Welcome to Day 5 of the “WHISPERS OF THE PAST” Blog Tour! @RobertaEaton17 @ @4WillsPub

Drop by “The Showers of Blessings” blog for Day 4 of the “Whispers of the Past” book blog tour, with a post from Jeff Bowles about the inspiration for his winning story, “A Peaceful Life I’ve Never Known”.

Welcome to Day 2 of the "WHISPERS OF THE PAST" Blog Tour! @RobertaEaton17 @StevieTurner6 @4WillsPub

Welcome to Day 1 of the “Whispers Of The Past” Blog Tour! @GodsAngel1 @RobertaEaton17 @4WillsPub

Reading and mathematics

Those of you who are familiar with the writing of Enid Blyton, may be familiar with her Enchanted Wood series which features the folk of the Faraway Tree. One of the characters in this delightfully imaginative series is Dame Snap, a strict school mistress, who runs a school for naughty pixies and other fairy folk. I loved this series as a child and was quite astonished by the questions Dame Snap poses to the learners in her class. This is an extract from The Enchanted Wood:

“Jo looked at the questions on the board. He read them out to the others, in great astonishment.

“If you take away three three caterpillars from one bush, how many gooseberries will there be left?”

“Add a pint of milk to a peck of peas and say what will be left over.”

“If a train runs at six miles an hour and has to pass under four tunnels, put down what the guard’s mother is likely to have for dinner on Sundays.”

Everybody gazed at the board in despair. Whatever did the questions mean? They seemed to be nonsense.”

Dame Snap from The Enchanted Wood

This particular extract came to mind the other day when I was assisting my younger son with his mathematics homework. He had ten sentences to complete, all of which were missing certain vital words to form a well-known mathematics concept. I thought this was quite a difficult way for a mathematics concept to be enforced and tested and it made me realise how important good reading and comprehension skills are to performing well in all school subjects, including mathematics.

As learners progress through the school system, the need to assemble, analyse and interpret data in order to present a view or outcome about a specific problem, increases significantly. In order to do this, the learner must frequently read and understand a mass of research material and extract the salient points for further analysis.

A big component of testing mathematical concepts involves solving word problems, which were called story sums when I was at school. A word problem is a few sentences describing a ‘real-life’ scenario where a problem needs to be solved by way of a mathematical calculation. These sentences are often complex and if a learner does not have well developed reading and comprehension skills, he or she will struggle to determine what they need to do to solve the problem and arrive at the correct answer.

Studies have been done to determine the correlation between good reading comprehension and mathematical word problem skills. The results showed that good performance with mathematical word problems is strongly related to effective reading comprehension. The results indicated that this is because reading comprehension and problem solving both require superior reasoning skills.

Reading understanding and comprehension is increased through exposure to the written word as a result of parents or other caregivers reading to children and later, by children reading on their own.

In summary, children who are read to and who are encouraged to read, generally perform better in all of their school subjects including mathematics which does not merely constitute manipulating figures on a page, but involves comprehension and assimilation of written data.

About Robbie Cheadle

Hello, my name is Robbie, short for Roberta. I am an author with six published children’s picture books in the Sir Chocolate books series for children aged 2 to 9 years old (co-authored with my son, Michael Cheadle), one published middle grade book in the Silly Willy series and one published preteen/young adult fictionalised biography about my mother’s life as a young girl growing up in an English town in Suffolk during World War II called While the Bombs Fell (co-authored with my mother, Elsie Hancy Eaton). All of my children’s book are written under Robbie Cheadle and are published by TSL Publications.

I have recently branched into adult and young adult horror and supernatural writing and, in order to clearly differential my children’s books from my adult writing, I plan to publish these books under Roberta Eaton Cheadle. My first supernatural book published in that name, Through the Nethergate, is now available.

I have participated in a number of anthologies:

• Two short stories in #1 Amazon bestselling anthology, Dark Visions, a collection of horror stories edited by Dan Alatorre;
• Three short stories in Death Among Us, an anthology of murder mystery stories, edited by Stephen Bentley;
• Three short stories in #1 Amazon bestselling anthology, Nightmareland, a collection of horror stories edited by Dan Alatorre; and
• Two short stories in Whispers of the Past, an anthology of paranormal stories, edited by Kaye Lynne Booth.

I also have a book of poetry called Open a new door, with fellow South African poet, Kim Blades.

Find Robbie Cheadle

Blog: https://www.robbiecheadle.co.za/

Blog: robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com

Goodreads: Robbie Cheadle – Goodreads

Twitter: BakeandWrite

Instagram: Robbie Cheadle – Instagram

Facebook: Sir Chocolate Books

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Write Me Better! – Amatuer Short Story

by Jeff Bowles

We’re starting a new monthly writing challenge series here on Writing to Be Read. Have you ever read a book or a short story and thought to yourself, I can do way better than this? Well, here’s your chance. Write Me Better will highlight a new prose passage by a different author each month, ranging from masterful to, well, just plain amateurish. Anyone and everyone will be open for a little revision, Shakespeare, Steven King, Ernest Hemingway, even the folks who write for this blog, and maybe someday down the line if you’re up for it, even you. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to rewrite what’s already been written. Give it a new style, a new focus. Make it a comedy routine or just plain tear it to shreds. It’s up to you! The following month, I’ll show off my version, and then we’ll look at some of yours. Sound Fun?

Our first piece comes from a little known master named Jeff Bowles. Before you go getting excited, this is one of the first short stories I ever wrote, and yes, I was being cheeky with the whole “master” thing. See for yourself. Let me forewarn all you armchair authors, this passage is not for the faint of heart. It’s bad. I mean real bad. So bad I had to write dozens of other stories just to wash the taste from my mouth. Okay, here we go. This is a little thing I like to call Tsar Alexei. Now Write me Better!

They hunt me even now. Aristocrat boyars, holy men, those who profess loyalty and who have received my kindness. All of them, cursing me in their thoughts even as they toast to my divine rule. A tsar must anticipate dissent. Even on the day of his wedding, he must be on guard and govern with an iron will. These things are expected of me, of Ivan’s son, Alexei. Russia needs Alexei. Even the malcontents gathered here need Alexei.

Regrettably, I am not Alexei. I’m not even human. But these are small matters; always, confidence is key.

I have allowed only two others to sit with me at the main banquet table, a fact which surely displeases the boyars and Metropolitan Boris, the head of the church. Boris rubs his bald head as his eyes trace the empty length of my table. I simply tip my glass to him and smile.

My bride, my lovely Tsarina Sofia sits beside me. Her dark hair flows along her neck, shimmering with highlights of brown and deep red in the candlelight. Her royal wedding necklace glints and sparkles. Her supple lips upturn in a smile as she examines a knife that belonged to Vasily III. She is happy. Her thoughts are of her troubled beginnings, of famine, of my grace and judgment in choosing her, above all others in Muskovy, to be mine.

“Are you well, my love?” I say.

Sofia smiles. “Yes. I could not have dreamed of all this, Alexei.”

“No?”

“I always hoped to marry, but…”

“Now you are tsarina. You were granted fortune when you least expected it. I understand completely.”

I touch Sofia’s hand. Her cheeks darken; her eyes widen. She smiles again.

Fëdor, my loyal servant, nudges me. I chose him first as honorific thousandman for the ceremony. Were he any other man, I would kill him for the distraction.

“Alexei,” he says, “please, we must speak in private.”

I try my best to swallow my anger. “I know, Fëdor. I knew when the celebration began, and I knew in the procession. I’ve known these past three days. It’s difficult to forget when your lapdog constantly nibbles at your heel.”

“I’m sorry, Alexei.” Fëdor averts his eyes. His large brow tightens and his thick lips purse. “But you must hear the message from our…from the Lord.”

“Speak openly. None here would dream of harming me.”

“Yes, but…”

“Fëdor, I am tsar, yes? Wasn’t it I, through sheer power and intelligence, that supplanted that feeble-minded Vladimir?”

“It was,” says Fëdor.

“Then respect me. Respect my bride and my guests, and only distract me from the festivities as long as you must. Speak openly.”

Okay, everybody, that does it for this month. Don’t forget to rewrite the above passage and share it in the comment section. Adios!

Jeff Bowles is a science fiction and horror writer from the mountains of Colorado. The best of his outrageous and imaginative short stories are collected in Godling and Other Paint Stories, Fear and Loathing in Las Cruces, and Brave New Multiverse. He has published work in magazines and anthologies like PodCastle, Tales from the Canyons of the Damned, the Threepenny Review, Nashville Review, and Dark Moon Digest. Jeff earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at Western State Colorado University. He currently lives in the high-altitude Pikes Peak region, where he dreams strange dreams and spends far too much time under the stars. Jeff’s new novel, God’s Body: Book One – The Fall, is available on Amazon now!

Check out Jeff Bowles Central on YouTube – Movies – Video Games – Music – So Much More!