L is for Literacy - Emotional and Linguistic

For this weeks AlphabeThursday, its the letter L.  For more entries, please go to Jenny Matlock's excellent blog.

Branwen's Burglar.

This week I have done two workshops in relation to literacy.  The first was to run a bookclub at my kids school and the second was as a participant at a workshop on Emotional Literacy.

I've never organised a bookclub before and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  We started by making collages of our favourite characters, then I went round the room and asked the kids what they wanted from a bookclub and made a list of activities we can do over the next few months.  Next month will be how to make our own books, something I have a good experience of, so we will probably do simple concertina books. 



Then on Tuesday, I attended a workshop on Emotional Literacy and Multiple Intelligences run by Elizabeth Morris, a psychotherapist, psychologist and all round incredibly knowledgable lady on children and their development.  To let our children grow up to be emotionally intelligent adults John Gottman recommends following 5 principles and these were the basis for the workshop that I attended.

What are the five elements of emotion coaching?

1. Be aware of a child's emotions
2. Recognize emotional expression as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching
3. Listen empathetically and validate a child's feelings
4. Label emotions in words a child can understand
5. Help a child come up with an appropriate way to solve a problem or deal with an upsetting issue or situation

It was a fascinating day and I really enjoyed it.  I'm looking forward to putting some of the things I learnt into place.

The Power Of Language

The power of language, not something we usually think about, but it surrounds our world and society. The words we speak do not necessarily get heard and interpreted in the way we mean. Miscommunication can occur purely because we may speak the same language but our interpretation of the words we speak can be incredibly varied. Used intelligently we can discover and uncover amazing things about the people we speak with. Needless to say, I went on a fascinating course yesterday on this subject, which crammed in the some useful tools using NLP techniques and Meta Models.

It was a fascinating and enlightening day of self discovery, peoples behaviour and the meanings behind how we speak. And to quote the deliverer of the course - 'The meaning of your communication is the response you get'