Booked Inn

Wow!

I’ve spent the last few weeks demonstrating some of the joys of my school’s new interactive whiteboard (IWB), and browsing on Google Earth has been addictive for most of the school’s population.

But, in similar vein, NASA has just released some very cool pictures from their Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (or LRO), which has returned its first imagery of the Apollo moon landing sites, just in time for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. “The pictures show the Apollo missions’ lunar module descent stages sitting on the moon’s surface, as long shadows from a low sun angle make the modules’ locations evident.”

The online comments added by moon hoax conspiracy theorists are hilarious.

I really liked the appended comment from a NASA Moderator: “This is just the first glimpse of many more images to come. When we’re in the operational orbit of only 31 miles, resolution should be two to three times better, and we should be able to get the right lighting conditions to identify the rovers.”

All images credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University.

Boy, sitting in the school hall watching a fuzzy black and white television in 1969 (Year 5) at Arncliffe Primary School seems sooooooo long ago, but it also seems like it was only yesterday. It’s frustrating we are currently on vacation and unable to make use of the anniversary with students this week.

Also worth checking out: The Moon in Google Earth

Aboriginal storyteller, Boori “Monty” Pryor,
visits my school in the lead-up to NAIDOC Week.
Note that no students are recognisable in this shot.

Today, my school was visited by Aboriginal storyteller and author, Boori “Monty” Pryor. He was a huge hit with the students and teachers. They listened, asked questions, danced, mimed and generally had a great time.

Boori expertly guided the action: when the students were paired up to perform a dance about the crocodile and the fisherman, he kept both groups, the “crocodiles” and “fisherman”, as active as possible, but with minimum instruction. Everyone knew they’d get their moment in the limelight as the carnivorous crocodiles because it was explained that they’d eventually be switching positions with the fishermen.

The students’ reactions are featured here!

The annual National Simultaneous Storytime is almost upon us again! 27th May, 11.00am. Our school had so much fun with “Arthur” last year, and we are sure the students will enjoy this year’s picture book, “Pete the sheep” by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley.

I just received an email from ALIA containing a link to a downloadable “Pete the sheep” PowerPoint presentation. (We’ll be able to use it to christen our new interactive whiteboard!) HarperCollins Publishers Australia has organised for “Pete the sheep” to be available as a PowerPoint presentation for NSS participants to assist with large storytime readings of the book.

Register on ALIA’s site to access the PowerPoint file. The email also contained a link to some promotional “Pete the sheep” blackline activity sheets, drawn by Bruce Whatley himself, and these are also downloadable from the National Simultaneous Storytime site. Bruce is to be a special guest at Shoalhaven Libraries’ Storytime in Nowra, for those in that vicinity.

Mmmm. How can we top that? Well, one of our teachers lives on a farm, and we are now wondering if she has a friendly sheep she can bring to school on the day?

I’m fortunate enough to share the same literary agent as Tara Moss, the successful Canadian Australian novelist, model and TV celebrity. Tara has decided to get behind the concept of “World Book Day”, and is happy for me to pass on her recent Facebook posts about it, should you wish to mobilise and get something happening in Australian schools. She says:

“Let’s celebrate ‘World Book Day’ on April 23, and encourage it to become a recognized and significant day on the Australian calendar.

“Happy reading, Tara Moss.”
http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=61720981519&ref=mf

So there you go! Now, of course, the “Facebook” group won’t be accessible through many educational institution firewalls, but if you celebrate in your school, post your ideas here and I’ll relay them back to Tara. Maybe all those great “Library Lovers” ideas from February 14 can be recycled more than once a year?

Our school celebrated the annual Harmony Day on Thursday, concluding with an afternoon reading picnic in shady nooks all over the playground.

The school hall is now decorated with about 1600 tiny paper dolls, four of each decorated by each person in our school. Looking around the school, orange-coloured reminders of Harmony Days past can also be found. There’s still a frieze of photos of orange-themed art, craft and cookery from about four years ago in the main foyer, and several sturdy banners with previous mottos for Harmony Day have also survived.

Our successes each year build on the ones before. Which made the comments of one country school particularly poignant. The organiser at that school, their teacher-librarian, encountered an air of apathy about the day, and/or its message, and I couldn’t help but respond:

“I know you’re feeling down,” I said, “but it’s time to celebrate all the successful elements of your Harmony Day. And there were plenty! Give certificates to those who got into the swing of it all, including staff. Do it at an assembly. Conspire with those teachers who supported you in 2009 to make next year bigger and brighter. Start your planning now. Rehearse for next year by promoting other theme days later this year. Keep photos and banners from this year’s Harmony Day to remind people next year of how many celebrated in 2009 – and record your increased numbers of participants each year in various newsletters/reports. Laminate the photo that appears in the local newspaper. Display copies everywhere.

Our Harmony Day committee, and sometimes a group of scripture teachers, also throw a free ‘orange food’ morning tea for the staff: melons, corn chips, Jaffas, orange-coloured dips and cheeses. That’s when you give each teacher their supply of orange crepe paper – and tell them to make some orange streamers and headbands before the reporter/photographer from the local press arrives!”

Over the last few years, our school has celebrated Harmony Day, and we usually try to come up with a K-6 activity to decorate the school assembly hall with a lasting thematic display. In the past we’ve worn orange clothing, decorated banners, made smiling Arrowroot biscuits with orange icing and various sweets, played multicultural outdoor games, made Harmony Hats, and performed songs.

For 2009, our school has decided to distribute a “paper doll” template for the students to fold, cut out and personalise. Even each staff member has received a strip of orange card in their pigeon holes. I was able to snatch a few minutes of time yesterday to decorate my entry:

I had a few spare minutes today, so here’s my entry:

Today, the staff celebrated Library Lovers’ Day, a concept promoted by ALIA (Australian Library & Information Association), a fledgling tradition now in its second year here.

Essentially, it was just a good excuse to throw the staff a bonus morning tea, this time in the new surroundings of the recently revamped library, and to take in the cumulative effects of the “shoestring makeover”. I’m really loving that the “desks end” of the library is the calming mint green end, and the “Check it out” end is all corporate burgundy.

Last year, I promoted OASIS Web Enquiry and “Scan” on Library Lovers’ Day. This year we just ate, drank and were merry. Edible goodies included ye olde Conversation heart-shaped sweets and some cute heart-shaped biscuits. The new peace lily took pride of place as a table setting, complete with little heart-shaped picks “growing” from the plant.

We’re just loving out “new” school library.

I was up and out of the house before 7.00am this morning, and did a detour past school, to drop off messages for my casual teacher replacement, so I could attend the Premier’s Reading Challenge presentation ceremony, an annual event.

This year, a new venue, Riverside Theatres at Parramatta, and a new Premier of NSW, Nathan Rees. Once again, we had glorious weather, and the lucky groups of students who were invited to attend had a great time rotating around various activity stands, meeting lots of Australian authors and the newly announced PRC “ambassadors”.

They tried something a bit different this year. Nathan Rees participated in a reading of a rollicking poem from Norman Lindsay’s “The magic pudding”, and Peter FitzSimons led a short panel discussion about favourite books. The student participants were so eloquent.

I was assigned to be minder/chaperone for author Frances Watts – a huge honour, since I’m a great admirer of the book she did with illustrator, David Legge: “Parsley Rabbit’s book about books”. Between denials to hopeful school students, many of whom assumed that I was David Legge (who at home trying to meet a deadline on their third book together), I was able to swap anecdotes with Frances about how her book is used in schools. She mentioned that many years of observing teacher-librarians introduce new books gave her the inspiration for the book.

What a coincidence that I wore my black and silver Superman jacket today; Frances was giving out bookmarks for her book, “Extraordinary Ernie & Marvellous Maud”, the story of two unlikely young superheroes. And, yes, the bookmark even has its own secret identity! Flip it over and make your own superhero domino mask!

I’ve reported on my school’s very successful reading picnics before: eg. here and here, and today we scored another home run!

Recently, I happened upon a revelation that children’s author, and former member of The School Magazine’s editorial team, Cassandra Golds, had been a former student of our school, so I went about inviting her to be our special guest at today’s reading picnic. Theme: Teddy bears. Dress: Pyjamas. What fun!

Cassandra was an excellent speaker, and comes with my highest recommendation. The students were abuzz for weeks before her visit. I fired up the kids quite a bit and they were very excited to meet a successful ex-student.

The Stage 1 students had plenty of questions about “where the library used to be” and Cassandra’s time at the school.

Our Stage 2 students are midway through “The mostly true story of Matthew & Trim”, a graphic novel illustrated by Stephen Axelson, originally serialised over two years when Cassandra was still at The School Magazine. Our students are working on the HSIE unit on Australia in class, so the graphic novel is working so well in library lessons. I’m practically doing Geoffrey McSkimming-style stand-up orations while reading them the story! (I do exaggerate, but it’s been fun.) I had the students enthralled with Trim “the demon cat” when explorer Matthew Flinders and Trim were in England. I’m looking forward to the arrival of the dodos myself. (Yes, Mauritian dodos. It’s complicated.)

The Stage 3 students were fortunate to be the very first audience to hear a rather spooky chapter from Cassandra’s new book, “The museum of Mary Child”. They were already familiar with Cassandra’s other novel titles, “Michael and the secret war” and “Clair-de-lune”.

Our now-traditional reading picnics are usually in that last hour of the day, after the lunch break. We usually gather at the podium, talk about the theme. In the past we’ve had a recipe theme, building anniversary trivia, spring, multicultural, etc – then we break up into smaller groups, or students take their parents to shady spots around the grounds, until we again gather to sum up.

At last year’s September picnic, I brought out a graph to record our Premier’s Reading Challenge results. This year we added a new annual tally and Cassandra presented certificates to the school from MSN Readathon, and another celebrating the students’ success with the PRC – up 2% on last year’s results to 80%.

We cycled groups through the hall to meet Cassandra in more intimate groups, and the afternoon was over before we knew it. A fabulous whole-community focus on literacy and the love of reading!

A big thank you to Cassandra Golds! And to teacher Kerrie Mead, who organises the picnics and does a great job promoting them in innovative ways.

An aside: Cassandra and I realised that the whole of our planning for her visit had been conducted online via Facebook. Welcome to Web 2.0!

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.