Why we’re thinking about the write stuff

Eye Halve a Spelling Chequer

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss Steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
It’s rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
It’s letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

-Martha Snow (attributed).

I tend to write with my ear.

That is to say, I prefer to write so that it sounds write. I don’t hold the pen with my ear.

One of the problems with this is that sometimes I misspell words (see above). It’s not that I don’t know the difference between right and write. I am just eager to get the words down. Unfortunately, as Martha Snow has pointed out, my computer’s spell checker doesn’t always pick up the error for me.

It’s even worse with phone spell checkers, where my messages often get auto corrected to something ludicrously, and sometimes embarrassingly, wrong.

So, despite all the amazing technology we have at our disposal, we still need to think – to use our eyes and our brains – before we press the send button.

Those of you who read my earlier article about listening and asking questions with my kids will know that I have been using Feuerstein techniques to help them improve how they think. I often use the tools when we are playing games, especially strategy games, or when we work on something challenging together.

The other day my eight-year-old son Charlie (pictured, below) asked me to help him build some ‘Micro Fliers’ – small cardboard aeroplanes that you piece together and fly. I agreed on the condition that we do some more ‘thinking games’, and he accepted.

We started sorting all the parts to build the planes. That involves a thinking routine of its own, but the challenge for Charlie was the Fokker Dr.I Triplane.