Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in bite-size chunks

Question: 'How do you eat a whole elephant?'

(Answer below.)

Yet again, I was called on to lead a school assembly at short notice this week. Something about others being absent and me available, I think.

We are continuing our theme of 'Going for Goals' and I really wanted to impress upon the children the importance of tackling goals in the right way: try and achieve a mammoth task all at once and you're soon likely to drop out and give up.

Most of the children know the song 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' from the Mary Poppins musical but not all of them find the word easy to say, let alone sing. So I chose a child - a willing volunteer who admitted that she didn't find the word easy to pronounce. And, yes, on first attempt, it was clear that that was indeed the case.

But what if you break the word up - like so:

SUPERCALI

FRAGILISTIC

EXPIALI

DOCIOUS.

The slightly nervous child agreed to try the smaller 'words' in turn - and succeeded quite handsomely.

On hiding the bottom word, 'docious', she repeated the task - successfully once again.

Having eventually hidden all four parts of the word in question, she then attempted the entire word, putting all four parts together. It isn't difficult to see that this approach enabled her to achieve what she previously found difficult.

On asking the children what they thought enabled her success, they volunteered the following:

- breaking the task into smaller parts

- practise

- trying

and one that I hadn't expected:

- encouragement.

Just how many people either give up on their goals through lack of will - or don't even make a stab at making their achievement of them a reality? A goal is nothing without a strike of some description: but I don't think there should be a limit to the number of strikes allowed. I mean, it's not as if every golfer gets a hole-in-one, is it?

In school, I've talked about 'steps to success': the small steps you make in lessons to achieve the learning. Follow them carefully, and you're almost guaranteed success.

I recall a camping trip once with a bunch of 9- and 10-year-olds.

We had the opportunity to use a rope swing but the children found it very difficult to swing successfully from the starting block to the landing pad. So we introduced and discussed relevant 'steps to success' in order to achieve a successful swing and landing. They went something like this:

a) hold the rope tightly at a position above your head

b) lean back

c) jump forward and pull your feet up

d) let your feet down as soon as you reach the landing pad

e) jump onto the landing pad and let go of the rope before you start to swing back again.

Without exception, every child achieved success on the rope swing when they followed these steps - and I managed to improve my own performance as well. Within that experience, they all knew the small steps they had to take, they practised, they persevered and, joy of joy, they encouraged each other and celebrated each other's achievements.

I've got the 'superfragilisticexpialidocious' word stuck up in my classroom now: I hope it inspires the kids and me to take on more and not to underestimate our abilities or potential.

You can only change the world one step at a time....

If you have anything to add to this discussion, please leave a comment.

Phil

(and the answer to the elephant question? 'Elephant burgers.')