It’s Book Week again. I was thrilled to have been invited to last Friday’s Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA)’s Book of the Year Award presentations for 2016 at Teachers Federation House, hosted by CBCA NSW.
Classes at Penrith PS have been busily creating displays for the school library. Every few minutes, another display arrives and we seek out an ideal spot for it. This has been a tradition at the school for many decades.
Apart from the links at Mrs Mac’s website and the Kids & Books blog, here are some useful Youtube clips to help us celebrate “Australia! Story Country”, the 2016 theme:
In association with the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s NSW Branch, and teacher librarian Jackie Hawkes, I have set up a blog to help students to explore the 2016 CBCA Book of the Year Awards, the “Notable books”, Short List, Honour Books and gold-medal winners, and to support CBCA NSW initiatives, such as the Kids AAA event.
Class 4-6S students are developing their field knowledge on the topic of space for science & technology. They hope to do some blogging about their learning during the year.
The above blog, the template of which was created in 2013, will be used to present the students’ research into Australia’s global connections – by being globally connected! The original Wordles are from the three classes who created the blog.
QR codes – those now-ubiquitous, distinctive, square barcodes – are on advertising posters, business cards and websites. For last year’s MANTLE conference, I made use of a QR code phone app, I-nigma, from iTunes. Apart from a few tests, I haven’t really done very much with this aspect of technology. But the possibilities may be endless!
I have created QR codes for the websites I am referencing in my MANTLE talks this week. For example:
Workshop 2: This workshop 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
* 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.
UPDATE to Workshop 2:
During the above presentation, 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:
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/
A group of Stage 1 (Year 2) students have been working on creating a digital story about the Book Week slogan, “Champions read”. We have spent 30 mins per day (for 2 weeks) watching stimulus material, such as The hare and the tortoise (2009) fable. Also brainstorming, character building, storyboarding, taking digital photos, caption writing, editing, and selecting music. They have discussed their effort on the book rap, Join a reading adventure.
About a year ago, I started hearing references to QR codes, and noticed the distinctive, square barcodes turning up on advertising posters, business cards and websites. I did a little further investigation when I received my upgraded iPhone4 in late 2011 – and even uploaded a recommended QR code app, I-nigma, from iTunes – but, apart from a few tests, I haven’t really done very much with this aspect of technology.
But it certainly seems to have some clever possibilities.
In preparation for my presentations at Friday’s MANTLE conference, I created QR codes for the websites I would be referencing in my talks. For example:
I have been invited to present at the 2012 MANTLE Conference in June, speaking on two topics: “Engaging students through Guided Inquiry” and “How to promote your school library on a shoestring budget”.
Both topics will have some added tweaks to presentations I’ve done before, so I’m really looking forward to the challenge of the conference, and meeting teacher librarians of the Newcastle, Maitland, Taree, Lake Macquarie and Central Coast districts.
My name is Charles and I wanted to let you know that Booked Inn was selected to our Top 50 School Library Blogs, based on recommendations from other school library blogs and because we think your site is awesome for people interested in school libraries.
Here is our review of your blog:
“Sydney, Australia is home base to Booked Inn blogger Ian McLean, who finds YouTube brings a life cycle unit to life and helps students make global connections, while clips of rapping readers put a fresh twist on storybook classics; promoting 2012 as a National Year of Reading is a cause embraced by this librarian/teacher and kid-lit reviewer who shares the journey of a shoestring library makeover on this blog.”
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Best wishes, Charles Sipe
Executive Editor
Teacher Certification Degrees
charles@project8labs.com
