Bear and Chook’s space adventure: fun with Kindergarten book rappers in the school library today, as part of the Bear and Chook books rap. During Circle Time, the students created three new adventures for Bear and Chook and we uploaded the photos as a Flickr slideshow:

Please click here!

They (and I) hope you enjoy this digital story. You can request to read the captions while the slideshow plays.

Unless a school has cause to collect measurable data of the students’ achieved outcomes – eg. schools defending expeditures in Priority Schools Programs; teacher librarians undertaking post-graduate study (and requiring valid results for their assignments); etc – that all-important post-test, and results analysis, often get lost in the shuffle in the end-of-term mayhem, and that often happens four times a year, of course.

In a previous school, long before outcomes appeared in every KLA syllabus, we had our first taste of the power of collaboratively-planning valid, measurable, pre- and post- tests, when we re-examined our school-based science and technology units, spent a considerable amount of money on relevant resources that truly supported what we were hoping to achieve, and ensured that every S&T unit maximised the capacity for Talking & Listening (in English).

Schools need to plan for constant revisiting of syllabuses and evaluation strategies. I was going to say especially in schools with a high turnover of staff but, no, every school needs to do this in a structured, cyclic way.

Certainly, I’ve noticed renewed opportunities for the teacher-librarian to be more involved in collaboratively-planning valid, measurable, pre- and post- tests as a result of my voluntary role as an editor of several teaching colleagues’ half-yearly student reports. When educators have to clearly articulate just where on the learning continuum each student is, and for each key learning area, the traditional, waffly comments of yesteryear just don’t wash. I can see where certain gaps are exposed, and then I try my best to lend assistance.

Statements about students’ achievement, at our school, now have to be written in terms of outcomes. The new online reports, as daunting as they are, do seem to be assisting with providing a strong focus on value-added results. Of course, the new reports have brought in an additional problem: many outcomes sound too much like eduspeak, and that can really make some parents feel even more out of the loop.

And, of course, sometimes the best ideas for how something could have been evaluated come too late. (Hurray for cyclic programs, which can be improved each time the units are revisited.)

Similarly, a few years ago, I volunteered my services as an editor of the Annual School Report, and we noticed that the library had, previously, not really rated a mention in the ASR. The last few years have seen added paragraphs about the interrelationship of this school library with other important, high-profile school programs and events: Holiday Reading Is Rad, reading picnics, visiting storytellers, participation in annual community artshows, book reviews in the local newspaper, Circle Time, Premier’s Reading challenge, book raps, and a wiki.

This year, I hope to add OASIS Library borrowing statistics, too, and this is another easily-obtained set of data.

How to ensure that higher order thinking, and pre- and post-tests, are vital elements of the teaching program?

Well, I’m a great advocate of the online book raps and event raps run by the School Libraries and Information Literacy Unit (NSW DET). Programming and planning (including evaluation strategies) are provided. At the conclusion of each rap, we have solid data of learning progress, and the students’ jointly-constructed responses to the rap points remain online, for parents to visit via home or local library computers.

While the maximum benefit from book raps would, ideally, include teachers and the teacher librarian working collaboratively on the rap points, we have also used a highly effective “withdrawal of rappers” strategy, that requires the students reporting back to their classmates. We timetable what is achievable, and that can vary. Because book rapping takes place in the school library – and the new interactive whiteboard arrived this term, and is also in the library – the profile of the library is constantly being flagged (and raised).

Our school wiki (which I instigated, and made a point of branding as the Penrith PS Library Wiki (see “Scan” vol 28 no 1, 2009, pp 30-37) has several pages dedicated to outcomes-based annotations of the students’ progress, much of it in the students’ own words – pre-, during and post- tests, as gathered through whole-school Talking & Listening programs, such as Circle Time (see “Scan” vol 26 no 4, 2007, pp 4-7).

Our survey was called: Does the use of Interactive Whiteboards assist with student engagement in their education and therefore improve students’ literacy and ICT skills?

Do you have the Internet at home?
Yes: 21
No: 1
Don’t know: 0

What does an IWB do?
• Like the Internet, plays videos, like a TV
• It helps you learn
• Lets you read a book to the whole class (eg. “Pete the sheep” simultaneous reading day) – looks bigger
• Like a plasma TV with bigger speakers
• A computer from the future, touch screen, can save work
• Like a normal computer only bigger
• Can search for stuff
• Can show stuff again, and save work
• Like the Internet only bigger, can do more things
• Like a computer, can touch the screen to change things
• Don’t know/Pass: x 11.

How is it better than an ordinary whiteboard??
• Can save stuff, use Internet, write things, use screen keyboard
• Like a computer, play games, do stories
• Don’t use Texta – use finger to write and draw
• Play games x 2
• Internet
• Already has information in it (eg. Notebook 10)
• Can save
• Can click to rub out x 2
• Like a computer and whiteboard combined
• Play music
• Can type or write with finger/IWB pen
• Look at everything on it
• Get pictures (eg. Google Images), save, rub out – not gone forever
• Can go back weeks later to revise
• Don’t know/Pass: x 6.

Why are we using an IWB to write, publish and read our Identity Rap blog posts?

Year 4 (who did the “Olympic Rap” on the library computers in 2008):
• Screen is bigger, easier to see
• Computer monitor too small
• Not bunched up, and no more arguing over chairs (ie. sitting around small monitor screen)
• Much bigger screen, can sit at tables and chairs
• Bigger screen, can write more things
• No people are stuck up behind others
• Can’t see small screen properly
• Don’t know/Pass: x 3.

Year 5 (who are doing the “Identity Rap” on the IWB in 2009):
• On small screen, you can’t see well x 2
• Easier to read writing
• Screen is much bigger
• Don’t know/Pass: x 1.

What will Year 5 have learned when they have finished the rap?
• Learn about our environment x 2
• About human body x 3
• Teamwork is really easy with an IWB
• Learn about other people’s identities
• How living things work
• Learn about where people come from (eg. Schools doing the rap with us)
• Transport – how cars move
• What the topic is, learn more about it x 2
• Learn about the solar system
• Cooperate with each other
• Know more things than the first time
• Don’t know/Pass: x 8.

What else could we do with an IWB?
• Use it as a TV, watch movies on DVD
• Make it read books
• Play games x 2
• Play music x 2
• Listen to heavy metal music x 2
• Learn rules for playing sports
• Read stories
• Look at different websites
• Draw
• Search the Internet
• Browse the Internet
• Learn about first aid
• Learn about speech writing
• Use Google Earth
• Search for things with Google
• Write stuff
• The school could buy things they need on eBay
• Don’t know/Pass: x 0.

We are going to do this survey again at the end of the Identity Rap.

This year, I’m repeating the unit with a new cohort. While last year’s project included an annotation page in which I recorded the progress of our learning, this time I’m also preserving notes from our Circle Time brainstorms and hot seat activities.

For example, in Week 3 – Favourite animals suggested for possible use in fables were: cats (allergic?), giraffe (who has his own special space), fox (sneaky), dolphin (helping people to water ski – going “Forward with Pride” – our school motto), sharks (sharp teeth, show off, brushes her teeth), panda (nice, look like bears, on TV; all black?), poodles (pink! – like to lick people), dog (that lets me go anywhere), kangaroo (with a joey inside her pouch – and a little bed), rhinoceros (go riding on it), dinosaurs (in a police uniform and a ballerina’s tutu), a lion (pride).

Week 4 - Circle time: shark has gills; lions go forward with their pride (of lions) and can run faster than a car; kangaroos and emus can’t walk backwards, always go forward (with pride); giraffe likes eating toast for breakfast; magical fox turned the poodle pink, turns into a dragon, always buys strawberry (pink) ice cream.

Week 5 – Investigate more of Aesop’s fables; Who was Aesop?; discuss morals in fables. Circle time: “Forward with pride” – our school motto. Makes us think of forward, four (number), 4 (numeral), fore (golf – “Look out in front!”), going for wood (forward), we would go for wood. Woodpeckers and beavers like wood. Fences, branches, sticks, treehouses, cubby houses, tables and chairs are made of wood. Fire needs wood. Trees need bark. Pride of lions. Things that make us proud: playing on my bike; Mum buying me stuff; parties; using my own money to buy a Slushy at 7-11; my doctor was proud of me at the hospital when I got stitches and he gave me a toy; winning at my DS game; my teacher is proud when I read well; winning lollies, stickers and Good Ones at school.

Week 6 – “Recent visitors” to the wiki include locales of: Soul-t’ukpyolsi, Hlavni Mesto Praha, and the exotic French location, Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur. Circle time: Bringing the pink poodle and the shark (favourite characters) into the same fable as the giraffe. Note that a giraffe now also appears in the “Kangaroo and Emu” fable, according to artwork. Inspiration from French locale discovered from “Recent visitors”. Perhaps also need to investigate the art of feng shui? The colour red? Eiffel Tower?

See the four drafts of our, as yet, unfinished school motto fables at the new wiki page. If you’re finding this blog entry at some time in the future, the fables may not resemble their early versions by much.

This week, I did a quick Google search on what other schools around the world are doing regarding Kindergarten students using wikis. (Answer: still not much?) It’s now been a full twelve months since the unit of work, documented at penrithpslibrary.pbwiki.com, was done at this school, and I’ve just launched a similar project for a group of (possibly) gifted and talented Early Stage 1 students, hoping to repeat and improve upon the 2007 successes.

What surprised and delighted me was that numerous sites recently have earmarked/bookmarked our wiki pages, as an exemplar from which others can draw inspiration:

For example, on the University of North Texas School of Library Science wiki pages, Janienne Brown says, about our site, “This example of a Wiki from Australia shows exactly what a Wiki can accomplish and in this case [Stage 3 book review page] one of the students had their review printed in the newspaper and another student won a voucher for their participation, this is above and beyond the immediate benefits of the Wiki. Also shown are the stages the Wiki went through to illustrate that this is a process [Kindergarten fables] and the process is part of the journey. The setup of this Wiki is from their home page and names the book and author of the book and ‘A book review by first name, last initial, and grade’. This Wiki shows beautifully what we hope to accomplish, students reading, writing, getting other students excited about reading and writing too.”

Cool!

And, in an excellent and enthusiastic PowerPoint presentation (”Web 2.0 – Join the journey”) , for a Summer Institute for School Librarians by Lori Franklin, our Core Values Fables pages were recommended in her section called “Why in the world wiki?”

Even cooler!

I’m making sure I take lots of notes (ie. “evidence-based practice”) again as I run the program this term. I’m already realising that some things I did last year, as a bit of a fluke, were very effective. We still don’t have an interactive whiteboard in the school, so last year, when I had the wiki page set up on a bank of three computers, the students were able to see, quite dramatically, that changes to one wiki page on one computer, were instantaneously altered on the other two computer screens, after a simple page refresh. I only had one screen on for the first lesson this year and I suddenly realised a missed opportunity.

The twelve students, from three different classes, are highly motivated and are excited about working together on some “special”. I was impressed that they seem to be more Internet savvy than the 2007 group. It will be an interesting term!

Yesterday, my last group of Olympic Games rappers had to miss their scheduled rapping session in the library and I had to play catch-up with them today. They were supposed to name the last of our animal mascot “reporters”: a large, cardboard, papier mache, crepe paper and fabric Chinese dragon, who has been a decorative fixture in the library since early 2007, and a frequent participant in our school’s annual Chinese New Year Parade.

This morning, one of the teachers of another Stage 2 class – having no idea of my plans to use the dragon during the rap – asked if she could borrow my dragon for her class item at Assembly next Friday. I told her that, by the end of the day, he’d even have a name (choosing a name was to have been a Circle Time activity for the rappers) but she said that the story being told in their item involved a Chinese dragon called Nian.

So Nian it is! Now one class is ecstatic that Niam is performing in another group’s item, and the budding actors are impressed that Nian will also be reportiing on Olympic events for the rappers… between play rehearsals, of course. Anticipation for the rap events (and the Games) is at fever pitch!

I wish I could say I’d planned it that way. A typical week in the library.

My co-presenter, Cath Keane, had prepared eleven of our PowerPoint pages, I’d added my own hyperlinks to the twelfth and last slide, and we only had 50 minutes or so to fill anyway. We also had plenty of time before our session, “Young rappers”, to play on the interactive whiteboard (IWB), test our hyperlinks and cache all our web pages that we were planning to visit. We also knew in advance that we had about twenty people signed up to hear our talk. Everything worked in the rehearsal and off we went to the first keynote event of Day 2 of this Early Years Conference.

Clinical psychologist, Lyn Worsley, presented her fascinating session on “The resilience doughnut: the secret of strong kids” and, while she probably didn’t say anything terribly new, especially to a ballroom filled with teachers who already had solid backgrounds in early childhood education, the strength of her approach was the clear answer of “where to know?” that one could glean after having used her clever, simple analytical tool for gauging the resilience of a particular student. Wonderful!

Before we knew it, Cath and I were deep into our presentation on book raps, blogs, wikis and Circle Time. Our only hitch was that our computer connection, which had worked so perfectly in rehearsal, had been lost for the presentation. A tech person came in and got us back online most efficiently, but our live connection to the Wilfrid rap blog (on Edublogs) was no longer working. Luckily, our PowerPoint had lots of frame grabs from the site, and the links to the Departmental website and my school’s wiki pages were still viable, so we carried on regardless. We finished off with a reading of my Kinder students’ “Zebra with spots” fable of 2007, and a walk-through of selected pages from my school’s wiki pages. I hope our presentation has encouraged more schools to start dabbling in wikis and blogs.

It all seemed to go very well, but a highlight for me was that two attendees hung back at the end to (re)introduce themselves. It was none other than Warren and Kathy, two of my colleagues from my teachers college days! They’d noticed each other in the audience of my workshop session – I’m not sure at what point they realised that I was also from the same year – but morning tea turned out to be a mini-reunion of the Class of ‘79 of the Guild Teachers College. We swapped anecdotes about the good ol’ days and pocket histories of our lives. It was the first time we’d seen each other since Graduation Day in 1980 – very exciting, and great to know that they are doing so well in their own teaching careers. (I can see a bigger reunion coming up in the next few months! I hope.)

Next up was Peter Gould, Manager, Mathematics at NSW DET – and one of the people I worked with on numerous occasions back in my Scan editor days. Peter’s keynote was “From ABC to 123: what counts in early numeracy” and – despite some frustrating glitches with the movie clip elements of his presentation – it was an invaluable reminder of the essential differences in the ways young children learn to be numerate as opposed to literate.

After lunch, I attended two more workshops, both of which (again) ably demonstrated the amazing array of teaching and learning strategies that interactive whiteboards are bringing to classrooms in the 21st century. I guess that’s the main thing I’m taking from this conference: that most of today’s students are already citizens of the digital world of Web 2.0. The sooner their teachers and parents play catch-up the better. Every presentation I went to was using IWBs as part of their presentation – even my presentation, and today was the first time I’d actually been able to use one! Knowing that a little knowledge is dangerous, I can’t wait to get my hands on an IWB as part of my school library’s facilities and let my imagination run wild. Or wilder.

This conference left its delegates with so much food for thought (and delicious food for the body – the Novotel, Brighton-le-Lands always does well in that regard), great ideas we can start using on Monday (first day back of Term Three), and some wonderful memories of networking with colleagues, old and new. Synthesising all the learning into our daily lives will take time, but I’m glad I gave up two days of my vacation to absorb it all. I’m also grateful for the very handsome, gold-embossed “Presenter” pens, which Cath and I received for doing our workshop.

Roll on Term Three…

I can highly recommend Circle Time as a successful strategy for scribing the students’ fresh, unassuming responses to the stimulus material. They were delivering their grandparents’ sayings with such seriousness. (I was inwardly in hysterics by the spontaneity and honesty of their oral replies, and it was all I could do to hold the pencil steady as I scribed their warmly humorous answers.)

They said:

We will always remember these wise words:

“When cooking pikelets, don’t get too close to the pan.”

“Don’t jump on the couch.”

“Chew like a lady.”

“Never draw on people when they are asleep.”

“These things you should remember because I did it the hard way.”

“Always start the day with a good breakfast.”

“Study hard!”

“Never pick your nose in public.”

“Respect people, even if you dislike them.”

Wonderful stuff, eh?

I have an article about Circle Time in a recent issue of Scan. If you’re interested in following it up, the details are:
‘Circle time: maximising opportunities for talking and listening at Penrith Public School’in Scan 26(4) November 2007, pp 4-7.

I have organised a wiki activity page based on the picture book, Arthur by Amanda Graham and Donna Gynell, which is the book being used for the upcoming ALIA National Simultaneous Reading Day on Wednesday 21st May at 11.00 am (Term Two, Week 5). A group of nearby Priority Schools Programs (PSP) schools have recently formed a professional network, to prepare for our forthcoming interactive whiteboards. The Penrith Reading Project: Books from Birth (another local PSP initiative, containing different local schools), has also been invited to join us for the reading.

My colleague, Kerrie Mead, and I have been brainstorming possible activities to support Simultaneous Reading Day. Here’s what a draft of what we plan to present to the staff of our own school on Monday, and we’ll be making the material available online – as a blog and wiki – for the other schools. (An email today tells me that the ALIA site offers even more activities, many downloadable.)

On Wednesday 21st May 2008, at 11.00 am, children all over Australia will be reading, listening to and commenting on the same story at the same time. The featured book is Arthur by Amanda Graham and Donna Gynell.

At 11:00 am we could:

* Gather in the hall and listen to the story en masse: one reader, readers from a single group (class, Student Representative Council members, captains and prefects, teachers, parents or __________________ ).

* Gather in three groups (Early Stage 1 and Stage 1; Stage 2; Stage 3) in the hall, upstairs area and library and read the story as above.

Before the day: (in class, at Stage meeting, at assemblies)

* Let the students know about it – the purpose of the exercise, the significance of this kind of literary activity, how it might be the same/different in each school. (Great Circle Time material!)

* Familiarise your students with the text. (See ideas below.)

* Outline how the event will be held – ask for ideas which the students think might improve the plan and let us know before the day!

* Promote the event in the school newsletter.

* Signage around the school for parents and students.

* Check out the official ALIA page, and links to free blackline activity sheets.

* Supplement our resources with official posters and the link to Era Publications.

After the event:

* Ask your students for feedback – eg. The best thing was… ; I didn’t expect that to happen; next time… , etc.

* Tell the PSP committee what you really think.

Some ideas to familarise your students in all the wonderful ways you know how to capture their imagination! (Our school has rounded up several copies of the Arthur picture book, a big book version, two sequels and an Arthur hand puppet.)

Early Stage 1/Stage 1:

Who is in the story? Where does it take place? (eg. Paint Arthur or your pet, write a list, make a shop diagram, role play, add a pet image to the wiki.)

What is Arthur’s problem? How does he try to solve it? (eg. Feelings barometer, descriptive writing, pet ownership graph, alliterative pet adjectives for the wiki – perfect pup, quaint quarrion, timid tabby.)

Pets need… – but what might pets want?

If I was a pet I’d like to be a ………………………. because …………………………

Interactive learning objects from TaLe (click on Primary and use search engine).

Stage 2:

Any or all of the above, plus

Descriptor matrix (eg. “Purple, spotty, three-headed wombat”) – and then create it.

Research – eg. Which animals are the most difficult to keep as pets and why? What is the best dog breed for (type of person/situation)? Who is the most famous pet and why?

Extend-a-story – eg. What other pets could Arthur have imitated and what would he have done? Write a new version of the story. Compare this book with the similarly-themed Edward the emu by Sheena Knowles and Rod Clement.

The perfect pet for ………………….. would be a …………………… because.

Stage 3:

As above, plus

“Unpack” the form of the story (repetition, chorusing, types of words used).

What are the conventions of picture books? Examine favourites from home and the school library to discover similarities/differences. Write and illustrate your own picture book.

Read the story with your buddy (Buddy Classes – pairs of students from different stages) and ask them some prepared questions about it.

What is the moral of the story? What is a moral? what is the point of stories with morals? What other moral stories (and traditional fables) do you know? Which ones make good sense… or not?

Check out the interactive Stage 3 learning objects from TaLe (click on Primary and use search engine).

Yesterday, Dr Ross J Todd had challenged the conference presenters – and all the teacher-librarian attendees – to embrace evidence-based practice when presenting educational research results. Although I had the students’ opening comments (scribed quotes from oral statements) on a page of my school library wiki site – ready for my tutorial session today – I had not yet planned to divulge all of the the evaluation comments (scroll down the page of the same URL) from the culmination of the unit (lest I decided to use the information elsewhere).

Oh well. I’m glad I decided to appease Ross, and fill in my time until breakfast, compiling the students’ final responses onto the wiki page, and uploading it ready for today’s talk. I’d quite forgotten how informative the students’ final comments were. (”Why did we use a wiki to write and publish our core value fables?” One answer: “Pencils run out of lead”.) Comparing these closing comments against the syllabus outcomes, over the next few months, is going to be very interesting.

By 11:00 am, my session was over for the conference – I was a free man! – and had a great and more relaxed time – especially by attending: author Paul Stafford’s fascinating talk about his Dead Bones Society (targeting reluctant young male readers) and how he has taught creative writing to hardened criminals; and an equally stimulating session, chaired by Kathy Rushton, on the Indij series of books, written by groups of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

A highlight of Day 2 was the closing panel, hosted by bookseller/teacher Paul MacDonald, and featuring several popular Australian children’s authors, including Libby Gleeson, James Roy, Kate Forsythe and Deb Abela. They were all contributing to a discussion on “Multiliteracies in a digital world”, including postulating whether “the book” was as dead as the dead trees of which books are made. (While text books and hardcopy encyclopedias may well be on their way out, none of the guests seemed to feel that children’s picture books or other fiction in book form were in too much danger – yet. Well, except for the rising cost of paper.)

Interestingly, the Kindergarten students’ work I was showcasing today backed up the professional authors’ feelings about books. One student’s response to my question of “What should we do next (ie. now that our wiki project is over)?” was:

“More drawings! Make lots more fables. Make a book with page numbers.”