Friday was my last full day in the classroom. I told the children one last story and then gave them a lined exercise book which I had covered in brown wrapping paper. I said,

"This might look like an ordinary exercise book. But it's not. I covered it in brown paper so that when you see it you know that it's different. It's your Book of Noticing. You can write down things that you notice. When I was your age and a little bit older I wanted to be a spy. I had read a story called Odette about a girl who helped the French Resistance during the Second World War. She had to be very observant all the time and pretend to be someone she wasn't.  I also read a book called Harriet the Spy." (They knew about Harriet. They'd seen the movie.) "I liked to go around observing things like Harriet. I had a green binder where I kept my notes."

The children sat patiently on the carpet. The stack of notebooks was beside me.

When I was eight years old my music teacher gave some very simple homework—listening, but not to music. We were to go and sit quietly in some corner of our home or garden and listen to the sounds around us. Then, with pen and paper in hand, our assignment was to describe those sounds. (Actually, the assignment was to choose three different locations and listen to the different sounds in each one.) I remember vividly how wonderful it was to become conscious of listening in this way.