More inclement weather on Friday meant that Class 1HB had another spare lesson in the school library, so we brought out the collection of puppets again and brainstormed a new digital story. A scary one this time:
A spooky story
Tag Archives: Photo Peach
We are surrounded by RED
Class 3/4L recently had an extra session in the school library, so we decided to create a digital slideshow, inspired by the powerful cover art of the new picture book, One red shoe, by Karin Gruss & Tobias Krejtschi (Wikins Farago, 2014). The book, set in the war-torn Gaza Strip, features black and white illustrations through, with the dramatic use of spot colour on a US-style, Chuck Taylor All-Stars red canvas shoe, to persuade the readers and viewers with symbolism.
Surrounded by RED
The resulting, jointly-constructed text of this digital slideshow, created during a Circle Time brainstorming session, is quite reminiscent of the colour poems featured in the now-classic book, Hailstones and halibut bones by Mary O’Neill (1961), although the students were not exposed to that particular work. Yet. Red objects featured in the images came mainly from the school library environment, but also a few from my personal digital albums.
Download free Teachers’ notes for One red shoe.
Hicketty Picketty: preparing for Chicks R Us
This week, students in Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 will be learning the nursery rhyme Hicketty Picketty. We will also be reading Out of the egg, by Tina Matthews, which is a variation of The little red hen fairy tale.
The inclement weather last Friday gave Class 1HB another chance to brainstorm a digital story. This time they ended up with an Easter theme, which will prove useful with other classes as the term progresses:
An Easter tale
The subsequent week consolidates the learning with this digital quiz on PhotoPeach, which draws upon images and information gathered in 2011 after a unit of work based upon the annual Chicks R Us experience:
What’s in the egg?
Another picture book favourite is Clifford’s happy Easter by Norman Bridwell, which features a North American (spring season!) Easter egg hunt and the dyeing of boiled eggs.
And our PhotoPeach digital story about Clifford the Big Red Dog’s last visit to our school library:
Clifford & Phoebe at Penrith PS
New PhotoPeach celebrations
Here is a new PhotoPeach digital slideshow which archives some of the photos and craftwork of this year’s K-2 Chinese New Year celebrations:
Year of the Horse at Penrith PS
The inclement weather on Friday gave Class 1HB an additional lesson in the school library, so we brought out the collection of puppets and brainstormed a new digital story:
A lemur’s tale
Welcome back, it’s Year of the Horse!
Dragon parade!
The Stage 1 students are already deep into their plans for celebrating Chinese New Year. Above is a PhotoPeach slideshow of our school’s first annual dragon parade, way back in 2005. It’s always a startling start to the concept of K-2 assemblies for the newly-arrived Kindergarten students!
Year of the Horse
Robbie Rules: My first day at school
This digital story is especially for author Meredith Costain, with many thanks for sending Penrith Public School the signed copy of her wonderful new picture book, My first day at school (Windy Hollow Books, 2013). The book’s illustrations are by Michelle Macintosh.
Stage 3 students have recently been working as “buddies” for Kindergarten Orientation, and they enjoyed having Meredith’s book read to them in a library session, and then reminiscing, brainstorming, storyboarding, photographing, and suggesting possible text for a joint construction to create a PhotoPeach presentation. We anticipate our incoming Kindergarten students, future buddies and staff and students at other schools to get some useful tips from it.
Special thanks to Ms Stockton, who allowed Robbie Rules – our oldest “student” at Penrith PS, who’s never graduated from Stage 1 – to visit the library for the last few weeks of Term 4, 2013.
Robbie Rules: My first day at school
Creating digital stories for PMBW TLs
My workshop: This session will look at how to make book trailers and their use in engaging students in literacy and reading activities. Applications used to make trailers will be looked at and discussed, also how they can be used as a resource in a school library and in classrooms and how they can help promote literacy and reading. Ways to engage students in these resources to augment their learning experiences will be modeled and discussed.
* Brainstorming (using Circle Time) – consider audience, theme, length, 30 images
* Storyboarding (using a book rap template) – small groups
* Will you use photos (“Creative Commons”), drawings, cutouts, puppets, toys, claymation, or actors in dress-up box clothing?
* Upload – to Photo Peach or other Web 2.0 facility – Flickr slideshow, PowerPoint/Keynote, podcast/Youtube, IWB Notebook software?
* Edit, adjust timing to the selected music
* Share with wider community – monitor incoming public comments regularly, or close them off.
* Rap resources (NSW DEC) for making digital stories and book trailers
* Flickr slideshow repositories – and with captions added or Explore Creative Commons
* Commercial book trailers on Youtube, eg:
In the lion book trailer – James Foley
* This year’s CBCA Book Week theme is: “Read across the universe”. A starting point?
Further reading (articles by Ian McLean):
* ‘iInquire… iLearn… iCreate… iShare: Stage 1 students create digital stories’ in Scan 30(2) May 2011, pp 4-5.
Stage 1 students narrate how they inquire, learn, create and share with ICT and Web 2.0 to produce online Photo Peach slideshows at Penrith Public School. View the article online HERE.
* ‘Have blog, will storyboard!’ in info@aslansw Issue #2, May 2010, pp 5-8.
Stage 2 students at Penrith Public School created storyboards and PowerPoint digital stories as resources to support Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students working on the Bear and Chook books rap, which ran during the subsequent term.
* ‘Circle time: maximising opportunities for talking and listening at Penrith Public School’ in Scan 26(4) November 2007, pp 4-7.
Circle Time is a structured framework for social and emotional learning which promotes a positive class ethos. Moving from class teacher back into the school library, I incorporated Circle Time and information skills into a range of collaborative literacy and ICT activities, including book raps.
When I presented the above worksop at a MANTLE conference, earlier this year, members of the audience suggested a few possible captions, in keeping with Book Week’s “Read Across the Universe” theme, and my intention was to get the Stage 3 students, back at school, to complete the brainstorming of the rest of the captions during Book Week. As the events of that week overwhelmed us, I filed away the groups’ A3 planning sheets, but dug them out again this week – and was thrilled with their results. A reminder to those on iPads: the latest version of Flash is required, so you’ll need to use a regular computer to see Photo Peach slideshows.
As promised, here is the finished slideshow:
Read across the universe by 5/6E
and an additional set of bookish/SF images that got the students’ conversations going:
Book Week 2013
By the way, we found “Robot jokes” during a Google search:
boyslife.org/about-scouts/merit-badge-resources/robotics/19223/robot-jokes/
and we were surprised to find that there are interactive “Yoda speech generator” sites (it started out as a joke that there might be one – and there were several!), such as:
www.yodaspeak.co.uk/
More fables: The magic fish and The town mouse & the country mouse
Stage 1 and Early Stage 1 students are studying fables this term. These Youtube videos will support the reading.
The magic fish, or The fisherman and his wife, is often categorised as a Grimm’s fairy tale, but it also has an obvious moral.
The fisherman and his wife
Two parodies of the same tale:
The magic fish – Fractured Fairy Tales
Fractured Fairy Tales – The fisherman and his wife
Aesop: biography of a great thinker
The town mouse and the country mouse – Aesop’s fables
City mouse and country mouse
Мышь vs. Печенька (Mouse vs Biscuit)
After reading several versions of the famous Aesop’s fable, the students created their own interpretation of “City Mouse & Country Mouse” as a PhotoPeach slideshow. A combined effort of brainstorming, storyboarding, set creation, photographing, and joint construction of text!
City Mouse & Country Mouse
Restoring endangered animals
In 2011, our Stage 3 classes created digital slideshows as persuasive texts in a Guided Inquiry unit, Endangered animals: beyond the rainforest, which focused upon rainforests in HSIE (human society & its environment’s Global Environments: Rainforests) and endangered animals in science & technology (Ecosystems).
A data crash of the Photo Peach servers, in December 2012, meant that the visual elements of the final products were lost. I am slowly restoring the students’ work from the archived storyboards, and the salvaged captions and comments on the old slideshows. I have restored the slideshows on my own (paid) PhotoPeach site, rather than the free s3penrithps page we originally created, because I can download archived versions as part of my subscription, and safeguard against losing them again.
by Tamara, Nandita & Riley (2011)
by Tahlia, Christina, Corey, Angela & Christian (2011)
by Tom, Matt J. & John (2011)
by Naomi, Bernise & Quinn (2011)
by Tristan & Luke (2011)
by Trent, Michelle & Latisha (2011)
by Jeremy, Lisa, Kayla, Emily & Phoebe (2011)
by Monique, Courtney, Patrick & Milo (2011)
by Jade, Lauren & Kiesha (2011)
Some of the original storyboards are linked at the Endangered animals: beyond the rainforest blog, plus programming, supporting documentation and a research article.
Then and now
This new digital slideshow on Sydney’s Luna Park features b/w and colour photographs across the decades, which would be useful for the Stage 2 HSIE unit, Places: then, now and tomorrow:
Luna Park, then and now
It is a companion piece to this slideshow on Taronga Park Zoo:
Taronga Park Zoo, then and now