National Year of Reading meeting

UFO 1
2012 is the National Year of Reading. This meeting, for teacher librarians and other interested parties, will be a think tank at Penrith City Library,
High Street Penrith (next to Westfield Penrith Plaza)
on Monday November 28 from 3:30pm to 5:00pm.

Not restricted to Penrith area educators, it will include info about:
– National Year of Reading
– the work of Judith Ridge (Westword and The Western Sydney Young People’s Literature Development Project) – Judy Ridge
– NSW DEC initiatives and support for NYR – Colleen Foley, School Libraries & Information Literacy
– Penrith City Library activities – Sarah Dean, public librarian
– Children’s Book Council activities – Jackie Hawkes, teacher-librarian (ret.)

AND

– time for teacher librarians to share brief ideas that encourage our readers to keep reading.

Cheers – Jackie Hawkes

Patrick Sullivan at NER TLs’ professional learning day

On Monday, I was fortunate and honoured to be the keynote speaker at a New England Region teacher-librarians’ professional learning day at Westdale Public School in Tamworth. My brief was to present “School library makeovers on a shoestring budget – and Adventures in Web 2.0”.

It was great to meet host TL Zoe Morris and all the TL attendees, but many thanks to Patrick Sullivan (aka sullypm) for introducing us to his Breakkie with a Teckkie page, which both promotes the Web 2.0 video conference series for NSW DEC teachers, and has hyperlinks to a huge range of amazing Web 2.0 tools.

I particularly liked (and am already using, or about to use):

Build your wild self avatar creator

Posterous spaces, which Pat demonstrated by uploading a picture he’d just taken of me delivering my presentation: HERE

Oxford owl: help your child’s learning with free tips and eBooks

and

Storybird collaborative storytelling.

The man, the boy and the donkey

Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 are studying fables this term. We found this great short video, with accompanying song, on Youtube:


Song: “A Man, a Boy and a Donkey” – Children’s Music Video

And here’s an award-winning music video version, by Derek Sonic Thunders, of Craig Smith’s “Wonky donkey” picture book and song:


Wonkey donkey song unofficial music video

Last term’s Stage 1 book rappers are doing an extension activity with me during our Literacy time: investigating claymation (stop motion) video presentations using a kit from the local post office, “Make your own haunted house movie” by Nancy Hall (Hinkler Books, 2010). We have already storyboarded our Halloween story, but have now checked out a few claymation fable videos on Youtube:


The story of the boy who cried wolf – claymation


Bugs and books 2008

Who will buy?: Buds

Flannel flowers by Sahel
Flannel flowers by Sahel, Stage 1, 2010

Once again exploring TaLe, in the quest to find engaging learning objects for the IWB to support Stage 2 in their HSIE unit, “Who will buy?”, I found this:

Buds (Code X01DA), in which the students help a farmer to win an award for business innovation. Players must start out by farming fresh flowers and selling them. The students are encouraged to think creatively to find new market opportunities and meet demand. They decide when to use equipment to make different products, such as compost and pressed flowers.

We will begin exploring this new learning object today. If it’s half as successful as Fish market: explore trading, it should be great!

Loyalty and truth

The Gully, 1966

My old school, Arncliffe Public School, is turning 150 on Saturday. I’m Class of 1970, and was school captain – and very excited to be going back to check it out. I’ve tempted two of my former teachers to go, and hoping to catch up with old classmates. Was also asked to contribute a double page of memoir for the souvenir book.

The pic is me in 1966, standing in front of “The Gully” that ran through the then-Infants playground.