Before the 11 plus our primary school classroom would be full of the sound of children’s voices chanting their times tables, and other important facts, such as length from inches up to miles, depths in fathoms, areas in hectares and acres, weights up to tons….but most of these facts are lost to me, partly I suppose because of decimalisation, negating the need to know in so much detail. I didn’t find rote learning a useful tool, quite often finding myself speaking the ‘Nine eights are…’ then mumbling the rest. I do know of course now know my most of my times tables and have strategies for checking my memory! What I remember from those classroom days are random things like the texture of the speckled paint, the smells, the anxieties, the friendship inconsistencies, the risk of having one’s head knocked sideways for not knowing the value of a minim….
I wonder if any of the Charioteers can remember the wordings for rest of these classroom chants…. this is to do with a poetry project I’m working on. Interweb searching has not yielded results!
And just to prettify the post, here is a picture.
Mist drops on Alchemilla mollis, (Lady’s Mantle)
Eleven plus
Mr Vaughan presided.
The divided classroom looked strange, opened up,
and rearranged into lines: individual desks
so no one could look over anyone’s shoulder.
We sat alphabetically: I was a G.
It started with ‘turn your paper over’
ended with my last page incomplete
and a little gallop in my chest.
When the playground boasting began
I pushed the thing into a lidded box,
along with Dad’s crossness, worries that I would
somehow always disappoint and my inability to sing.
Weeks later, back in our twinned desks,
with scratched lids and holes for inkwells
I opened up my book, Anne of Green Gables
and read, waiting for the usual: registration
and a tirade of some sort.
I read until I became aware of laughing,
Mr Vaughan asking, had the bookworm
heard the results? I hadn’t.
When he told me, my question was
‘who else has passed too?’
and he read the list again. 11 out of 30
way above the National Average
of 10 or 11% he said, blowing his own trumpet
and I looked to my left to my best friend,
cleverer, prettier, I always thought
and she was smirking along with everyone else.
And now, was she thinking what I was thinking?
Maybe I had passed, but I was a fake, a fraud, a fluke
that had somehow been, squeezed in.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Poem for the competition:
https://charioteers.org/2014/04/03/april-poetry-competition-nostalgia/
Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain
The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog
Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
It all helps a lot until one mixes them up 🙂
Actually we didn’t do any of those! Useful though 🙂
🙂
God bless you – positioning snooker balls in the “D”
Sorry that comment is lost on my, Soutie….
or even ‘me’
me too
When setting up the balls on a snooker table, the Green, Brown and Yellow are positioned on their spots in the “D”
But in which order?
God bless you is a way to remember the correct placement as illustrated here…
See? Green on the left, Brown in the middle and Yellow on the right 🙂
Duh! And to think that I played snooker for many years and even knew that at one time…..long ago 😦
Ha ha, I still use it to this day!
… 🙂 …
I learnt by ‘rote’ – still don’t see that there is anything wrong with it… at least I knew my tables, poems and even chunks of Shakespeare!
For those (like me) who wanted to know why the things I learnt by rote worked – well I just went away and worked it out. Those who were taught to do ‘multiplication’ by continuous adding they spent so much time on the basics they never moved on to anything much more.
I was really heartened a few years back to read that those of us who were made to use our memories in that ‘awful’ process of rote leaning were less likely to lose our memories in later life… The idea being that one should ‘use it’ or ‘lose it’.
I look at the whole process of learning by discovery and am reminded of my wonderful headmistress, who said, very sadly:
“How cruel to expect children to rediscover the learning of centuries in a few years, when we can teach them..”
The only mnemonic (other than those already mentioned) I can recall at this time of night is:
soh-cah-toa
🙂
I also learned a great deal by rote.
20 pence is one and eight
30 pence is two and six
40 pence is three and four
50 pence is four and two
60 pence is 5 shillings
70 pence is five and ten
80 pence is six and eight
90 pence is seven and six
100 pence is eight and four.
Not much good to me now, though.
What has always been very useful is this poem that I believe should be required learning for all primary pupils:
Three little words you often see
Are ARTICLES: a, an, and the.
A NOUN’s the name of anything,
As: school or garden, toy, or swing.
ADJECTIVES tell the kind of noun,
As: great, small, pretty, white, or brown.
VERBS tell of something being done:
To read, write, count, sing, jump, or run.
How things are done the ADVERBS tell,
As: slowly, quickly, badly, well.
CONJUNCTIONS join the words together,
As: men and women, wind or weather.
The PREPOSITION stands before
A noun as: in or through a door.
The INTERJECTION shows surprise
As: Oh, how pretty! Ah! how wise!
The whole are called the PARTS of SPEECH,
Which reading, writing, speaking teach.
thank you each!
Boadicea: I didn’t mean there was anything wrong with rote learning, but that it didn’t work especially well for me…different brains retain information differently.
and thinking on that further, I think it had something to do with the chanting that didn’t work, being completely out of tune with others in situations such as singing…
I’m after those rote learning sayings that helped with distance miles, chains etc, area, and all the weight ones,
The fact is that rote learning of simple things like multiplication tables makes life so much easier when you do not have to think what 7 x 6 is when adding up the price of a round in the pub after the government has added so much tax to a pint of beer (not yet, but not for long) that it costs £7 a pint. It helps even more after the third pint! 🙂
I remember in English Literature I was once told to stand before the class and recite from the Rime of The Ancient Mariner. Our English teacher was one of those who still wore her university black gown and was so strict that we were all afraid of her.
I was awful at English Lit. and began shakily with:-
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, the ….and then I got stuck.
The teacher was so involved in my recital that she tried to encourage me and said “f”
I looked at her and had no clue so just mimicked “f”
The whole class burst out laughing, I followed, until we were all in stiches.
Granny Smith, as we called her, was so furious that she stormed out of the classroom to calm down.
……but I have never forgotten that piece of poetry since 🙂
We sang the alphabet. Does that count, pretty please, Miss? 🙂
Ah, the value of a misspent youth! 🙂
The alphabet only counts if you learned it like this :-
If you did it like this:-
it doesn’t count 🙂
How about, ‘No Plan Like Yours To Study History Wisely’?
Norman
Plantagenet
Lancaster
York
Tudor
Hanover
Windsor
You see how it helps you spot my deliberate mistake!
I dinnae ken wat ya meen lassie.
Did the three Rs not apply to you, gazoopi? 🙂
Do any alphabet songs ‘count’?
Surely only number songs count?
I forget the one we used for planets, a quick google brought this one up …
“My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets”.
There is a song that virtually all Japanese school children and many foreign students of the Japanese language learn called “帰るの歌” or “Kaeru-no-Uta” in the Roman Alphabet. The purpose of it is to help memorise different forms of Japanese verbs. While it sounds childish, Japanese verbs are conjugated according to different principles than Western languages. Each tense only has one way of conjugating a verb, but there are far, far more tenses in Japanese than in Indo-European languages. If that doesn’t confuse you, keep in mind that in Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Here is a link to the song:
Very drôle, Nym! 🙂
Scottish – Stuarts…..
Nice pome, btw! 🙂
Thank you, Janus. (no one else has commented upon that… )
yes, I did on the competition page 🙂
Just found that!