Retrospective – Lily Grade 2 Speaking Contest Preparation 2020

With the spreading of virus nCoV-2019 (Covid-19), schools are closed for weeks. My daughter teachers sent homework, recommendations to us so we can support kids during the slow time. Out of many subjects, there was an instruction to prepare for the school speaking contest. My daughter is grade 2, and this year topic is Go Green—Save the Planet.

Note: English is foreign language. We are Vietnamese.

My daughter delivered a speech to me. Wow, fantastic Lily! I really meant it—every single word. A few days later, the teacher gave her example speech in written form and a video. Oops! "it is not that simple", I uttered.

I knew there is a lot of work that my daughter and I have to go through. But, wait, I have not seen anything like this in my school years including the high school. Maybe there was, but not in my memory. I went through a quick reflection. That I had problems with explaining in writing. That a major of my colleagues had the same problem. We are developers, we write code. But we have problems with writing the design, explaining the root cause and solution in … writing. I wondered what if they were given this challenge. I did not bet on that.

For a speech, a thesis, there are usually 3 parts: Introduction, Main Ideas, and Conclusion. And that is the easiest part. My daughter knew that from Youtube. However, what includes in each part? Explaining that to a grade 2 kid is not easy.

Rewrite the whole speech

So the first thing I did was to convince my daughter to rewrite her teacher’s speech. She read the speech, watched the video. She understood and liked it. However, I was sure that she did not have a visualization of the scope—of how big the speech is, what are in the speech.

"Why do I have to write it?", she asked many times. Good question, kid! Why? Because "we are going to analyze the speech and that will help you do your own speech", I answered. She understood the reward. Let’s grasp a pencil and paper.

After 1 hour, with the motivation that we will play after completed the writing, she finished the task. WOW! "That’s a lot", she said.

I asked her to read it out loud. My mind was blown away with her result. I smiled with a happy thought that she is in a good school with great teachers.

Why do I ask her to write down?

  1. Writing will help you remember longer, easy to visualize things, scope. With the developing of technologies, people can access information easily, and most of them stop at the reading stage—not a good habit IMO
  2. Develop a habit of thinking on paper
  3. Learn vocabularies

Analyze the structure

By analyzing her teacher’s speech structure, I had a better chance to convince her what are included in a speech. And the importance is that we have to do it together. Get her involved in the process.

The introduction paragraph is easy. She knows and does it well. The topic and introduction are general information.

They include

  1. Theme (Go green, save planet): The importance of bees
  2. Topic: Specific areas that bees contribute—food, plant

Lily chose Birds. So she had to do some research how the birds contribute to the environment. She did her first research with Google. People found what they looked for. So did she.

The main paragraphs is challenging. Here they are

  1. 1 paragraph about role and contribution of the bees with numbers—facts, statistics
  2. 1 paragraph about they are in danger and why with numbers—facts, statistics
  3. 1 paragraph about calling for actions, what actions we should do

Of course, we do not focus too much on the scientific facts.

We went through each paragraph and read it out loud. We prepared another paper. I asked Lily what the paragraph was about. She explained and I helped her rephrasing them. After 1 hour or less, we had our second paper filled with the structure of her teacher’s speech.

We practiced saying the structure without looking at the paper, if could not remember, read them again. I wanted her to visualize the structure. So she will have a mental map of the speech.

So far so good! Lunch time.

Let’s write the speech

Nothing happens if we do not take action. Lily wrote her first draft of the speech base on the structure and facts we found on the internet–fact is crucial, not so detail, but they have to be there.

She could not make it in one go. But she did it beyond my expectation. I was impressed with how far she’s done. She completed the final paragraphs the next day.

It turned out this step was easier than I thought. She was comfortable with writing once she knew what to write.

Review and feedback

I asked her to write them again in a Word document (stored in OneDrive) so that I could send it to her English and Science teacher (thank you for your support); another good chance for her to remember the speech and ICT skill (computer skill in her academic program).

I didn’t do any correction. I sent whatever she wrote, original version. Her teacher was so nice that she gave a correction version with corrections highlighted. She did not change the content, she corrected the words, sentences, and asked questions for sentences that were not clear. I was so graceful to have my daughter in her class.

Lily and I went through the feedback.

"Are all the corrections correct?", I asked.
"Yes", confirmed after she compared changes with her version.

There was one sentence that was not clear in term of the intention.

"Should we remove it?", I asked.
"Yes. It is not important.", she replied.

Practice speaking and recording

After going through class lessons, we did not have much time to practice the speaking. We have practiced and recorded many times and finally submitted the recording.

Result

She got to the final ground in the campus. She was one of the 2 best, and her friend was chosen to compete in the school round. She was happy with the result. We made a promise to participant every year regardless of the result. The benefit that she have gained from the preparation is far more the prize.

Summary

I was amazing what a grade 2 kid can do. Many people think that it is too hard, too soon for them to work at that level. However, from that experience, I can say that it is not true. Everything is a matter of technique, preparation, a sense of humor. Learning, competition are fun if you prepare your kid mental in that direction.

Learn to encourage the kids, participate with them, support them but do not do it for them.

I wrote this post a diary without modifications to keep it honest and real. It was a journey and we handled the pandemic in the best way we could.

I am looking forwards to writing the same post next year.

Dear Leaders

At any point in time, one is leading or being led by someone. Everyone is a leader within a context. You might be led by a leader in your company. Mostly because you are the bottom of the organization. However, when you are at home, you lead your family. If you are a wife, you lead your husband (sorry guys, it is just the fact). If you are a husband, you lead your kids (how dare you lead your wife 😛 ).

I just take a small context for this post: You lead a development team. Take a more common scenario that I have seen:

You lead a developer team.

A leader can be a technical leader, a scrum master, a manager, … The context is pretty much the same: You take care of a team.

There Small Things

Three things I consider the most important: Accountability, Mentor, and Cheer Leader.

Accountability

I like military principles. When a soldier is in a battle, his captain and comrades are his life. He trusts them. I know, in our IT job, most of the time it is not a Dead-Or-Alive situation. That might be a reason why leaders do not care so much about building accountability.

Mentor

Did you forget to help your member growing? Deep inside, everyone wants to grow. They want to be useful. They are expecting someone to guide them, to help them in a positive way. That is you__leader.

Should you add “Mentor” in your responsibility bell? Your call! I highly suggest you should.

By helping other, you are helping yourself. You help them grow, they will lift you up.

Cheer Leader

Well, this is not a football match. But you get the idea. Make the team closer, talk more to each other, discuss openly.

Working is not easy. There is stress. But, there should be joy most of the time.

Another Sand in the Sea

There are thousands of articles, books, seminars, classes … about “Leader and Management” topic. They are useful resources. I have read some of them. The more I read the more confuse I am.

Finally, I found out: Hey, wait a minute! There are too much! Maybe I should start with 3 small things and change my mindset.

Everyone has deserved a chance to grow. So I am!

 

Oh New Year, Again! Let’s Make Wishes

New year alway comes. I guarantee you. Welcome to another Lunar New Year. Everyone makes wishes. They wish for themselves, for their family, for their relatives. Everyone has good intention.

Yes! I do. I make wishes every new year. Actually, some years ago, I had made vows. Kind of

  1. I vowed I will quite smoking
  2. I vowed I will drink less
  3. I vowed I will save money
  4. I vowed
  5. …….

I just forgot one important vow:

I vow I will make the same vows again, next new year

I am not saying that process is good or bad. I just wonder why I did that again and again. I know some people do the same thing.

So, let’s explore some theories behind this question

Why do people make vows every new year?

No Cost

You do not have to pay anything for your wishes/vows. And if you do not say it out loud, you are safe. No one knows.

Feel Better

Oh God, It is TET (our Vietnamese name for Lunar New Year). TET is the time for parties with beer, food, hanging around with friends. I might feel better if I make some promises to myself. Kind of, Well, it is ok to relax. I will be a better person after TET.

Make up for a Bad Year

Sometimes, I screw up with the current year. And there is a feeling of “nothing can be done this year”. I just let it go and make a promise for the next.

Screw up and Wish for a better one without taking any action. That’s kind of thing!

High Emotion

People are happy when TET (except some special circumstances). Happy people make promises. They believe in a bright future.

Think about your childhood, if you want to ask parents for money, you know when to ask. Of course, when they are happy 🙂

What happens after TET?

—————–>

Nothing happens! Period.

People come back to their real life. Fight for a living. Have some more parties. … And then finally they realize:

Oh Shit! TET is coming. There is no time for me in this year.

The cycle begins.

Ok. Enough talking! What should we do instead?

This year (2017), I decided to do

  1. Have a list of small things to do.
  2. Make a small plan for them
  3. Start them immediately (Write this post is a part of the actions). Take action!
  4. Have a good time in TET with beer, food, visit parents, relatives, friends, …
  5. Back to work immediately after TET.

My friends, maybe it is the time for you to reconsider what you have been doing for years. No matter what actions you take, they are yours. And you are always right with your decisions.

Everything has its cost.

The cost of a wish is the time.

Happy Lunar New Year! Beer Up.

Welcome to the That Fundamentals

Recently I have created website: That Fundamentals that I will focus most of my writing. Currently the site is under construction. It is more of experience of trying new thing. And it will become the main portal of mine.

what happens to this blog? Well, nothing, It will be running as it is since it is free. Later on I might category the content that should post in this blog or That Fundamentals Blog. The main purpose of my writing is to experience and improve my skill. Therefore, i will not limit myself to anything.

I have a busy period at work the last couple of months. Stay tuned, More will come 🙂

Value and output

For the past of 1-2 years, my life philosophy has changed. Let’s forget about the past of how i was. I will  focus on the present and the future I want to be:

VALUE and OUTPUT

Let’s talk about VALUE. It came from this valuable statement of Jim Rohn:

We get paid for bringing value to the market place

Jim Rohn quote

Everyone has his/her own value. And that value is evaluated by the market you are in. In my field, it is IT industry. Why do I talk about value here and now? Well, there are some:

  1. Because, I want to remind myself about “VALUE”. Therefore I am always aware of improving my value if I want to get more.
  2. Because, VALUE is the only thing you should put in the table when discussing your opportunity and your price.
  3. Because, you should give your price base on your VALUE.
  4. Because, you should NOT give your price base on your age. You are not get paid for your age or for your being old. NO NO, it does not work like that
  5. Because, I want to help people around me aware of the term “VALUE” and help them improve their VALUES.

For more, I suggest you listen to this life changing video

How about “OUTPUT”? What is it about? It is about your delivery:

Deliver result

I usually tell people that about my theory of this:

  1. You think you know 100 things
  2. When ask you to TALK about them, you can express using your speaking language 60-70 things out of 100
  3. When ask you to WRITE about them, you can write just about 30-40 out of 100
  4. When ask you to DO, you can do around 10 out of 100
  5. And you might DELIVER 1-3 out of 10 done

And many people I know (just the one i know, i do not speak in general) stop at step #1 and they think they have that value. Here is the phase:

I think I am good and I deserve better

And here is what I (will) reply:

OK. Wonderful, can you show me your delivery (output)?

Well, most of the cases, you know the result of the conversation.

So, my friends, if you are in such a conversation, make sure next time you will: Hey wait a minute, here are my deliveries 🙂 And you have a strong evidences on the table for the deal/discussion.

Have a nice weekend 🙂