We also had a visit from author Bruce Pickworth, a former teacher at our school. He introduced his book The godwits to students in Class 23, and all of Stage 2 and Stage 3.
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.
UPDATE: The students who created this amazing 3D display for Scary night just heard back from the author, Lesley Gibbes:
Scary night by 3-6R
Lesley wrote, “Thanks so much 3-6R, your display is amazing! Have a wonderful Book Week celebration!” And then, a courier arrived, with free copies of Scary night for the creators!
Make sure to check out out the free Apositive phone app and make the CBCA firefly fly – and read, and wave!
A few months ago, I did a presentation to the MANTLE Teacher Librarians’ Conference in Newcastle about creating book trailers and digital stories. As part of the preparation, a series of space and science fiction related digital photos had been newly uploaded to Photo Peach (“Here’s one I prepared earlier…” again) and I was able to demonstrate how images could be easily moved, duplicated or deleted in the editing process.
During the 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.
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
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.
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/
And this just in: the Tuesday Library Book Club at Wyong High School was inspired by my presentation at MANTLE and spent some time with their teacher librarian, Ms Murray, making claymation figures to create an Animoto audiovisual to celebrate Book Week 2013 and its theme HERE. Wow!
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.
Gus Gordon’s CBCA-nominated picture book, Herman and Rosie, has been selected by Literacy & Numeracy Week’s Read for Australia event. View the Story Box Library presentation, read by Australian actor, Melissa Bergland.
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/