Booked Inn

Unlike the last conference I was asked to speak at, I went into today’s events without that heavy weight of responsibility and impending disaster. I mean, if I could fill an hour on my own last time, how much easier would it be this time? We knew our material back-to-front, if necessary. The most difficult aspect would surely be, what bits do I leave out?

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 knew there was a reason I didn’t book my overseas vacation for this break, but I wasn’t sure exactly why… until I realised that it would have been because I’d already committed to speak at a workshop at the 2008 Early Years Conference: Learning, Growing, Achieving, presented by NSW DET. Day 1 was held today, but my talk session - co-presented with current Scan editor, Cath Keane, isn’t until tomorrow.

Cath has put together a PowerPoint presentation about our recent ventures into the world of Web 2.0 - online book raps for Stage 1, and related blogs and wikis, and I’ll also be talking about my school wiki pages, using some of the material I prepared (on fable writing for Early Stage 1) for the School libraries leading learning conference I did earlier this year. My conference notes are still online, revamped a little to incorporate some recent reflections. Since that last conference, I’ve also worked on some other relevent projects: a wiki page for the Arthur Simultaneous Reading event and some great Nursery Rhyme matrices, which I used in Term One this year with Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 classes.

Today there were some excellent and thought-provoking keynote speeches from Professor Scott Paris, of University of Michigan, (”Teaching and assessing comprehension right from the start”) and Tracey Simpson (”Honest talk, shared language: connectedness for success in the early years”). Both keynotes emphasised the importance of teachers making full use of evidence-based practice, both reading the results of others’ research, and using one’s own to inform future teaching. I enjoyed these sessions, took lots of notes - which I promise to synthesis and report back about.

And sorry, Judy - of HeyJude blog - I still take my notes on paper. With a pen. The old-fashioned way. Again. (Although the money I saved not going to the USA could go towards an Apple laptop? Maaaybe.) At another recent conference, Judy had challenged attendees at that conference why no one in the audience was using their mobile (to send off live still images of the speakers direct to their blogs), or Twittering as the speeches were unfurling, or sending a live feed of the conference to overseas locations.

As I await my school’s first interactive whiteboard (IWB), it was interesting to note that many (most?) workshop presenters are now using them as standard equipment. I attended excellent and flashy sessions on “Student learning in a digital age” and “COGs: raising the bar in the early years”. In the main room, there was also a “Regional showcase” of the Best Start assessment tools project from the Sydney Region.

In summing up the regional showcase, Rob Randall reminded us of an excellent earlier quote and many people jotted this down as one of their last comments on their notepads. The new emphasis for the schools involved in Best Start has become “… shorter teaching episodes with fluid groups of students”.

Not an entirely new thought for me, coming from plenty of experience in PSP (Priority Schools Program) schools, but no doubt quite a new concept for others.

Tomorrow - Day 2! Wish me luck!

Every year since 1999, the NSW DET team gathers the reviews of the annual Children’s Book Council of Australia shortlisted books onto a web page. It’s a topic I find quite nostalgic, since when I worked at Scan, as editor, it was part of my job to prepare the annotations and reviews for uploading, and to do all the cross referencing.

2008 isn’t up yet, but most of the nominated books have already been reviewed in past Scans. Resources are reviewed by experienced NSW teachers, teacher librarians and DET (Department of Education and Training) curriculum specialists to a clear set of criteria, and stage levels, perspectives and curriculum links are always recommended. The May issue of Scan (vol 27 no 2) arrived in schools just this week, and the latest annual annotated list of CBCA shortlisted books (directing readers to various past issues containing the reviews) is on pp 44-45.

I very rarely get the “Books for Older Readers”, such as this year’s Love like water by Meme McDonald, for the K-6 school library since the CBCA usually specifies “for mature readers” for this section when the shortlists are announced. Love like water was reviewed in Scan (vol 26 no 3) and it was recommended only for Stage 6 (Years 11 and 12).

Scan suggests Matt Ottley’s Requiem for a beast for Stage 5 and 6 (Years 9-12). I must admit I’m quite intrigued to see it; I love Matt’s past work, and this book features a music CD to accompany the strong images!

I have picked up the information book, Girl stuff (not getting a print review in Scan until vol 27 no 3), but I’ve housed it in our Reference section and will promote it to the Stage 3 (Years 5 and 6) students by way of their class teachers. Likewise, I placed the haunting picture book Dust in my Reference section, since I wasn’t sure that parents would appreciate young students taking it home.

From the Crichton Award new illustrators’ category, I made sure that Ock Von Fiend went into Fiction, not Easy Fiction. I recall several people questioning its inclusion in Australian Standing Orders last year and, again, it’s a beautiful picture book which needs to be placed with appropriate audiences.

Sometimes you just can’t be in several places at the same time! (Even when uploading posts; it should have still been 21st May when I posted this!)

For our very successful Simultaneous Reading of the picture book Arthur, the teachers had voted to do the readings in three sections and three locations, but I wasn’t able to stretch myself sufficiently to get to all three places. As agreed, Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students and teachers (and lots of parents) gathered in the assembly hall with a big book version of Arthur, an official Arthur finger puppet, and a large, fluffy dog hand puppet, which had a striking resemblance to the title star. Stage 2 came to the library and had orgainsed selected students to reading passage. Stage 3 went to the old upstairs hall, and used an online version of the book, enlarged onto a big screen via the data projector. (That was the group I couldn’t get to, but the students seemed to enjoy their experience.)

Speaking of split loyalties, I had realised a few days ago that we had so much on today (the above-mentioned reading; our first Stage 3 sessions of a new book rap; the Greatest Morning Tea charity fundraiser; a mufti day for a belated Loud Shirt Day; and a canned drink collection to prepare for our upcoming, annual Pedlars’ Fair), I didn’t have the heart to abandon it all for the local district teacher-librarians’ professional development day. Drat. (I wonder if the T-Ls, too, ended up reading Arthur at 11 am?)

Every day is different; I wouldn’t have it any other way. And somehow I must find time with each class, over the next week, to squeeze in a great little wiki activity, to further follow-up Arthur. Although our school doesn’t have an interactive whiteboard (yet), I do find myself reconfiguring lessons so they’ll work well with the IWB (next time) when it does arrive.

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).

Welcome back to a brand new school term!

In the rush of all the end-of-term events a few weeks ago, the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) announced the 2008 shortlist for the annual Children’s Book of the Year Awards. The Winners and Honour Books will be announced in Term Three, on Friday 15th August, 2008. This year they are again presented in five categories:

• CBCA Book of the Year: Older Readers
• CBCA Book of the Year: Younger Readers
• CBCA Book of the Year: Early Childhood
• CBCA Picture Book of the Year
• The Eve Pownall Award for Information Books.

I found a few minutes between finishing up book raps, rounding up overdues, gathering resources for Term Two units of work, etc, to find out how many books on the shortlist were already in our collection. Quite a few, actually, which was pleasing; my selection criteria must be pretty good. I made some little badges (representing the bronze nomination stickers the books will start displaying in the shops) to put on the covers of the shortlisted books so I could set up a display. It occurred to me that, this year, I can parallel the gold, silver and bronze medals of the Book of the Year Awards with the medals of the 2008 Olympic Games.

Wandering through the supermarket during the holidays, I found the most wonderful $1.69 teaching aid! Three little “party favour” plastic medals in simulated metallic gold, silver and bronze. The number of times, in previous years, I have been presenting titles from the shortlist, only to find myself really stretching to describe the colour “bronze” to young children - and the number of times I end up realising that many young students simply have no concept, whatsoever, of what a medal is…

Maybe this year my $1.69 extravagance will pay off?

Our whole school community has just celebrated their love of reading this afternoon with our quarterly reading picnic - a great sight to behold: 400 students, their teachers, students’ parents and toddler siblings, spread out in groups scattered throughout the school playground, enjoying books and nibblies in a wonderful picnic atmosphere.

These celebrations have become an end-of-term tradition here over recent years, and they are so effective at bringing a community together with a literacy focus. This term we has an emphasis on procedural writing as our reading matter, with student-made recipes collected in a school cookbook, and baskets of commercial picture books, School Magazine issues and recipe books. There was also a quiz about bizarre foods, with prizes for successfully completed entries.

The last of my Wilfrid book rap groups had an opportunity to finish off their elderly resident outlines yesterday - it was frantic here last week, with Book Fair and Grandparents’ Day - and I’ve just taken digital photos of their work, which I’ll add to the rap blog’s Gallery tonight.

It’s been a busy end-of-term. While the rest of the staff were at the student disco, I presented the Wilfrid rap blog and wiki pages to a group of our parents on Tuesday night and they were surprised/enthused/fascinated at how we had harnessed the capabilities of Web 2.0 to share such meaningful learning and teaching, especially that their children had been communicating with students all over Australia and even Vietnam. While preparing my talk, I re-read the early introductory messages again this week, and it was a great reminder at how far the groups of rappers and their teachers had come in such a short time!

We are always looking for opportunities to improve community involvement in school life and promoting our website, blog and wiki URLs for parents to access at home will go a long way to fostering such involvement.

Next term’s reading picnic coincides with ALIA’s simultaneous reading of the picture book, Arthur. We have big plans for that one. Watch this space!

The alarm clock was again set to go off at 6:00 am and, of course, I was awake - wide awake - at 4:20 am. Nothing to do except turn on my computer, dig through all my hand-scrawled notes from Circle Time evaluations of last year’s Kindergarten wiki fables project, and add them to the new wiki page I intended to use in my presentation today.

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.”

Literally.

This week, my book rapping students in Stage 1 were writing their responses to a rap point which required them to create an elderly character for the retirement home, which next to the house of young main character, Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge (see the Mem Fox & Julie Vivas picture book of the same name). The students must collaborate on a jointly-constructed text, drawing upon Mem’s writing style, to introduce a brand new resident of the retirement home.

Last year, the Early Stage 1 students really got the hang of character generation for our wiki fables, which we developed during Circle time and then visual arts activities. Wanting to replicate that success, I suddenly had a vision of the students sitting around a long sheet of coloured Brennex paper, with a young volunteer stretched out upon it, while I traced their outline with a Texta. Perhaps the students would be already sparking ideas off each other as I drew?

And it worked! While I made the life-size silhouette (x 3 - which we will decorate later), I quizzed the three groups about what their resident likes to do best, former careers, physical appearance, etc. Keeping in mind the need for these students to use current experiences, I used orange Brennex paper for the first silhouette (it was our school’s International Harmony Day celebration the next day) and suddenly - so obviously, much to the students’ and my delight - Mrs Harmony Day was born! We ended up with a whole A3 page of brainstormed suggestions and, at our next meeting, the students helped me reassemble them into a descriptive narrative which answered the Rap Point:

“One day a new lady came to live in the old people’s home. Her name was Mrs Harmony Day. Her favourite colour was orange. She wore orange clothes and her hair was orange and styled in a bob.

“Mrs Day liked reading. She used to be a skipping champion, and she was also a racing car driver. She still has her old racing car and she uses it to go shopping to buy rings and necklaces. She has a treadmill to keep fit. She loves tearing out recipes in old magazines.

“Wilfrid asked her, ‘What’s a memory?’

“Mrs Day said, ‘Something that’s orange, my dear, something that’s orange.’

“Wilfrid took an orange from the fruit bowl to show Miss Nancy. The orange reminded her of happy memories with her family, squeezing orange juice on an old fashioned orange squeezer.”

I make a point of jotting down the students’ banter for use in writing up our rap responses. When I write fiction texts myself, they are always much too wordy and complex. I just love the natural language of young students, and I find that their scribed sentences have an economy of words and a unique spontaneity that sounds just like a picture book.

The second group came for their lesson to find I’d rolled out green Brennex paper - I’d just grabbed a colour that seemed plentiful - and the procedure was repeated. This time, a boy was the tallest (to make the silhouette), and suddenly the green colour had them discussing St Patrick’s Day, which had obviously been mentioned in their home classes during the week.

The vacation for Good Friday and Easter Monday has prevented us from constructing our final draft but so far, the students have decided that their resident is Mr Patrick St Green. The list of Mr St Green’s likes, dislikes, hobbies and his old job has been compiled - they are great, but you’ll have to wait! (A few students thought he might be a friend of still-faceless Mrs Harmony Day, whom they saw pinned to a noticeboard in the school library.)

Then the Language Support class came to the library, with friends from the hearing support class. Three time’s the charm, so the tallest boy rolled himself onto some purple Brennex paper and I drew his outline to make a new resident of the old people’s home. This group is much harder to draw ideas from, but they still managed some great one-liners!

“One day, Wilfrid Gordon’s other grandfather, Mr Peter Laurie Bilby Partridge, came to live at the nursing home. He has four names just like Wilfrid. Grandpa Peter is a happy fellow who loves wearing purple. He likes eating ice cream, red apples and Tiny Teddy biscuits. Maybe that is why he is a bit too fat.

“Grandpa Peter used to be an author who wrote children’s books. When he wasn’t writing books, he drove an ice cream truck. Grandpa Peter goes to bed a lot, and he sometimes likes to swim in the pool.

“Wilfrid asked Grandpa Peter, ‘What’s a memory?’

“Peter Laurie Bilby Partridge said, ‘Something as cold as ice cream, Wilfrid, something as cold as ice cream!’

“Wilfrid showed Miss Nancy a photo of Grandpa Peter’s blue and white ice cream truck and she remembered hearing music playing as an ice cream van came by on very hot days.”

Next week, I’m hoping to photocopy some large elderly faces so the students can select an appropriate face for their new resident. We’ll probably add some wool hair, as well.

This book rap has been exhilarating!

As I explained in my post about the fables wiki post, Term Four for our Early Stage One and Stage One students concentrates on fables. Now that we’ve started a new year, the school-based (three year, cyclic) literacy program devotes Term One to an exploration of nursery rhymes, Term Two to fairy stories, Term Three to Dreaming stories - and back to fables again in Term Four.

On Fridays, I take eight Early Stage One and Stage One intensive language class students for an additional lesson, to help prepare them for their immersion into English lessons the next week. These students perform best in English when they have had lots of exposure to the field knowledge of the topic being studied. For the nursery rhymes unit, I like to emphasise the repetitiveness of rhyming words, the relative ease of memorising nursery rhymes, the historical context (as often reflected by the illustrations in children’s picture book collections of nursery rhymes), and really explore the often archaic vocabulary.

Last year, these language students were integrated into several different English classes, and it was important that they entered Monday’s lessons full of confidence about the topic of each nursery rhyme (a different one each fortnight). This year, they come to the library on a Thursday (for their team-taught lesson) accompanied by junior students from our hearing support class. It will be interesting to see how these students work as a cohesive group in the upcoming week.

Last Friday, we examined Jack and Jill, which they’d already learned by heart with their class teacher - so I brought out the book we used last year, which has bery old-fashioned artwork to illustrate the nursery rhymes. I had the students predicting what they would see in the pictures, and they did extremely well: “a boy; a girl; some water (in a well? - What’s a well? Will it be made of bricks, stones, wood, etc.); a bucket; a boy getting a bandage put on him…”

We also discussed why they were called “nursery” rhymes, and then the meaning of the word “rhyme” in its context. Who are nursery rhymes told to? What’s a nursery? What’s a ryhme? Why weren’t they written down at first? Who do we tell nursery ryhmes to? I was thrilled that the Stage One students were remembering details from a similar set of lessons this time last year!
We said the rhyme together. Where was the bucket? It wasn’t mentioned in the nursery rhyme. Or was it? (It took another recitation before someone realised the bucket must be the pail.)

Then I asked some questions: will we see the city or the country (harking back to last year’s The town mouse and the country mouse fable); will there be a rabbit in the picture (there was!); will we see a mother/cow/shark/bottle of vinegar (what’s vinegar?), etc.; a cat?; a crown? (What will the crown look like…?); and so on. There is always a major emphasise on opportunities for the students to use repetitive oral language, in ways I had modelled, as they answered these questions.

Next, I revealed the pictures and we ticked off our predictions. The students were getting very excited that they had predicted so well. (Again: “Where was the crown?” - I even demonstrated finding it on a real boy called Jack!)

Next, we did a dramatisation of the nursery rhyme: miming the exhausting climbing of the steep hill; fetching the water; “Jack” rolling down the hill (the illustration had the bucket upturning onto Jack’s head, to great hilarity; “Jack” hurting the crown of his head; “Jill” tumbling after him; “trotting” home for medical attention; “Jack” crying out as vinegar was splashed on his head, etc. I also had a chance to tell an anecdote about my paternal grandfather, who always used to maintain that the best cure for injuries like Jack’s was a Depression-era poultice of Friar’s Balsam and brown paper!

Sometimes I look at these five- and six-year old students and worry that I’m aiming too high, but they thrive on it! Their eyes grow wider and wider as we act out the words, not overlooking any of the quirky, now-anachronistic, terms. Their reactions as “Jack” suffered loudly his indignities with the vinegar soon had them telling their own anecdotes of various medical treatments for their cuts and scratches over the years.

The dramatisation of the (rather abstract, to them) concepts in Jack and Jill have definitely became more real, and I know that they will surprise their class teacher on Monday with their newly-acquired field knowledge, and renewed confidence, in saying - and performing - the rhyme.

Update (25 Feb): Success! Now check out Stage 1’s Nursery rhyme wiki page! First Stage 1 class for the week suggested rhyming pairs for flashcards, which were typed onto an online matrix on our wiki page to create their own nursery rhyme parodies.