Imaginative Teaching

This chapter hopes to cover questions like the following: How can I teach in a concrete, three dimensional, pictorial, imaginative way? What appeals to the child’s imagination? How can I get through to the class? What actually happens when children show puzzled faces? Is it possible to be too abstract? Can we overtax children’s energies? How do I economize here?...

Imagination

 One picture is worth a thousand words.

               Frederick R. Barnard

 Most children have the ability to create inner pictures of what can be, pictures of things already seen plus something new that was not seen before. We grown-ups have the ability too – at least, we had it once – and if we no longer have it, or if we think we do not, we can find it back again and develop it. This ability is the power to imagine, or just simply, the imagination.

Shakespeare in Henry V, seems to suggest that imagining something is a matter of conscious effort on the part of actor and audience. He appeals to wilfully see whole armies in the vasty fields of France and not just a few ragged actors on a wooden stage. Also to ‘Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth…’  When Sir Philip Sidney wrote about poetry, he said it was ‘a figuring forth to speak metaphorically’ and a ‘speaking picture’. Wordsworth wrote in The Prelude that Imagination … is but another name for … clearest insight, amplitude of mind, and Reason, in her most exalted mood.

Every picture tells a story

 So when we explain things to children we try to tell a story. We do not just give facts but also feelings, appearances, smells, sounds, moods. There is a three-dimensional richness in lively, imaginative descriptions. So when we talk of ‘frying’, for example, we describe how we put fat in the pan, allow it to heat up before putting the egg into it, how the fat then sizzles and a smell spreads would be more ‘picturable’ and also more memorable than saying ‘to fry’ is ‘to cook in hot oil’, which for us adults would be more to the point.

Practical examples of ‘pictorial teaching’

- To get a ‘feel’ for how long ago it was that Charlemagne ruled Europe imagine holding hands with your father or mother, they with their father or mother and so until there is a line of thirty-six people! - So, always appealing to the imaginative faculty we may describe English inverted commas like a ‘ninety-nine’ at the beginning and ‘sixty-six’ at the end (something many computers do not do), both ‘upstairs’. Here a comparison, a simile gives the picture.

- Before reading one sentence of a new paragraph or chapter in the reader we put our learning group ‘in the picture’ so that they can bring their imagination to bear on the words they are reading, an important part of understanding.

- When describing a man’s face we can say he has the face of a wolf or an eagle, which also conveys the character of that man: pictures can do more than words can.

 - When we mention a gesture, this has the quality of an image (for example: he was as happy as a dog with seven tails).