Hi All,
I have a couple of Junior novels to recommend (if they are not in your library you may like to request them)
Hunter by Joy Cowley AND River Song by Belinda Hollyer,
I have been onto Juls Library Thing to add them.
Let me know what you think
Cheers Vera

Art and picture books, visual literacy

There are a couple of interesting articles on the School Library Journal website about encouraging children to look at and appreciate the art in picture books, based on workshops run at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art www.carlemuseum.org

Part 1 - If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s a picture book museum worth? By Wendy Lukehart -- School Library Journal, 1/1/2010 http://tiny.cc/artinpicturebookspart1

Part 2 - How do a museum’s philosophies work in a public library setting? By Wendy Lukehart -- School Library Journal, 2/1/2010 http://tiny.cc/artinpicturebookspart2

Here are a couple of short extracts from the articles :

Thumbnail Sketch of Visual Thinking Strategies VTS - from Part 1 article

The leader invites the group to take a few moments to look closely at an image and then asks these, and only these, open-ended questions:

• What’s going on in this picture?
• What do you see that makes you say that?
• What else can you find?

The leader continually paraphrases student responses, all the while increasing the accuracy of the language without making participants feel corrected, validating individual views, connecting observations, and pointing out differences of opinion.
Participants must provide visual evidence to support their interpretations.

VTS is both the name of a curriculum and a framework for looking at a single image. For much more see: www.vtshome.org To see a short video of children engaged with VTS, click on: www.vtshome.org/pages/videos

Whole Book Approach Guide - from Part 2 article

Spend time with the book before sharing it with a group ; consider how each element contributes to meaning. Use these questions as a guide to draw attention to aspects of the design and illustration that are noteworthy.

• Jacket: Think of the jacket as a poster for the book and use VTS questions. (See Part 1 of this series)
  
• Spine: Does the jacket image wrap around the spine? Consider the lettering.
  
• Cover: Is it cloth bound? Embossed? What are the colors? Why?
  
• Format: Portrait? Landscape? Square? Shaped? Why?
  
• Endpapers: How are they the visual overture for the art in the book?
  
• Front Matter: How do these pages ease you into the book?
  
• Gutter: How does the artist accommodate or use the gutter between the verso and recto pages?
  
• Typography: How are all elements of the book proper arranged on the facing pages? Consider the absence or presence of frames, the use and pacing of double and single spreads, font choices, placement of text and pictures, etc.
  
• Medium and Style: How does the artist’s choice and use of medium(s) suit the story? How does the medium generate attention to artistic elements (color, line, shape, etc.) and principles?
  

The following link offers an edited WBA reading led by Megan Lambert at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art: www.picturebookart.org/Noggin2

"Picture book a day" blog

I've just come across this blog which may be of interest - Anastasia Suen’s Picture Book of the Day blog at http://6traits.wordpress.com/

This blog recommends a picture book each day of the week (some days have a special focus eg Non-fiction Monday, Poetry Friday) with a 1 or 2 line plot summary, a short quote from the text, and a suggested writing activity for one of the six traits of writing

The six traits of writing were identified in the 1980s as a way to help young writers look at their own writing. They are

1. Ideas
2. Organization
3. Voice
4. Word Choice
5. Sentence Fluency
6. Conventions

The books featured in Anastasia Suen's blog are American, but many are available from National Library and may trigger ideas for using similar books / activities.

Here is a link http://educationnorthwest.org/resource/503 for more information about the 6 Traits which has been expanded to now include a 7th - presentation...

The 6+1 Trait® Writing analytical model for assessing and teaching writing is made up of 6+1 key qualities that define strong writing. These are:

• Ideas, the main message;
• Organization, the internal structure of the piece;
• Voice, the personal tone and flavor of the author's message;
• Word Choice, the vocabulary a writer chooses to convey meaning;
• Sentence Fluency, the rhythm and flow of the language;
• Conventions, the mechanical correctness;
• and Presentation, how the writing actually looks on the page.

Assessment Resource Bank news - 2009

NEW ASSESSMENT RESOURCES

English:
'Learning vocabulary through reading' has been added to our support material section. This page lists English resources that provide teachers with assessment data on student ability to understand new or unfamiliar words as they read, by using background knowledge, context clues, and word part clues.
All listed resources have been published this year, with the addition of two new English resources. They are: WL2657, Nippers: "awkward"; WL2656, Nippers: "spectators". Both resources are based on a Part 4 School Journal article, "Playing with words". http://arb.nzcer.org.nz/new_english.php

Maths:
One level 4 and six level 3 resources have just been published.
The contexts include:

• deciding whether a graph is suitable to display category data;
  
• placing decimal numbers in the correct order and positioning them on a number line;
• identifying fractions that are greater than a half;
  
• identifying fractions that are greater than one;
  
• showing or explaining how two different fraction numbers can represent the same fraction;
• finding subsequent shapes in several patterns and showing how to work out another shape based further on in the pattern; using given numbers to work out rules. http://arb.nzcer.org.nz/new_maths.php

ALIGNMENT TO THE NEW CURRICULUM
The ARB resources are currently being aligned to the new curriculum.
From the 19th of October, all resources will map to the new curriculum. This means that the classification search pages will use the new strands and objectives of the new curriculum.
If you have any questions about the alignment to the new curriculum, please contact us.
http://arb.nzcer.org.nz/contact.php