Today, I want to explore with my teacher colleagues the upcoming National Simultaneous Storytime picture book for 2018, Hickory dickory dash by Tony Wilson & Laura Wood, and how it fits into our existing K-2 literacy cycle, and how it can address English outcomes for Stage 2 and Stage 3 students (see Objective C).
* aspects of Guided Inquiry activities for Stage 2 and Stage 3, team-taught, library lessons this year (Note: units use the KLA’s own syllabus outcomes plus related English outcomes)
* revisit the concept of pre-, mid- and post- surveys for students (from the SLIM toolkit) to collect both qualitative and quantitative data (action research)
* some possible strategies for improving student attitudes and successes with longer form fiction, such as novels (see Objective D).
Thank you everyone for a thoroughly enjoyable conference last weekend (Menzies Hotel, Sydney). Gail Erskine, Felicity Jagavkar-Baker, Margaret Hamilton, and all the volunteers, did a spectacular job. As a veteran of many science fiction media conventions (as an attendee or committee member), and a number of TL-focused PD seminar/conferences (sometimes as presenter, or attendee/volunteer/committee member) over the decades, “Read: Myriad Possibilities 2016” compared very well.
This was my first CBCA Conference. The two full days had wonderful variety and no dead spots at all (that I noticed), and it appeared to be very seamless. I loved that the early release of the “Notables” enabled publishers to have every shortlisted title available for sale on the day of the Shortlist announcement on the Friday. (I know there was some trepidation about this when first announced.) I ordered my school’s books from Paul Macdonald on the Friday, and they arrived at school on Thursday, a day earlier than promised.
The authors and illustrators at the conference made themselves very available to all, and autograph sessions were well timed and well promoted.The Committee appeared unflustered most of the time, and glitches were quickly addressed. (And in the timeslots where I volunteered, everything seemed to be set up for success. Much appreciated!)
I also attended the Leigh Hobbs’ Masterclass (see pic above) arranged by the Australian Society of Authors in Ultimo, on the Sunday after the conference! It, too, was excellent. Worth every cent.
And then, on the Monday, it was back to Week 2 of my school’s Book Fair. Stop the world, I wanna get off! #CBCA2016
At Penrith Public School, the transition to Oliver (from OASIS Library) and the students’ interface, Orbit, had to be delayed slightly due to long-service leave. It has been a very busy year: in addition to volunteering to be a Lighthouse School – demonstrating implementation and integration of Oliver through action research – we have been celebrating our school’s Sesquicentary celebrations. We have also been adapting from a complete Collaborative Planning, Programming and Teaching Program (CPPT) K-6 to the teacher-librarian providing one hour of Release-From-Face-to-Face (RFF) teaching for each class teacher.
Despite these hurdles, I am committed to continuing to involve most Stage 2 and Stage 3 students in the Guided Inquiry approach and collecting data on student learning with the tools of evidence-based practices.
Because the RFF program had to commence in Week 2 of Term 1, and it was not yet decided on just when the Oliver transition would occur, it was essential that I continue to collect quantitative and qualitative data using the SLIM tool kit survey forms (School Library Impact Measure, designed by Todd, Kuhlthau & Heinström, 2005). I highly recommend the collection of such data for all Guided Inquiry activities.
Surveys (as adapted for each unit from the template) are routinely filled out by students at pre-, mid- and post- intervals, even if not all data is tabulated immediately. I know that some teacher-librarians prefer to use an abbreviated survey (the so-called “Skinny” toolkit, as adapted by Lee FitzGerald and others), I do like to have all the data on hand simply because one often doesn’t know what evidence might be required/requested in the future.
For the two Guided Inquiry units started earlier this year – Stage 2: Built environments (science & technology) and Stage 3: Global connections (HSIE) – it became obvious, but too late, that the best way to integrate an introduction to Orbit would have been when locating relevant websites for research. By the time Oliver had arrived at Penrith PS, we unfortunately had already progressed past the Initiation and Selection stages of Guided Inquiry. (For the next time these units are taught, I need to ensure that all of the new and useful websites we found the hard way are represented in the new catalogue, so that students will achieve scaffolded success in their early searches).
For the purpose of today’s presentation, I am drawing my examples of a previously-taught Stage 3 unit, Endangered animals, for which a full set (pre-, mid- and post-) of survey responses is already available.
^ Question 1 responses(Click on the image to download)
^ Question 2 responses(Click on the image to download)
^ Question 3 responses(Click on the image to download)
^ Question 4 responses(Click on the image to download)
^ Question 5 responses(Click on the image to download)
Above extracts (pp 31-33) are as featured in McLEAN, Ian. ‘Research columns: Taking the plunge: Guided Inquiry, persuasion and the research river at Penrith Public School’ in Scan 30(4) Nov 2011, pp 26-35. (Stage 3 students used a weblog to showcase their learning journey in Guided Inquiry, and to share their persuasive multimedia slideshows on endangered animals with the extended school community – and beyond. This action research paper is peer reviewed.) Download the whole article as a PDF from HERE, courtesy of NSW DoE’s School Libraries & Information Literacy.
Todd, R.J., Kuhlthau, C.C. & Heinström, J.E. (2005). School Library Impact Measure: SLIM: a toolkit and handbook for tracking and assessing student learning outcomes of Guided Inquiry through the school library, Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries at Rutgers University (CISSL), New Brunswick, NJ.
* Banks PS teacher-librarian, Julie Grazotis, has a wonderful ClassMovie video clip about their Oliver journey HERE. Other links to local preliminary Lighthouse School Library System projects are HERE.
At one of my past schools, the Principal kept suggesting that I abandon the Dewey Decimal System and create some colour-coded Key Learning Areas (KLAs) in the Teacher Reference section of the school library. Some teachers would complain that they “didn’t understand Dewey” or “couldn’t ever find anything.” This were the bad ol’ days of drawers crammed full of catalogue cards, but I never really understood the problem. My counter argument was always that Dewey is essentially in KLAs anyway, and so many books are useful for numerous KLAs. I was gone from the position for a year and the change to shelving in the TR section was done in my absence. I came back for a few visits: the colours chosen were definitely not good for a colour blind person. Lime, orange, red and green all side by side! And blue next to purple. Torture!
What shuttlecock?
Interfiling TR with the main collection is a great idea for many items. A high school I visited during my initial retraining was creating a brand new library collection with no separate TR section. Almost everything was being interfiled with the main collection. Certainly, in a high school, many items hidden away in TR could be very useful in student assignments. A few years ago, at mu current school, I moved a lot of neglected art books (written for children but stored in TR and seemingly ignored/forgotten/overlooked by most teachers) into regular non fiction, where they are used more frequently by students. When I took over in the library, one of my first major reorganising jobs was to disband (barely-used) reading boxes that had been colour-coded with small, self-adhesive dots. When people came in asking for a particular set of coded colours, I would be beyond frustration trying to find the correct ones, usually having to open the lid of every box.
Actually, our non fiction resources now have little, square, spine stickers representing their ten broad Dewey categories – we use the exact colours of Syba Signs’ shelf labels, after my SASS person saw the system working well in another school. It was mainly to assist the library monitors with sorting and reshelving the NF section more efficiently, but the stickers are quite useless to me, colour blind as I am. (Luckily the PRC stickers colours are quite distinguishable.)
When I worked at Ryde State Office of the NSW DEC, I was often called in to look at various curriculum units’ website designs, and help them pick onscreen colours that worked better for red/green colour blind people.
Please consider that the alterations you make to your library shelves (and web pages) can have repercussions for those who come after you!
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
* 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:
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/
This presentation to the teacher-librarians of Granville District, followed by a practical workshop, looks at how teacher-librarians can work with students to create book trailers to enrich learning, maximising the engagement of students in literacy 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 reading.
The kookaburra who stole the moon: retold by Class 1/2Sa
*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? *UPLOADING – to Photo Peach or other Web 2.0 facility – Flickr slideshow, PowerPoint/Keynote, podcast/Youtube, IWB Notebook software? *EDITING, and adjusting timing to the selected music *SHARING with the wider community – monitor incoming public comments regularly, or close them off.
* RAP RESOURCES (NSW DEC) for making digital stories and book trailers
* ‘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. The Photo Peach slideshow featured in this article is recently restored, and now located at photopeach.com/album/18cw2b6.
* ‘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.
Well, one thing *I* did was to get Issue #2 of “iLeader” professional journal (of the School Library Association of NSW) approved and off to the printers. After getting a designer friend to help with creating a slick, new, modern template for the first 2013 issue of the journal, this time she was busy to help out so I had to do it All By Myself.
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/
