Another Christmas, another John Lewis ad

I may have retired – my second Christmas period away from teaching – but the time still goes so fast! Every year, I am curious as to what John Lewis & Partners did with their famous annual Christmas ad. It was always fun to share and discuss these productions with the students. Merry Christmas!


Christmas 2019 Ad | John Lewis & Partners and Waitrose & Partners | Excitable Edgar


The Making Of Excitable Edgar (Extended Version) | John Lewis & Partners and Waitrose & Partners

Merry Christmas!

Have you been wondering why no updates?

Currently I am on Long Service Leave, preparing for retirement. I guess there will be irregular blog updates as they occur to me. Meanwhile, Merry Christmas!


John Lewis Christmas advert 2018 featuring Elton John | The boy and the piano


The making of The boy and the piano | John Lewis & Partners Christmas ad 2018

Humpty Dumpty and eggs

Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students are investigating the nursery rhyme of Humpty Dumpty.


Humpty Dumpty Traditional English nursery rhyme egg song


Humpty Dumpty – 3D animation English nursery rhyme songs for children with lyrics


Humpty Dumpty


Humpty Dumpty rhyme – Meaning behind the nursery rhyme

More origin possibilities at:
Humpty Dumpty and the Fall of Colchester


Alice through the looking glass [movie] | Humpty Dumpty | Disney NL

Humpty was pushed?

Grass into hay: Little Boy Blue

Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students are investigating the nursery rhyme, “Little Boy Blue”.


Little Boy Blue – nursery rhyme with karaoke

Here are the factual Youtube clips we will be using to expand their field knowledge:


Haystack building using pitchforks


How to make grass into hay bales


Round baling hay


Blowing horns


Blowing 2 shofars

Chinese New Year – Year of the Dog

Students in Stage 1 and Early Stage 1 will be celebrating Chinese New Year as part of our Celebrations unit in literacy. This year, it will be the Year of the Dog. We will be reading the picture books, New year surprise! by Christopher Cheng & Di Wu and Made in China by Deborah Nash.

Here are some Youtube resources:


Year of the Dog – Wallace & Gromit


2018 Lion Dance in Pavilion KL ushering the Year of the Dog

And when revising our work on sheep:


World’s wooliest sheep ‘found in Australia’


Shaun the Sheep has been finally shorn!

Addressing English outcomes in library lessons

Today, I want to explore with my teacher colleagues the upcoming National Simultaneous Storytime picture book for 2018, Hickory dickory dash by Tony Wilson & Laura Wood, and how it fits into our existing K-2 literacy cycle, and how it can address English outcomes for Stage 2 and Stage 3 students (see Objective C).

English K-10 syllabus outcome (From NSW Education Standards Authority, NESA):


English Objective C
English Objective C

We will also briefly discuss:

* aspects of Guided Inquiry activities for Stage 2 and Stage 3, team-taught, library lessons this year (Note: units use the KLA’s own syllabus outcomes plus related English outcomes)

* revisit the concept of pre-, mid- and post- surveys for students (from the SLIM toolkit) to collect both qualitative and quantitative data (action research)

* some possible strategies for improving student attitudes and successes with longer form fiction, such as novels (see Objective D).

English K-10 syllabus outcome (From NSW Education Standards Authority, NESA):


English Objective D
English Objective D

OASIS searching:



Searching the library catalogue in Oliver


Students searching with the Orbit interface in Oliver

Fables and frogs

Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students are learning about Spring, the life cycle of the frog and the fable, “The exploding frog” (aka “The frog and the ox”).


The life cycle of a frog


Life cycle of a frog


Panama frogs serenade females – The trials of life – BBC


The mystery of the red-eyed tree frog

Here are the links we have used in previous years:
ianmclean.edublogs.org/2011/10/18/frogs-frogs-frogs-life-cycles-fables/.