Booked Inn

The Stage 2 students and I had a great time this week writing up their sports reports for the Beijing Olympics & Book Week 2008. They came to the library with their class teacher (who is brand new to rapping) - usually we’ve had two rotating groups instead, but with the industrial action of yesterday morning, there were lots of students still absent in the afternoon.

We went through the key elements of a newspaper sports report/article, using the supplied Rap Sheet, then read and analysed the “Kiwis vs Wallabies” report from The Shaggy Gully Times by Jackie French & Bruce Whatley. When it came time to break into writing groups, the students were highly motivated, and they were so empowered whenever they made up a clever pun. Of course, it really helped that one of the students was fresh off the plane from her recent visit to Beijing - and that the extremely fast gold-medal winning Jamaican athlete she told us about had the highly punny surname of Bolt!

By the way, it only occurred to us later why that Shaggy Gully football match was being played at night!

Yes, it’s been a a busy term, but traditionally Term Three always is in school libraries: Book Week, National Literacy & Numeracy Week, and all that.

Rap Point 2 stretched across two weeks this time, on purpose, and it was also okay to post a bit late, since each school in the rap tends to work at a different pace. There had been a few new schools only just starting to look around the pages and/or noticing the newer messages on earlier rap points.

I decided to concentrate on prediction that week. I like to get the students to anticipate what might be coming next, so we predicted how we would:
* find the rap blog, with which search terms (eg. on Google)
* recognise our post from last week (ie. look out for school crest avatar).

Also, we predicted the contents of the page of The Shaggy Gully Times we’d be reading in the rap session. I asked one group of students to make predictions as to what they’d see inside the local newspaper when I unrolled it (fresh from my front lawn). Local newspapers are a great free resource, and many times they only get noticed by the students when they are asked to clean out the budgies’ cage, or collect newspapers for covering school desks during art, or when making papier mache.

The students were very engaged in skimming the layout, quickly identifying and confirming almost all their predictions about the newspaper. The standard of talking and listening was very pleasing - they were perceptive, and supportive of each other’s earlier ideas.

I hope this is an activity they will be able to repeat with their parents. (And that the newspaper they choose doesn’t have too many full page ads for local attractions such as “Wild Boys Afloat”, etc.) Several students reported recently that they’d personally gone online and shown their parents the current rap blog on their home Internet computers. One girl said, “I even printed out the page that had my name and comment on it.”

I’ve received a question about the current rap, the Beijing Olympic Games and Book Week 2008 rap, which is going to incorporate a wiki activity.

To join the actual rap, go to http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/raps/beijingolympics/index.htm and follow the prompts. The rap blog itself, where you enter your class responses, is over at http://rapblog3.edublogs.org/

There’s still time to join, do jointly-constructed introductions and then Rap Point 1.

I’ve also been asked about one of my school’s Stage 1 teachers’ “Cranky the crocodile” project. This is like a “Travel buddies” set-up, but just for the one class to share. Cranky is a stuffed class mascot/puppet, who goes home with a different selected student each weekend. That child is responsible for documenting the adventure with photos, stories, drawings and small, flat souvenirs (such as cinema ticket stubs).

The teacher took Cranky home the first weekend, then Cranky went home with the most able students first, so there were some good model examples in the first few pages of scrapbook. This set a high standard.

Another school ran a “Travel buddies” project to complement the NSW DET’s “Possum Magic” book rap a few years ago. Grandma Poss and Hush - and their bicycle! - were posted off to numerous schools who’d signed up, and Grandma Poss collected photos, postcards, souvenirs and diary entries along the way.

Details on “Travel Buddies” is at http://www.oz-teachernet.edu.au/projects/tb

When local schools all have their interactive whiteboards (IWBs), I’d love to do something similar and maybe send a stuffed animal from school to school. I have a great flying fox toy the students have named Phoenix. currently, he’s helping the Stage 2 students with the new rap.

Here’s the wiki page we’ve set up.

Ah wonderful serendipity!

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.

This term, I’m working with at least seven very enthusiastic groups of Stage 2 students on the New South Wales Department of Education & Training’s Beijing Olympic Games & Book Week 2008 rap.

Firstly, as with the other raps which ran this year, I’m promoting the rap blog URL in the school newsletter so that students can show off their group’s rap responses with their families each week.

In case the URL doesn’t make it home, I’m also explicitly modelling a search strategy (ie. how to use Google to find the rap pages) each time the students come for their blogging session. I show them what happens when we type in raps and book raps as search terms (almost 1.5 million hits!) and how the abundance of riches can be reduced by using inverted commas. (ie. “raps and book raps” gives only 5000 possible sites - and, in any case, the NSW DET Raps webpage appears as choice #1).

Also I demonstrate the pathway to get to the blog itself. For the last two raps, many students tried out visiting the rap blog from home, and we received great parental feedback.

Secondly, I brought in a collection of stuffed animal toy mascots (plus others that were already decorating the library). The Bruce Whatley drawing of Tammy the Tortoise (in the Children’s Book Council of Australia shortlisted book, The Shaggy Gully Times) is uncannily like a toy tortoise I had at home, especially with the addition of a battery-operated pocket fan strapped to her back.

Now each group is selecting (and often naming) one of the animal “reporters”, who’ll represent them in the upcoming newspaper article rap point. Each one has his or her own “Press card” to get them into Olympic venues. The animal characters (a flying fox, the aforementioned tortoise, a Puffin Books puffin, a Chinese New Year dragon, a large green frog, Selby the taking dog, and my trusty big, black, furry, bungee spider - it’s a long story) might prove useful for some f(p)unny photojournalism in the playground. We’ll be able to upload the pictures to the Gallery of the rap blog - and they should provide inspiration for some typically Jackie French-esque animal puns.

Book Week is fast approaching!

Yesterday, I was discussing some of the CBCA shortlisted books with Stage 2 classes, and we turned our attention to “Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie letter” (Black Dog Books), which is edited by Carole Wilkinson.

Now, the Stage 3 students became very aware of the Kelly Gang last term, thanks to their “Gold!” unit in HSIE, and our library focus on bushrangers. I wasn’t expecting Stage 2 students to have much of an awareness about Ned.

A student in one class was asked what he knew about Ned Kelly the bushranger. I was fully expecting something to do with metal helmets, or robbing people, or maybe a connection to the late Heath Ledger (whose “Ned Kelly” movie was mentioned in recent obituaries for the Australian actor.)

“Ned Kelly had a lot of headaches. I saw him on the Nurofen ads on TV.” (Sure enough, I saw the commercial myself last night! Nurofen is a prominent pain medication.)

I read Carole Wilkinson’s introduction to “Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie letter” to another class and we discussed her mention of Ned’s rambling style as he narrated the long letter to gang member, Joe Byrne, and how Wilkinson had to correct Byrne’s spelling errors and missing punctuation.

“What is wrong with having no punctuation?” I asked.

“Full stops tell you when to take a breath,” someone suggested.

“Is that how Ned Kelly killed people?” another student piped up.

Huh?

“Is that how he killed people? By making people read all those sentences without taking a breath?

I’ve recently altered my blogroll to reflect the changes to Al Upton’s blog that mark the beginning of the end to a virtual controversy.

Teacher Al Upton and his class, the Year 3 miniLegends 08, of Glenelg, South Australia, now have separate blog sites.

Al has documented all the changes, checks and balances that will enable his online collaborative projects to continue! The long list of supportive comments from his readers and fellow educators, plus student bloggers the world over, has been preserved for posterity and makes for very stimulating, positive reading.

I love that Al has emphasised being proactive rather than reactive throughout the whole frustrating experience. Congratulations on a positive outcome!

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).

Al Upton and the miniLegends 08, an inspirational education blog from a teacher and his Year 3 students in Glenelg, South Australia, has been “disabled in compliance with DECS wishes”, DECS being the Department of Education and Children’s Services of South Australia.

I would hope this is only a temporary closure, during which time the Department will be clarifying some clearer guidelines? I can’t see that sealing off blogs as an avenue for student publication can possibly be a successful longterm strategy.

When I designed a website for a NSW primary school way back in 1997, it was only after uploading it - and seeing exactly how much information about students could be scooped up by the always-improving search engines, even in 1997 - that we, as a group of teachers, began to realise we needed quite a few ground rules to ensure student safety (such as “no student surnames”) - and eventually there were official Departmental memos to follow. At the end of last year, I introduced wiki pages to my new school, and this year blogs as well. I’ve also been trying to ascertain what Web 2.0 style will best suit my Principal, who’d like an easy, efficient way to upload the weekly newsletter.

It’s almost been like the process of discovery has started all over again; only very early days yet, but I’ve worked hard to make sure we cover all our bases. In my research I did find examples of NSW schools which published surnames of students, floor plans, teacher details, etc, on their websites, which was of great concern. Al has hit a problem in South Australia, with a blog that encouraged the fostering of mentorships, and thus a concern, or a perception, that the students may have been (or would be?) revealing too much of themselves online.

Surely the best learning situation for the students, as I said last week, is to have modelled the essential self-regulation of what they upload to a blog: following examples which they can use as a set of strategies at home, when the educators aren’t around to support them. (We can’t assume their parents are aware of how Internet savvy their children are.) I’m constantly amazed with what students already know about the big wide world of the World Wide Web. I hope there is a satisfactory resolution for the miniLegends and their teacher.

As I’ve mentioned here before, we are having great success with our NSW Departmental-sponsored book rap - in blog and wiki form - this term, with an emphasis on jointly-constructed texts, and it’s upskilling lots of teachers, teacher-librarians and students, from NSW and beyond, in the ways of Web 2.0. There’s no stopping these newly-empowered bloggers now, I wouldn’t think!

The very best of luck to Al and his class in getting back online very soon!

Meanwhile, I’m thrilled to report that I received notification from the NSW DET’s Web Filtering Team that my “…reported Incident has been resolved…” My Flickr slideshows are once again available, even if only under a teacher username.

Another great TaLe discovery: Discovering Antarctica: Being there!

I used this today with Stage 3 students, having found the site at lunchtime - and it answered my requirements perfectly. the students were actively engaged, and their banter was on-topic. The bridges sites I used this morning with Stage 2 students were simply too wordy (ie. while the information was there, they couldn’t extract it). This site on Antarctica concentrated on highly descriptive adjectives to describe a small selection of stunning photographs.

Ironically, the scope is almost exactly what I visualised doing as a wiki with the Stage 2 students for their investigation into bridges. Our result might not be as flashy (or even use Flash), but it will certainly serve as an inspiration.

I was first introduced to the mnemonic acronym, S.C.U.M.P.S., in 2003, when I was teaching a Stage 3 (Years 5 and 6) class. Presented in a matrix, students can use the attributes of Size, Colour, Use, Materials, Parts and Shape, for describing, comparing and contrasting objects. (The SCUMPS model can be found in Teaching complex thinking #6122, Hawker Brownlow Education, 2000, and has been used in HSC online activities.)

S.C.U.M.P.S. encourages and supports students, especially when working in cooperative learning groups, to record their topical field knowledge, show gaps in their research or sources, and can scaffold talking, listening, reading and writing.

Today, after demonstrating to the first Stage 2 class for the week how to use a S.C.U.M.P.S. proforma to compare and contrast a gluestick and a picture book, the class teacher and I sent the students off, in groups of three, to begin recording their comparisons between two distinctly different bridges of their choice. The proforma was used to compare a selection of the online Bridges photographs from the Flickr slideshow I set up for them two weeks ago.

The students were actively engaged in their task, and I noted a maximising of time spent on practical issues, and talking, listening and cooperation.