Hello from Shirley T

Hey Guys,
Hopefully I am posting a blog. Really, it's my second attempt. I tried last year but failed. If you can read this, then I HAVE SUCCEEDED!!! And if I can do it, then you can too.
I will put something more worthwhile next time.
Cheers, Shirley T.

Follow up from National Library session on picture books last term

Hi JuLS teachers - I thought I'd do a quick post on the blog to follow up from the busy afternoon session last term - from the evaluations some people liked it but some people found it too rushed - I'll ensure more discussion time next session...

The focus for the session was to celebrate the picture book and some of the ideas were :

• getting to know them yourselves - increasing your knowledge / setting yourself reading challenges / sharing children's literature in your school with other teachers - the importance of teachers as readers
  
• reading picture books aloud every day / more than once a day to your students and encouraging parents to read aloud http://www.literacyconnections.com/ReadingAloud.php
  
• borrowing from National Library Curriculum Services - here is the online order form link http://www.natlib.govt.nz/cis-online-request
  
• focussing on the wonderful rich vocabulary - word of the day, word wall...
  
• visiting LibraryThing and setting up a class LibraryThing of your favourites http://www.librarything.com/
  
• exploring the pictures / teaching visual literacy - looking for the details, allusions and references, use of colour and space etc - What is going on in this picture ? (seeing and interpreting) What else can you find ? (from observations to stories in pictures) What do you see that makes you say that ? (visual evidence to support opinions)
  
• talking about authors and illustrators - getting to know their style, discussing preferences
  
• using the language of books - jacket, spine, endpapers...
• sharing reading responses - eg using the Aidan Chambers tell me questions to facilitate thoughtful reading responses and discussion
  
• comprehension strategies such as making connections
  http://www.readinglady.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=2&MMN_position=4:4
  
• using picture books as mentor texts to inspire students' own writing http://www.writingfix.com/picture_book_prompts.htm
  
• using wordless picture books - teaching ideas from ReadWriteThink (IRA website) http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/creative-writing-through-wordless-130.html and here is a booklist http://nancykeane.com/rl/317.htm
  
• developing extension activities around books - examples shared around The Smartest Giant - art, reviews, website activities, writing etc http://www.gruffalo.com/index.html
  

Phew, it was a lot in one session ! You might like to look again at the powerpoint which I sent out and review the various handouts ?

We'll start our next workshop together (workshop 4 - 9th June Whangarei / 16th June Kaitaia) by sharing what things you have done with your students and picture books in your classroom and be inspired by each other's practice... As well as general feedback, please bring along at least one idea in particular that you'd like to share with the rest of the group.

How about posting something about what you have done on the JuLS blog ?! What picture books have you read read recently that your students loved ?

Did you get a chance to read the Michael Rosen talk ?

By the way, has anybody done anything with maps in their classroom ?

I'm looking forward to seeing you in week 8 and 9 of this term.
Cheers, Jeannie

The power of words

I've come across a couple of interesting books recently about the power of language - in particular how a teacher talks in the classroom - and some chapters are available to read online :

The Power of our Words : teacher language that helps children learn by Paula Denton http://www.responsiveclassroom.org/bookstore/tupowerofwords.html

Here is the first chapter : http://www.responsiveclassroom.org/pdf_files/pow/pow_intro.pdf
It is easy to read and annecdotal - these are the subheadings

• Language molds our sense of who we are
• Language helps us understand how we think, work and play
• Language influences the nature of our relationships

and the Goals of teacher language :

• Developing self-control
• Building a sense of community
• Gaining academic skills and knowledge

Choice words : how our language affects children and learning by Peter Johnston
http://www.stenhouse.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=389&idcategory=0

and if you google "choice words peter johnston" it will bring up 120+ pages of the book at Google Books
http://books.google.com/books?id=tJJqZ_uSVxcC&dq=choice+words++peter+johnston&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=OHzLS6qmKIaasgOGxcyTAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

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

Writing activity

I've just been helping Vera do her previous post about the neat activity she did for her kids using the Ready to Read "Going to the beach"... It reminded me of a wonderful activity I saw many years ago at Peria School - the students (junior school) each chose a favourite picture from the New Zealand Geographic magazine - usually a double page spread, A3 size. It might be dolphins coursing through water, a Maori hunter creeping up on a moa, bungy jumping off the Sky Tower, a shark with wide open jaws etc... The children then were photographed in a pose (it would be so much easier now with digital cameras), then the child was "cut out" from the photo and stuck onto the NZ Geographic picture with blu tak, then it was photocopied. Although black and white it made a very effective illustration for some great story writing, putting the child as a character in the picture and action... "Here I am, creeping silently up to the lion sleeping in the sun..." sort of thing. I guess now you could do it with Photoshop so much more easily but this is a more low tech version from a decade ago !

Vera suggested that you could use this activity with the National Exemplar writing indicators for recount - consider what moves writing from Level 1ii to 1iii and identify the learning for the student, eg

• Write your thoughts and feelings that really show or tell the reader about how you feel at this point
• Add enough information so that the reader can feel as if they are there with you...
  

Going to the beach

Here's an idea, that I made up for my own BIG kids from a much loved ready to read, you could try this idea with your class, but include lots of written text for reading...

There is my photo can you spot my son in the back seat ?
Cheers, Vera

Click on the picture to enlarge it...

Hi Everyone,
Its great to start the year off with our first Juls workshop in Whangarei.
Welcome Carolyn Henwood, good to catch up. I hope you enjoyed the first workshop.
I am looking forward to workshop one in Kaitaia.
Cheers Vera Unka

Running Record analysis

Posted on behalf of Heather Hardy :

In terms of using "strategic activity", here is an example for your consideration

http://tiny.cc/RunningRecord143

Is the child self-monitoring ?
If so, how does the child monitor his errors, or not ?

Family reading resources

Here is a link to the UK Literacy Trust - a useful site with heaps of resources to help foster early literacy in the home.

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/familyreading/parents/index.html

Reading mileage activity

I have an 'activity' for Juls teachers, if you wish to participate, and then share with your colleagues at a Juls workshop if you wish...
Cheers, Vera.

This activity comes from : Best practices in literacy instruction, Third edition 2007, edited by L. Gambrell; L. Morrow; M. Pressley , page 101.

• Track the volume of reading that struggling readers in your classroom or school do over a 1-week period. You can think of 'struggling readers' as 'at risk readers' at any level if that helps.
• Compare this to the volume of reading better readers do.
• Use the books (count the words) that the reader sees at Guided reading time and home reading time.
• Just track one at-risk reader and one reader (this will help keep the task manageable).

• Are struggling readers doing at least as much reading as better readers?
• If not what can be done to expand the reading volume of struggling readers?

• Share your findings with other Juls teachers.
• Share what you did to change the amount of reading done.

Waima School Library

Congratulations Waima School on your recent ERO report (November 2009) ! Glenys drew my attention to it, in particular this great comment about the library...

Library. The library is attractive and inviting for children, who benefit from having good access to it. One class uses the library for their daily reading lessons. The board funds a part-time library resource person and ensures that the library is well stocked with interesting materials that include Maori titles and high interest texts for boys. The boys’ section is a recent initiative to motivate boys as readers. Students also have input into the reading resources that are purchased for the library.

So, maybe ERO don't talk about the library in their report on reading and writing in Years 1 and 2, but they know a good library when they see one !

How about posting a photo of the library on this blog, eg the Boys' Section ?

Another wonderful Picture book about faces and feelings

Dear all,

I have just come across another truly wonderful picture book, - that would be especially great to use in the junior classroom at the beginning of the year when the teacher is discussing feelings and faces etc with students.

The title is What's That Look on your face; All about faces and feelings.
The author is Catherine Snodgrass

Once again this title is available from National Library Auckland.

Michael Rosen on the power of the picture book...

The wonderful author and poet Michael Rosen was Britain's Children's Laureate in 2008 /9. Here is the link to his website for the full text of his Patrick Hardy lecture - http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/patrickhardy.html and there are other gems there too so it is worth exploring...

His Patrick Hardy Lecture talks about the relationship between education and books, a checklist of questions and suggestions about a school's "book culture", and a paean to the picture book and all that it offers to mind and ear and eye... " This is not just a matter of how we read, it’s why we read."

Here is an extract from the Lecture (slightly edited) :

So I’ve become more and more interested in looking at how schools do or don’t help create this book-loving culture. Here’s my checklist of questions to ask of a school, to see if it really is serious about books.

1. Does the school have in place any kind of home-school liaison where someone talks with individual parents about specific books, libraries, book departments, magazines, book clubs, book shows, that might interest this specific child and his or her carers?
   
2. Does the school hold book events all year round with writers, illustrators, story-tellers, librarians, book enthusiasts coming in and talking and performing for the children and parents?
3. Does the school not only invite in a syndicated book fair but also invites in local bookshops, specialist bookshops and has books available for borrowing or buying to support the visiting writers, speakers, performers and story-tellers?
4. Is there someone in the school trained and interested in running the school library and who is on hand to give advice to every teacher to help them with their class libraries?
5. Does the school run book clubs for teachers, parents and children?
6. Does the school give every parent information – perhaps in the form of an attractive pack – on the local library, the local bookshop? Does the school take children and parents to these venues?
7. Do the school and individual classes adopt an author or illustrator for the week, or month or term and investigate, explore and do creative work around that author and illustrator?
8. Do the children make books of their own? Are these readily available for everyone in the school and parents too? Does the school encourage parents to come in and make books with the children? Does the school celebrate and cherish these books as much as it celebrates its most important activities?
9. Does the school encourage children to pass books between each other by means of book swaps, prominently displayed reviews, assembly presentation of ‘this week’s good read’, book posters and the like?
10. Does the school seize every possible moment - eg visits to museums, visits from specialists of any kind, school trips – to support these events and activities with books, eliciting from all and sundry what their favourite books are or were when they were children?
11. Are there regular whole school projects (like, say Black History Month, or ‘The Sea’) where a topic or theme can be supported by books of all kinds, all genres and all ages? Is the school on these occasions inundated with books?
12. Are assemblies and classrooms frequently a place when children are encouraged to become fascinated by something – anything! – to do with a book or what’s in a book?
13. Are the head’s study and teachers’ desks places where special, intriguing, exciting, ever-changing, odd, old, weird books lurk?
14. Does the school keep and use book reviews of children’s books from Books for Keeps, Carousel, Times Educational Supplement, Child and Junior Education, The School Librarian, the broadsheet review pages and the internet?
15. Is there at least one time every week where children will have nothing else to do with a book other than to read it, listen to it, and chat about it in an open-ended way?

This series of points should not be a utopian wish-list. It should be addressed with exactly - yes, exactly – the same urgency and attention to detail that the whole panoply of reading strategies is given. For every sounding out of ‘per’ and ‘ther’ there is an equivalent attention to detail that can be given to any of these fifteen points.

And the obvious, mind-blowingly simple fact stares us in the face: in the very area where the book-loving culture begins, nursery, reception, years 1 and 2, there is, if you like, a world class range of ‘materials’ (!). No, I’m not referring to the Oxford Reading Tree or the Jolly Phonics books or any all-in-one, solve-all literacy pack. I’m talking about - the picture book.

There it sits like some massive inflorescence, budding and flowering and reproducing in all its delightful, complex and beautiful ways, all freighted with the same impulse – how to please, intrigue, and amuse young children and their carers and teachers. When we look at who makes these books, we are talking here about some of the best people to go through art school, some of the funniest, cleverest, most thoughtful people we have and I’m talking here about the whole team – whoever it is who makes up the words, makes the pictures, designs the books, edits, publishes and prints it.

They produce what is a complex art form, that passes on its meanings, makes its suggestions in ways that call on readers to make many, many creative leaps, many, many investigations, many, many connections between parts of pages, different pages, forwards and backwards through the book.

And it does this inviting, in many different ways: visually, orally, textually and in any combinations of all three. Eye and ear are constantly challenged to look and listen here, there and everywhere. The narrative, is in truth a multi-narrative: one moment told in words, next in pictures, simultaneously in both, sometimes complementing each other, sometimes in contrast with each other, sometimes, even in contradiction with each other. There are often more and more details to be found, there are rhythms to be remembered and re-found, there are shapes, patterns, tones, visual rhythms and compositions to be made sense of.

The strategies that we all adopt as older children and as adults in order to read, stick with and unlock stories are all to be found in picture books: plot and sub-plot, goodies and baddies, mysteries to be uncovered and guessed about, heroes on quests, heroes being tested, loss, compassion, achievement, solidarity, pain, intrigue, subversion, scheming, psychologising, resolution and much more.

What’s more, these books address a complex, multi-faceted audience. Picture books are not solely for or about children. They are artistic interventions into the many different kinds of relationships between children and adults. The reading-situation itself is nearly always one shared by at least one carer and at least one child, or at least one teacher and, nearly always, several children. The books are both for and about these relationships. In the books, parents comfort their children, or get the wrong end of the stick or are indifferent. Surrogate children in the form of animals and soft toys get lost or face tremendous ordeals. These open up moments of talk between adults and children as the book is read on many disparate occasions afterwards. How many times have I been asked by parents who’ve been asked by children, is there a mummy in ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’? Is that larger female figure a mummy or an older sister? Is the bear sad? Did he just want to play? These are the brilliant gaps left by Helen Oxenbury (nothing to do with me, I hasten to add), where talk between children and adults arises spontaneously. And these are serious questions from the child, and of course, about that child itself. The child who asks about the missing mummy is a child, who like all of us, wondered what life would be like without mummy. The child who asks, ‘Is the bear sad,?’ ‘Did he just want to play?’ is the child who at one time wanted to play or join in and couldn’t and was left out.

Meanwhile, adults who, as they read these books with their children, wonder about their own childhoods and wonder about their own parenting, caring and teaching. If you’ve ever been a carer of any kind, it’s impossible to read ‘Not Now Bernard’ without knowing that you’ve been a not-now-Bernard person. It does the work of a hundred guides on parenting, a hundred TV programmes on why you are an inadequate parent. ‘Peepo’ is not just a book. It’s a game and, if this doesn’t sound too dull – it’s not meant to! – it’s a social document. There are a hundred details of the way people used to lead their lives, and any number of unquantifiable feelings attached to those people and objects. This is the stuff that history books leaves out: what it felt like to look in a mirror at the moment that a family faced up to the fact that the man was going off to war. Imagine a whole school project on, let’s say, how we used to live, or World War Two. As the school gears up for visits to the local museum, visits by old people, children go home to quiz their grandparents, a host of books come into the school from Nina Bawden’s ‘Carrie’s War’, through Michael Forman’s ‘War Boy’, archives from the local library or town hall, so ‘Peepo’ can take its place amongst it all. Perhaps the year 1 children will perform it, which will be videoed and there’ll be copies of the book for them to buy so that they never need forget what it felt like to look through those holes and find the next picture. Grandparents can say how they remember their parents talking about bomb shelters and rationing...You would be hard pushed to find any other artistic form that has the power and potential to help create conversations like this.

This is something far too valuable to be let to go into decline or restricted to privileged reading situations.

All this is a what I’ll call the ‘literacy of literature’ not the ‘literacy’, per se. This is not just a matter of how we read, it’s why we read.

I suggest that the question, - why we read – should be addressed with just as much attention as schools are giving to the question of how we learn to read.

And so to point 16: I don’t think any meeting held by teachers to help parents understand what literacy is, should ever be without the presence in the room and the time to look at them, of such books as Trish Cooke’s and Helen Oxenbury’s ‘So Much’, Tony Ross’s ‘I Want My Potty’, Shirley Hughes’s ‘Dogger’, books by Anthony Browne, Penny Dunbar, Michael Foreman, Mick Inkpen, Lauren Child, Quentin Blake, Colin MacNaughton, Emma Chichester Clark and many, many more – apologies to those I’ve not mentioned.

17. There should be Beano annuals and football programmes open at the Junior Supporters pages, there should be books that tie in with TV shows and films.

18. Teachers could and should wrap up a meeting with parents with a read-aloud session, say, of a Julia Donaldson/Axel Scheffler masterpiece, with compulsory joining in!

19. Parents and grandparents should be encouraged to bring in and show off the books and magazines, no matter how humble, that they’ve kept since their childhoods.

Go to Michael's website to read the whole talk from this passionate advocate for children's books and reading. This "book culture" is what was a missing element in the ERO report on Reading in Years 1 and 2 - see earlier post in this blog...

New junior books to consider for your class or school library

Dear all,

I have the opportunity to check through the new picture books that arrive at the Christchurch National Library Centre. I have come across these 5 titles which I feel may be suitbale for junior classrooms. They are all available through the National Library Auckland office if you wish to borrow them.

Do you know Millie by Gordon Winch ( about moving and making friends)

Click clack splish splash by Doreen Cronin

Robot by Jon Scieszka

The Wonkey Wonkey by Craig Smith (includes a cd of the author singing the words)

Not last night but the night before by Colin McNaughton

The toymaker and the bird by Pamela Allen (very sad!)

New Zealand ABC wall frieze

Have a look at this NZ ABC wall frieze / poster... http://www.kakarikigreen.co.nz/

A is for aroha, j is for jandals, n is for netball... lovely bright graphics and clear letters.

test post

Dear all,

I am now based in the Christchurch Centre of Natonal Library and enjoying the changing landscapes of Canterbury. I will try and remain an active blogger, - and add informaoitn as it passes me by. I am now based in a centre where there is a collection so I will keep my eyes peeled for new books especailly picture books that would suit the aims of Juls.
Take care and enjoy 2010 Dyane

ERO Report : Reading and Writing in Years 1 and 2

Here is a link to the newly published ERO report on Reading and Writing in Years 1 and 2, due to be sent to schools in Term 1 2010.

http://tiny.cc/EROreportReadingandWritingYears1and2

I was interested to see how the library fitted into effective teaching of reading and writing at Years 1 and 2 from ERO's perspective... I was disappointed.

The word library does not appear at all in the report.

The word libraries appears once in the report in the following sentence on page 18 :
Children had plentiful and appropriately levelled texts in their reading boxes, big books, poetry cards, reading games and in class and school libraries.

The word literature appears 4 times in the report, in each instance referring to professional reading about best teaching practice.

I can't believe that a report about reading and writing in the junior school does not mention the vital importance of ready access to a range of literature and engagement with stories for reading motivation and pleasure, teacher reading role models "readers are made by readers", well-resourced and well-used school libraries to enrich teaching practice, and the creation of a reading culture in the classroom and school...