’s very cool,” he said. He grabbed the box. Cut out ‘he said’ and just have he grabbed the box immediately after. That can even be done during a rewrite. Another way to add beats is through the actions of the character that serve the story in place of the tag.
– One way to test an excessive use of tags is to go through a text that has all the tags removed where there is only the dialog. The conversation can sound quite unnatural at that point.
– Though tags: Put thoughts in italics and can often satisfy ‘he thought’. Don’t have too many lines in the story in thoughts. Italics is hard to read. Maybe don’t have more than two. Some don’t use he thought in the story. If you’re really deep into the character’s point of view you don’t need tags.
– How to write accents: many will just say he spoke in a Scottish accent rather than illustrating that accent.
– Some will alter the manner of phrasing or word choices to show uniqueness in a character (Yoda).
– if a character has a specific set of skill sets or occupation their language will reflect that. For example a metal smith may use imagery that illustrates his occupation: heat, hit or force. Someone who is a weaver may use words, thoughts and point of views comparisons that illustrate weaving related imagery. Someone who is an aristocrat will use more refined language in their thoughts, perceptions and language than someone who is uncivilized. Someone from the medieval ages, they might use broken and simple phrases. The level of language is also illustrated by their level of education.
– Have people in stories talk like real life but cut out the excess “Ahhs” and stutters etc. also cut out uninteresting parts of the dialog.
– Speech patterns need to be influenced by the story. What is this guy about? One evil character may be very methodical in his villainy and so may speak very precisely. From his point of view he is right and so everything he feels must be done his way. His language depicts that. If someone is more coarse in their personality, their words and actions will depict that.
– Listen to children and note how they talk and pay attention to how they say something. The maturity level of a child will influence how they talk. For example a young child might use shaped like a ball but not use the word orb. Another pattern of language is that some people repeat themselves.
– Different types of people will use different types of metaphors in their language.
– Some authors will free write a story until they ‘discover’ the voice of the character and then go back and rewrite the story with that discovery.
– Read your story out loud and it can help catch dialog that doesn’t work. It will sound funny. It can help discover run on sentences and helps later to present a writer trying to read their writing in front of an audience because they lose their breath in reading something. Reading out loud can help to discover what is important in the story. Than get rid of the excess text.
– How to make characters sound different. Assign certain words to different characters. One person might favor calling someone else ‘chump’ another might often react with “Oh man!”, “geesh” or “You’re nuts!”
– As a writer you need to be a word smith. The larger your vocabulary the more you can talk. Vocabulary limits or helps make characters distinct.
– Character’s conversations makes that person unique. Each person has a separate object and perspective and their view of the world and thus influences their speech patterns.
– Go through your work and cut out words that don’t move the story forward.
– Techniques to present an alien or monster: Speech pattern or a warped point of view. There are many examples where the language of a British aristocrat has been used. Others use high speech patterns. Give a sense of history or halting like Lord of the Ring’s Gollum.
– Conflict and Drama: People read stories about people with different goals and about people who have the same goals as the reader but they use a different ways to achieve that goal.
Have you ever gone to the grocery store and seeing a humongous selection of apples and try to decide which one to buy? I know very little about the difference between apples; but, I have a friend, Leilani Speck, who’s done research on apples and how they are different.
Please click on the link below to read her explanation of apples. This link contains public domain photographs of apples that provide a wonderful aid with the descriptions. Happy reading.
I find this information very useful. I hope you will as well. Also enjoy the wonderful photographs.
Bio:
I long to make items (i.e., shopping bags, kitchen towels/ washcloths, blankets, soft toys) for those living in shelters and getting ready to move into their own home or apartments, to give them a lift up. We all need a lift up from time to time and I have seen firsthand what a little help can do. I have created an email address for anyone who has questions at: ladylibertycrafts@yahoo.com. I am hopeful to develop a website somewhere down the road.
I hope this lesson will be useful for youth ministries, family devotionals, family counselors, parents, grandparents and family home evenings.
Today’s theme is on perspective, and what better children teach perspective than following joke:
What did the cobbler say when a cat wandered into his shop?
<Wait for it>
<Wait for it>
<Wait for it>
Shoe!
The answer to this question may have been obvious to some. It was not obvious to me. Many times we may not get the obvious answer or punch line to a joke. But, when we hear it, we think Oh, that’s obvious. This is an important principle to remember when you want to teach somebody on an unfamiliar topic, for example, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I liked to share a list several things that we may want to consider when trying to teach important principals to a young audience. Teachers can make a very strong impact of making lessons for children to be a very enjoyable process.
First of all, a positive teaching environment needs to be a safe zone. Not all children have had the same experiences, so what is known or familiar to one child may not be known by another. This may influence their receptiveness to new concepts and ideas. Thus, they will need to feel secure in the environment where new concepts are taught. For example, in Sunday school. If one child came from a home with an abusive relationship, a touch on the back to offer encouragement might be interpreted as an act of discipline. And of course teachers need to be careful upon how they touch children anyway.
Second, we need to consider our word choice. Depending upon the educational level or maturity of a child may influence if they understand a certain term while another child may make an easy connection. That means expressions and topics in lessons need to be very much simplified as influenced by the age of the child. Sometimes, I have a difficult time with this. I often have a tendency to use bigger words and thus I may confuse a child. One experience was when I was trying to advise some children who had won a storytelling competition. It was my first time as a story telling judge and upon the request of the school, the judges were to give advice to children on how to be better storytellers. I realized in an instant, that all my carefully prepared advice was for a much older audience. I had to simplify my comments in an instant, to meet the wide range of first grade to sixth grade students. If I didn’t do this, then the children may become disengaged in what I had to say.
Third, is to consider is the past of the child. Various experiences to children can give them a wider perspective that enables them to encounter new experiences. They can compare the new experience to what they know and thus make conclusions. I’ve watched some wonderful adults as they teach children and they provide delightful lessons. Not only were the lessons they taught engaging, with fun pictures and fun stories, but they often included fun activities.
Lessons for young children need to begin with objects and themes with which they are already familiar. If you will be managing the children for the long-term, that may mean you need to determine what the level of the children so that you know where your starting point is. Mutual knowledge is the beginning foundation for the beginning of a year of lessons. From those first building blocks the lessons can then start branching into new concepts.
If you have some advice for visitors to this blog on how to teach children, or you have some recommended websites that might be useful to teachers, please feel free to share them in the comment section of this blog. Thank you.
