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Could ‘Clean Language’ Stop Your Pupils Making a Meal of Spellings?

With careful listening and questions that make no assumption about what the answer might be, Clean Language can result in astonishing breakthroughs in communication, says Julie McCracken…

Julie McCracken
by Julie McCracken
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One of the first recipients of my new Clean Language skills was a 10-year-old who I’ll call Annabel. She was in Year 6 and couldn’t spell, so she, her parents and staff at her school were becoming increasingly concerned. She was approximately two years behind, and interventions over the years had resulted in meagre progress. Now secondary school was looming. Annabel was an intelligent and capable child with high levels of attainment in all other areas, so I figured it might be a good idea to begin by exploring some of her strengths.

Peer pressure

I asked Annabel where in the room she would like to be for the lesson. At first she was puzzled – children are accustomed to being told whether to sit or stand, and where to sit and so on. But this sends a message right from the start that the locus of control is with them. She chose somewhere comfortable to work and we began.

She told me about the things she enjoyed and what she could do well; I encouraged her to describe in as much sensory detail as she could how she feels when doing them. As she did so, I asked questions that focused her attention with more precision – ‘What kind of feeling?’, ‘Whereabouts is it?’ Annabel’s answers helped us both to develop a better sense of her experience when doing something well. Often in the past, when working with difficulties, I would focus on the problems – on what the child couldn’t do. Today, we focused on what was already working well, and began to model Annabel’s resourceful state. She said it was like ‘fizzing and bubbling’ in her belly which rose up through her body.

As she described it, I watched her posture change – she had been glancing down, now she stood taller, looking ahead with a beaming smile and twinkle in her eye. Having made such a good start, I wasn’t sure what to do next, but I trusted in Annabel to know what needed to happen and so I asked her. She said she wanted to be able to spell the word ‘went’ and get it right in a spelling test. She had been trying in vain to spell this word for six years and was determined to succeed. It’s hard to imagine how frustrating it must have been for her.

This was one of the first words she had been given to learn when she started school, aged 4. She was annoyed, frustrated and ashamed that she hadn’t been able to learn it in all that time. And she was sensitive to the reactions of her peers, and unwilling to receive help directly from the TA because of these anxieties. Next, I asked, ‘What needs to occur for that to happen?’ With the support of these few clean questions to facilitate her thinking, she went on to devise some uniquely tailored next steps for herself.

Novel mnemonics

First, she made the word out of plasticine. Then, she decided to make it without looking, hiding her hands underneath the table as she made it, before placing it on the table to check it against a written example.

She then devised more novel approaches that made sense to her and appealed to her own sensory preferences. For ‘friend’, she imagined the word to be made out of sausages that she was cooking in a frying pan. This made sense to her, because ‘friend’ begins with ‘fri’ (like ‘fry’) ends with ‘end’ (‘fri-end’). To my great surprise, she was able to spell both words correctly in her next spelling test. This was a turning point for Annabel, because she could now see that success was possible. She had a strategy, newfound confidence and hope, which helped her to cope with the anxiety of peer pressure. Seven years on, Annabel continues to use mnemonics for simple words. Spelling is not her strength, but it’s no longer holding her back – her spelling assessment scores are now average for her age. Annabel completed her GCSEs, achieving four A*s, five As (including English literature and language), a B in German and a C in French, and went on to achieve three As and a B at A-Level.

She has now successfully completed her first year of a medical degree (MBBS) at St George’s, University of London.

Julie McCracken is a primary school teacher, a certified Clean Language facilitator and an NLP Master Practitioner; her book, Clean Language in the Classroom is available from Crown House Publishing.

For more information, visit www.CleanLanguageInTheClassroom.com or follow @juliemcc

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