The Lion and the Leopard in Igbo

*A Leopard

We invite all those who have referred to the lion as Agụ in Igbo language to come and learn why Igbos call the lion Odum and not Agụ.”THE LION IS ODUM AND NOT AGỤ IN IGBO LANGUAGE”Leopard is Agu in Igbo and not lion.

The Igbo Bible translation is very much on point about this.The recent argument on my post,on whether lion should be Agu and not Leopard might have a minimal reason to ponder but at the end, Igbo name for leopard is as clear as the day. Leopard is Agu in Igbo. Let’s consider below –Igbos is a vast language, I really don’t understand it when people say Igbo as a language is severally lacking.

Igbo is a super language that is almost perfect. There’s nothing obtainable in Igbo land and the surroundings that does not have Igbo name the problem is that we are confusing Igbo language with recently introduced (foreign) things.

TheLeopard is definitely Agu, and nothing is confusing about it. Igbo have a clear pattern of naming animals that look similar but are slightly different.Leopard = Agu. The Cheetah =Agu Awara.Tiger = Agu Owulu.Lion = Odum.

The form the above names, Leopard has been a familiar animal throughout Igbo land from time immemorial, according to animal discovery Channel, leopard is said to have a very old base which is a sort of origin point at West Africa, whose natural habitat is tropical rainforest.

Ancient Igbo folklores are built on two animals – Agu (Leopard) for its strength and charisma and mbe (tortoise) for its wisdom and cunning. The Leopard is clearly described in Igbo folklore as a strong animal with spots on its skin, aggressive and charismatic. Agu is said to be the king of animals but here comes the question that opposes the view – can Agu (leopard) be the king of animals and the strongest in presence of Lion (odum)?Seems unlikely!

The Leopard has no chance in a combat against a lion. Now, here is a point to ponder. Did a typical thousands years ago Igbo know what the Lion is? Did they come in contact with the beast?

In most Igbo towns and communities including my town Uturu which is said to be among the oldest Igbo towns, the leopard is still recognized as the King of animals. Whoever kills Agu is regarded as a great hunter with a title – Ogbu Agu (the killer of leopard).

To hit the nail at the head, it is likely that lion (odum) is not recognized in ancient Igbo folklore because our people never came in contact with it. Odum as a name might not be over 200 years old while Agu is clearly thousands of years.

Leopard skin has been existing in Igboland for ages, they still exist today and one thing is clear – they have spots. The Lion cannot be Agu because it does not have spots.

The Cheetah is called Agu Awara because it looks like a leopard (Agu) and has outstanding speed (awara = speed) remember what I said earlier about Igbo naming of similar animals. The Cheetah appears to be a new animal to Igbo.

Agu Owuru (tiger?) also has spots like the leopard but it is much bigger and stronger. The Tiger is also a new animal to Igbo. The Lion (odum) seems not to be as popular as the leopard because, ancient Igbo might not be aware of its existence. This is the only reason the leopard will be named the king of animals instead of the lion. The Lion is odum while the leopard is agu .

The Igbos say odum na-egbu agu (the lion that kills the leopard).

The Wall gecko is called agu-ulo) because it has spots like the leopard.

The Crocodile is called agu-iyi because it has patches that look like the spots of a leopard. The body of a lion is brown with no spots or lines.

In the Bible, Daniel was put in the lions’ den. The Igbo Bible calls it “olulu odum.” The lion of the tribe of Judah is interpreted in the Igbo Bible as “odum nke ebo Juda.” When the Bible asks if the leopard can ever change its spots, the Igbo Bible interpreted it as agu (Jeremiah 13:23)

Please look for an Igbo Bible and confirm this. Chinua Achebe published Chike and the River in 1966. What killed Chike’s father was a leopard, not a lion. Chukwuemeka Ike published The Leopard’s Claw in 1950 and The Bottled Leopard in 1985. The generation of Achebe and Chukwuemeka Ike had no confusion over agu and odum.

It was rare to find any old Igbo novelist writing about the lion. It was always the leopard that was written about. The reason is simple: The leopard was more common among the Igbos than the lion. It may seem small to us today because we watch animal documentaries, but in the days of our forefathers, the leopard evoked fear in the villages. It killed people. Once it was sighted, an alarm would be sounded. Women and children would not go to the stream or farm alone. Strong men would go out in search of it to kill it. The community would not be at rest until it has been killed or there was news that it had left the community.

Anybody who killed a leopard was honoured as an ogbuagu. Yet the Igbos admired the leopard because of its beauty, strength and agility. And many people took the name or sobriquet of agu because of this admiration.

That could have contributed to the choice of two leopards as part of the coat of arms of the Republic of Biafra in 1967.

Source: Twitter X https://twitter.com/IgboHistoryTV?t=RDn__Pb2gvLc1LBduqHG1Q&s=09

Expert Q&A: Tricky science concepts for primary students

By Joe Earp

A recent Teacher article explored how teachers can pro-actively plan to address student misconceptions in STEM. In this expert Q&A we dig deeper into the science concepts that primary students struggle with.

Kristy Osborne – physicist, former pre-service teacher and Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) – shares several examples, explains why it’s important to identify and address student misconceptions early on, and highlights how teachers can use them as anchor points for learning progression.

Science, in particular, is a subject area where students can really struggle with some of the concepts – why do you think this is?

One barrier to achieving scientific literacy is the abstract nature of some scientific concepts, such as energy transfer and scale. Visualising objects that are incredibly large (such as some celestial objects) or very small (such as viruses or the particulate nature of matter) can be conceptually challenging for students.

In particular, gases and thermal phenomena are often not well understood in the primary years. Keith Skamp’s work (2005) discusses the issues children have with thinking about the particulate nature of matter, gases in particular. The majority of students think about matter as macrocontinuous – a continuous piece of material, not containing particles or spaces. However, understanding the particulate nature of matter is important for students to develop the conceptual understanding needed to be able to classify materials as solid, liquid or gas.

What does the research say about student misconceptions in science across the world? Do students in different countries struggle with the same things?

Students often develop incorrect ideas about physical science phenomena before they enter the classroom. These alternative conceptions – also known as misconceptions or ‘children’s science’ – are often highly resistant to change and typically pervade students’ views across cultures and countries, indicating that these conceptions are born from everyday experience. For example, some students hold the belief that gases do not have mass, and this belief is held by many students across the world.

Why is it important for teachers to firstly identify student misconceptions, and then plan to address them in lessons?

Ultimately, we want to ensure students leaving school have the scientific literacy needed to fully participate in society. Alternative conceptions can be so difficult to shift that many students carry them into adulthood. That’s why it’s important to identify what misconceptions students might hold in primary school so that they don’t inhibit their learning of science in secondary school. A possible way of addressing these alternative conceptions in the Year 3 classroom is to:

1. Assess whether your class holds an alternative conception.

2. Use a demonstration, analogy or model, to highlight the inconsistency between reality and the tightly held alternative conception.

Predict–observe–explain techniques are an excellent method for achieving both of these points. By asking students to predict what will happen in a system, you are assessing their pre-instructional knowledge and any alternative conceptions they might hold. For example, take the set-up in the figure:

If you take 4 pieces of plasticine, you can place them on the scale and show students how much they weigh, and ask ‘What do you expect will happen to the weight if I squish these 4 pieces together?’ The response will enable you to assess if students hold any alternative conceptions about larger objects always weighing more than smaller objects. When you squish the materials together and place them on the scale, students can observe the measurement. Students then need to explain, with your guidance, why larger objects don’t always weigh more than smaller objects.

Your latest research explores the physical science concepts that year 3 students struggle with. What did the research involve?

In this work, I evaluated the responses of more than 8,000 middle-primary-aged students to a range of physics, space science and chemistry questions. Students were able to choose from answers that included both the key (or accurate conception) and distractors (some of which were common misconceptions). The data were drawn from the International Benchmark Test (IBT), conducted by ACER in 18 countries over 4 testing periods between 2013 and 2018.

In addition to determining the percentage of students that chose the alternative conception, the research also determined the probability of a student answering the question correctly based on their overall performance on the test. This work used unidimensional item-response theory in the form of Rasch modelling, to develop item characteristic curves. These curves allowed for the evaluation of ‘probability of falling for the alternative conception’ versus student ability.

What did you find?

Four alternative conceptions around physical sciences were found for Year 3 students:

1. bigger objects always have more mass than smaller objects.
2. air/gas has no mass.
3. air/gas has no volume.
4. day and night are caused by the Earth orbiting the Sun.

Take, for example, the first alternative conception: bigger objects always have more mass than smaller objects. This alternative conception was found through the responses of students to the question shown above, as well as their responses to the following question:

This question was run in tests in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2018, with between 1,944 and 2,231 students (N) answering the question in each year. The majority of students chose the key (The weights will be the same), however, the alternative conception was the second most popular choice: 25% to 29% of students chose the alternative conception (The new block will weigh more than the 4 small blocks).

To investigate the ability of students selecting the alternative conception, the probability of a student selecting a particular option versus their ability (latent trait) was plotted for students who attempted the question, and the Rasch model used to fit the data. The Rasch modelling was an excellent fit to the data, indicating that as students’ ability increased, they were more likely to select the key and realise that an object being large does not necessarily mean it weighs the most.

Similar analyses were done for other items on the test, to identify the 4 misconceptions listed earlier.

Do we know if student misconceptions in science have changed over time? For example, did children of the 1990s/2000s struggle with the same concepts?

Students’ misconceptions do not appear to have changed over time. Today’s children still grapple with many of the misconceptions that children of the 1990s grappled with. Take, for example, Ruth Stavy’s 1991 study, which showed that the alternative conception of students not regarding gas as matter – a substance with volume and mass – was held by 76% of year 3 students (Stavy, 1991). In our recent study, 74% of year 3 students also selected the alternative conceptions that air has no mass and/or volume. For the majority of primary-aged students, the definition of matter as being a substance with volume and mass does not hold. Instead, most primary-aged students consider matter to be something they can see and grasp.

Why are misconceptions difficult to shift and how does this impact on future learning in STEM?

These alternative conceptions, also known as misconceptions, are often born from everyday experience. In fact, many alternative conceptions are based on reasoning, making them particularly difficult to shift; if you can’t see gas and grasp it with your hands, it’s harder to understand gas as having a volume and/or mass as compared to a solid object like a piece of wood.

Your research identified anchor points for learning progression. What are they and why is this useful? And how else can teachers support students in this area?

Anchor points are concepts that students need to grasp so they can progress in their learning. Air and other gases having mass could form an anchor point in a learning progression and, for students to progress in the core concept of gravity and/or states of matter, it will be important for them to overcome this alternative conception. Similarly, misconceptions around larger objects not necessarily weighing more than smaller objects, could form an important anchor point in a learning progression around density.

Ultimately, this research has shown that many of the physical science alternative conceptions held 30 years ago are still prevalent in the modern classroom. A concerted effort is still required to change students’ thinking on these concepts and ensure students’ leaving school have the scientific literacy needed to fully participate in society. I hope teachers will be able to use this research to help them plan to address these misconceptions, using them as anchor points in a learning progression.

References

Skamp, K. (2005). Teaching about stuff. Primary Science Review, 89, 20–22.

Stavy, R. (1991). Children’s ideas about matter. School Science and Mathematics, 91(6), 240–244.

Group breathes hope into Urhobo language studies

By Moses Darah

A sociocultural organisation of Urhobo male staff of the Delta State University, Abraka, the Ukoko R’Emotọ has presented cash prizes to three best students of the Department of Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, DELSU, Abraka.

The group led by Olorogun Matthew Ovedje Eyuren presented the cash awards at the 2023 Annual Cultural Day of the National Union of Urhobo Students, NUUS in DELSU, Abraka in response to the 2006 report of the United Nations that Urhobo language, among other minor African languages will be extinct by the year 2050.

The three recipients, Ufuoma Okere (400 level), Emily Akpomedaye (300 level) and Susan Ohwonohwo (200 level) got N50,000 each.

The Ukoko R’Emotọ Vice President, Dr Basil Enemute Iwhiwhu and Secretary, Dr Efe Ejedafiru also announced N50,000 token for best graduating student of the BA Linguistics/Urhobo programme during convocation.

Origin of the Urhobo

*An Urhobo traditional attire on display.

The Urhobo population was founded by Urinrin,the younger brother of Igodomigodo and the youngest brother of Oduduwa.

Oduduwa, Igodomigodo and Urinrin were princely -priests-brothers who were priests and regents in the palace of Pharaoh in Egypt. Before the reign of Apepi the Pharaoh of Egypt, Urinrin even served and held briefs for the throne.

A fiasco that ensued in the palace in Egypt snowballed into the migration of these three princely-priestly brothers. As priests, they disappeared and reappeared in a territory now Ile Ife.

Oduduwa landed through his mystic mantle chain at Ile Ife, while Urinrin the founder of Urhobo landed at a stream or Brook at Uhe near Ife.

Urinrin had a walking stick as a mantle which he pointed at the water and a tree grew out of it,which he perched on. He later commanded the tree to become flat to float him to the shore. This incidence is preserved in a song till date in Urhobo. “Eghwo, eghwo damukelegje, Eghwo eghwo damukelegje,

Oke me vwo riakpo damukelegje. Oto ma damukelegje, enu ma damukelegje, urhe ovo Todo Mecha me da muo. Eghwo eghwo damukelegje.”

It was the mystic walking stick of Urinrin that the name urhobo is coined out from. Urhe obo boh (the mysterious mantle stick of the priest) Urinrin (founded) a kingdom or dynasty’ at Udo.

The first war that broke out between the urhobos and Yorubas made the Urhobos to loose Udo to the yorubas now Ondo town.

Thereafter the descendants of Igodomigodo and Urinrin started living together in the current Edo territory.

Oba Oramiyan changed the name Igodomigodo to Ile Ubinu and later to Ubini (bini) which was anglicized or corrupted to what is now Benin. The oppression of the Ogisos made the urhobos to move to their current territory.

Source: Urhobo Renaissance Society

What Teachers Think Makes a Principal Great

By Caitlyn Meisner & Hayley Hardison 

Feodora Chiosea/iStock/G

Principals are a central figure in any school. Their job is to set the direction for the school, create a safe and healthy environment for students, and lead the teaching staff. But what makes a good principal a great one?

That timeless question was resurfaced on Education Week’s social media last week. After a 2009 Education Week Opinion piece on the topic was brought out from the archives, dozens of teachers flew to the comment section to share their thoughts on the qualities of a great principal.

Many of the teachers who weighed in commented on working with understanding and communicative principals and shared personal anecdotes of their experiences. Here’s a roundup of their thoughts.

Collaboration is key

Some educators pointed to a principal’s ability to foster a collaborative environment between school leadership and staff as one top-notch quality.

“The best principal I had was collaborative, not directive. Also, they created an environment of trust and teamwork. We need to get away from calling your workplace a family. We are a team that works together, helps each other, and supports each other.”

Learning about food: How can schools and educators support healthy eating?

August 2, 2023

Food. It’s an essential part of our survival and many of us assume that we’re born with a liking for a wide range of foods when, in reality, food preferences vary considerably between individuals. Once we are weaned onto solid foods, it can take time for us to learn to like different foods. Caregivers and education settings (nurseries/kindergartens, preschools, and schools) all have an important role in helping children to learn to like food. The eating habits we develop in childhood stay with us throughout adolescence and adulthood, so this is a key time to support children’s developing relationships with food. The more we understand about food and nutrition, the more we can also learn to eat healthily as adults.

This blog, written by our Head of Teaching and Learning Strategy, Paul Ellis, and Emma Haycraft, Professor of Psychology and Public Health, at Loughborough University, UK, focuses on educating young children and caregivers to eat healthily. Our Head of Teaching and Learning Strategy has also worked on a series of podcasts with academic experts focusing on nutrition. This blog is written to accompany the first episode of the podcasts: How to Educate Young Children and Caregivers about Healthy Eating where he discusses the topic with Professor Emma Haycraft.

One key factor in learning to like food is that we need to be ‘exposed’ to it, often several times. This notion of ‘repeated exposure’ is key to us becoming more familiar with, and less wary about, a food. Research shows that it can take 7-15 exposures to a food before we start to like it. Eating a food in front of a child (role modelling) and offering the child a non-food reward (for example, a sticker) for trying a new food can both help children to become more familiar with that food which, in turn, can increase liking and intake. Research also tells us that children love to learn about food and to be more involved with it; be that growing it, singing songs about it, or simply choosing and preparing it.

Fussy eating, or food refusal, is often partly linked to children feeling wary about unfamiliar foods, or foods which look unusual, or even foods just being served in a way that the children are not used to. Helping children to learn about foods, making food fun, and increasing children’s engagement with food, in all its forms, can really help children to overcome these food fears and reduce their fussy eating behaviour.

There are lots of ways that we can help to make food fun and caregivers and education settings can have an important role in supporting this. For example:

Play

• Find pictures of fruit and vegetables that children can colour or cut out and stick.
• Use Play-Doh (a soft substance used by children for making models) to make fruit and vegetables.
• Encourage children to engage in role-play games, such as “at the shops” or “at a cafe” to try new foods in a relaxed way.

Grow

• Grow your own! You don’t need expensive equipment or even a garden. Many foods can be grown indoors, for example in yoghurt pots or on a windowsill. Children will enjoy learning about how foods are grown and tasting the results.

Learn

• Teaching children about foods by reading or learning about them is an effective way to help children to become more familiar with foods.
• Reading books that have images of foods in them, or that have a food-related theme, and talking about this afterwards is a great way to expose children to foods away from mealtime.
• There are many computer games and apps that teach children about (healthy) eating and introduce them to the idea of nutrients. This can be a fun way to learn.
• Introduce a learning challenge with children in your care. For pre-schoolers, this could involve learning about foods that are the same colour (for example, clementines, carrots, butternut squash and sweet potatoes are all orange in colour). For older children, this could be learning about different types of food or food groups (for example, citrus fruit) and what makes them healthy to eat. You could choose a new food each week.

Implementing some of these suggestions into day-to-day activities, alongside offering children a variety of different foods and role-modelling eating them, are all effective strategies to help children to learn to like food.

*Source: Cambridge Assessment International Education