Rotating Earth day & night – PlanetObserver
Earth’s seasons — RMSC Strasenburgh Planetarium
From Penguin Primary School in Tasmania: a Grade 4 clay animation about the earth’s orbit of the sun and the reason for winter solstice:
Why the Earth has seasons
If we had no moon
This week, Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 classes are investigating the topic of “Trees” (and “forests”), and relating it back to the fairytales of Hansel and Gretel and Goldilocks, and to previous work on “Autumn” leaves.
Books to be used include Seed to plant by Melvin & Gilda Berger and Trees (Go facts plants series) by Paul McEvoy.
Supporting Youtube video clips will include:
Planting bean seeds
Time-lapse phaseolus runner bean. Hypogeal germination
Acorn to oak filmed over an 8 month period time-lapse
The 2013 CBCA Crichton Award nominee, “A forest” by Marc Martin, will also be a useful resource for this topic. I recently found the following clip on Youtube which carries similar environmental messages. It is an animated short by Aspen Center for Environmental Studies “exploring how forests affect, and are affected by, the forces around them”:
What’s happening in our forest?
Gingerbread house from 2010, made by Ms Stockton’s mother!
Two versions of Grimm’s fairytale of Hansel and Gretel will be used this week with Stage 1 and Early Stage 1 students. Picture books are by Tony Ross (from Arrow, 1989) and Lucy M George & Rachel Swirles (Koala, 2010).
A school made resource, a digital slideshow in PowerPoint from 2010, will also be used: Handsome & Gentle, a fractured fairy tale by Class 2FR, based on “Hansel & Gretel”.
At today’s Musica Viva performance, the members of the musical group Zeeko sang a song that featured a species of endangered toad, the Golden Frog, the males of which have a call so soft (and obscured by the noise of running water in its homeland), that it has delevoped a unique hand wave when approaching other males:
Attenborough: Golden Frog: fighting & mating – Life in cold blood – BBC wildlife
Penrith Public School students are about to share a fun tale of Nicholas Ickle’s challenge to share his story, in the wonderful picture book, “The wrong book” by Nick Bland, as part of ALIA’s National Simultaneous Storytime 2013.
The wrong book Auslan version
“My name is Nicholas Ickle and you’re in the wroooooooooong book!”
This weeks fairy tale for Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students is The ugly duckling by Hans Christian Andersen. We will be using the picture book adaptation by Masumi Furukawa (Flip up fairy tales series by Child’s Play, 2006).
The ugly duckling
Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) bust
Hans Christian Andersen on Observatory Hill, Sydney
Digital stories:
The ugly duckling, an assembly item by Class 2FR (from the year 2010)
The ugly caterpillar, a digital fairy tale by Class 1K (also from 2010), loosely based on “The ugly duckling”
Cockatoo and Tiger, a digital narrative by the other half of Class 1K (2010), also inspired by “The ugly duckling”.
Next week, the work will be followed up with an investigation into the attributes of ducks. The books, What is a bird? by Feana Tu’akoi (Scholastic, 2007) and Amazing facts about Australian birds (Steve Parish discover and learn, 1997) by Pat Slater, will be contrasted with the fictional ducks featured in Duck in the truck (Picture lions, HarperCollins, 2000) by Jez Alborough, Vote for Duck (Pocket, 2004) by Doreen Cronin & Betsy Lewin and The goat, the duck and the bale of hay (Viking, 2004) by Rachel Flynn & Tom Jellett.
Workshop 1:
QR codes – those now-ubiquitous, distinctive, square barcodes – are on advertising posters, business cards and websites. For last year’s MANTLE conference, I made use of a QR code phone app, I-nigma, from iTunes. Apart from a few tests, I haven’t really done very much with this aspect of technology. But the possibilities may be endless!
I have created QR codes for the websites I am referencing in my MANTLE talks this week. For example:
Booked Inn blog
GoldQuest blog
Penrith PS Library wiki
My PhotoPeach profile page
PMBW TL professional learning group
NSW DEC CLIC raps and book raps
Stage 3′s Endangered animals: beyond the rainforest
Workshop 2: This workshop will look at how to make book trailers and their use in engaging students in literacy and reading activities. Applications used to make trailers will be looked at and discussed, also how they can be used as a resource in a school library and in classrooms and how they can help promote literacy and reading. Ways to engage students in these resources to augment their learning experiences will be modeled and discussed.
* Brainstorming (using Circle Time) – consider audience, theme, length, 30 images
* Storyboarding (using a book rap template) – small groups
* Will you use photos (“Creative Commons”), drawings, cutouts, puppets, toys, claymation, or actors in dress-up box clothing?
* Upload – to Photo Peach or other Web 2.0 facility – Flickr slideshow, PowerPoint/Keynote, podcast/Youtube, IWB Notebook software?
* Edit, adjust timing to the selected music
* Share with wider community – monitor incoming public comments regularly, or close them off.
* Rap resources (NSW DEC) for making digital stories and book trailers
* Flickr slideshow repositories – and with captions added or Explore Creative Commons
* Commercial book trailers on Youtube, eg:
In the lion book trailer – James Foley
* This year’s CBCA Book Week theme is: “Read across the universe”. A starting point?
Further reading (articles by Ian McLean):
* ‘iInquire… iLearn… iCreate… iShare: Stage 1 students create digital stories’ in Scan 30(2) May 2011, pp 4-5.
Stage 1 students narrate how they inquire, learn, create and share with ICT and Web 2.0 to produce online Photo Peach slideshows at Penrith Public School. View the article online HERE.
* ‘Have blog, will storyboard!’ in info@aslansw Issue #2, May 2010, pp 5-8.
Stage 2 students at Penrith Public School created storyboards and PowerPoint digital stories as resources to support Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students working on the Bear and Chook books rap, which ran during the subsequent term.
* ‘Circle time: maximising opportunities for talking and listening at Penrith Public School’ in Scan 26(4) November 2007, pp 4-7.
Circle Time is a structured framework for social and emotional learning which promotes a positive class ethos. Moving from class teacher back into the school library, I incorporated Circle Time and information skills into a range of collaborative literacy and ICT activities, including book raps.
The three bears at Penrith PS!
To enhance our Term 2 study of fairy tales, Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students will be using the picture book, Goldilocks and the three bears (Picture lions series, Collins, 1990) by James Marshall, and these Youtube clips this week:
Goldilocks and the three bears – Kids Stories – LearnEnglish Kids British Council
From the BBC programme “Nigel’s simple cooking”, host Nigel Slater meets the 2008 World Porridge Making Champion, Ian Bishop, to find out the secret of perfect porridge:
Porridge
Digital stories:
The three bats, a digital fairy tale by Class 1/2H (in the year 2010), loosely based on “Goldilocks and the three bears”
Mr E and the three bears, a digital fairy tale by the other half of Class 1/2H (2010), also based on “Goldilocks”.
In support of the CBCA shortlised information book, “Lyrebird!: a true story” by Jackie Kerin & Peter Gouldthorpe:
Anglo Saxon lyre
The sound of 3000 year old lyre strings (2 of 5)
Ten cent coin – Australian – from 1966 to present today
Lyre bird mimicking voices (Healesville Sanctuary)
Our Stage 2 students have commenced a unit of work in science & technology, “Space”. These Youtube video clips will be useful in our initial brainstorming activities.
The Solar System – Space School
Space School – The Sun
Star size comparison HD
Space School – The Moon
Day and night on Earth
First Moon landing 1969
Colonizing the Moon
Here are two websites for online research, Planets for kids and The nine (8) planets: just for kids (now updated to reflect Pluto’s change of status)
Evidence of water, which was once flowing on Mars, recently found: HERE.
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