Literary Discussions

Me again!

After the children on placement came inside from outside play, we would often sit on the mat and read a story to slow down before having afternoon tea. On day, we decided to A House For Wombats by Jane Burrell and Michael Dugan. I went through a book orientation as we discussed in EDLA this semester, going over the title, the front image and the author's name when I turned the book and... 

THERE WAS NO BLURB!

...and the children in the room immediately noticed. We read through the book, which wasn't too bad, and talked about what happened in the story and what it meant when one child put their hand up and asked if we could write a blurb for the book. So I said yes!

We talked about what was important in the book and came up a list in which the children basically told me absolutely everything which happened in the story. After talking about how the blurb only tells the reader some of story, we whittled down the list after carefully considering each point and how important it was to the story and came up with the following list:

    

" she makes a house

the house changes

the house has stairs

the houses are different 

the wombats fix the house

the wombats sleep

they sit on the couch 

they had a cup of tea "

We were all happy with the final list and decided to print it out and sticky tape the list onto the back of the book so that future readers could read a blurb when they chose to read this book.

Miss Tracy xx

Off the Shelf - A Call for a New Alphabet

Hello!

This week's book to be featured is 'A Call for a New Alphabet' by Jef Czekaj. I was originally expected a run of the mill alphabet book in which the letter 'X' plays some form of commentary but I was so thankfully surprised.

I bought the book at Booktopia's Moving Sale, for $1.95, a total steal! You can view the book trailer below...

The story focuses on a class vote to change the order of the alphabet after X expressed his disdain for his placement. Along the way we learn about grammatical rules and spelling patterns while listening to how other letters feel about their place in the alphabet. The resolution of the story explains why our alphabet looks the way it does.

The book begins as a traditional picture book however transforms to take the appearance of a comic book, or graphic novel. The 'blended narrative' style of the book asks the reader to use their multi-literacy skills to interpret the dialogue on which the story rests. 

 

I absolutely loved the book and the way it incorporated the standard rules and conventions of language in a funny and relative way for children. I'm so disappointing that this will just fly over the kindergartner's heads but this is definitely one to share with your class after they have grasped the concept of alphabetical order, grammar and spelling rules and patterns. 

Outside a read aloud, the book continues to have merit with creating your own alphabet character, reordering the alphabet yourself and descriptions of what you would like to be among some of them.  This is one book to hold onto for when I start my primary school placements and one to add to your growing collection!

Grab it from Booktopia, Book Depository or Amazon!

Miss Tracy xx   

Off the Shelf - I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen

Hi all!

Due to one of my more recent assignments, I have had to peruse the shelves for good quality children's literature. After reading the good, the bad, and the never-to-be-shared, I decided that it was only fair to share my discoveries with you. So this new section was born: Off The Shelf!

The book I ended up choosing for the said assignment was 'I Want My Hat Back', by Jon Klassen. This book was first brought to my attention during a lecture in relation to picture book series', as it is the predecessor to the Caldecott winner by the same author, 'This Is Not My Hat'.

Above is the book trailer and summarises the book perfectly; a bear has lost his precious hat and resorts to asking his friends if they have seen it. Little does he know that one of his friends may have taken it to begin with!

The book has the overarching message of lying and theft but uses timing, suspense and inference to present its key messages. The text is structured like a conversation but who is speaking is differentiated using colours rather than quotation marks.

The illustrations are beautiful to look at and add to the meaning of the text; the last 4-5 pages of the text is wordless so it is through the images that we see how the bear's story ends.


I have used this book with kindergarten aged children but it can be utilized with older children as well. Be sure to ask the children for their end responses; if you had some like mine, they will really shock you!

No spoilers but the ending is great! I would definitely be hanging on to this book for years to come.

Check your local or school library to see if they have a copy or grab one off Book Depository or Amazon.

Miss Tracy xx

In Review - The Teacher's IpadoPedia

Hey readers,

Recently I decided to peruse the (free) shelves on the iTunes bookstore and was astounded by the number of free books available in the education section. I came across textbooks, guides and many other wonderful things and promptly downloaded all that I could see. The first book I decided to read was 'The Teacher's IpadoPedia, An A-Z of using iPads in the classroom' by Philip Johnston.

The Teacher's IpadoPedia

An A-Z of Using iPads in the Classroom

Philip Johnston

After my first placement and some of the material we have been covering in class, I have come to realise what an impact technology can have in the classroom, both good and bad, and how this comes into play when I eventually am in the classroom. For these reasons, I decided to go with this book first and was pleasantly surprised with what I had found.

This book blew my mind! Not only was it incredibly well written and set out, Johnston commented on a large range of topics including:

• attendance 
• managing homework
• archiving
• coaching
• photocopying
• quizzing
• creative writing
• taking notes

The book is divided into categories, with app listed which can either perform a task or help aid the process of the mentioned categories. Not only is there a wide range of apps, free and paid, to cover the categories but the book is cross references when apps have multiple functions. 

The actual layout of the book is clean with small chunks of information and plenty of pictures to accompany. The great thing about this being an eBook is that often the text is interactive! Beside the text, you will often find videos which demonstrate an app and how it works and text is often hyper-linked to show you exactly what app you should download and where to find them.

I have already downloaded some of the apps and can see their potential for use of them in the classroom. Other I have been able to integrate into my university life! Overall I enjoyed reading this book, it was not text heavy, it flowed well, you could jump chapters without feeling lost and the interactive nature made finding what Johnston what talking about incredibly easy.   

Philip Johnston has also step up a great website for the book which includes sample pages, links to download the book as well as a contact page if you would like to speak with the author. The website can be found here.

As Johnston said in the foreword, reading this book does not mean you have to apply everything that you read about but rather take what you like and make it work for your classroom. There are some great apps listed and the great thing is the discovery, while Johnston may list the app for one use, you could find a totally new use, either for the classroom or for your personal life!

For those of you who are still unsure, you have nothing to lose as this book is 100% free to download from the iBookstore!

Stay tuned as I discover more education eBooks from the iTunes bookstore!

Miss Tracy xx 

Resource Find - Free Education Books

Hi everyone,

Well recently I have really discovered how expensive uni books are. Each semester, I spend around $450 on textbooks alone, ones that are readily available at my library. BUT... they are on limited loans. Limited loans range from 2 hours, 1 day, 2 days, 3 days and 7 days. For someone studying for the whole semester, I cannot make do with these loans if my assignments focus on the set texts.

So you can understand my surprise when I saw a sign saying free books near a trolley out the front of the library! The first few times there were some good books but for other faculty's. But I persisted and recently found the best education haul yet!

Teacher Education in the English Speaking World; Past, Present and Future

Edited by Tom O'Donoghue and Clive Whitehead

500 Tips for Open and Online Learning

Phil Race

Critical Readings in Teacher Education; Provoking Absences

Anne Phelan and Jennifer Sumsion

Becoming a Teacher; Knowledge, Skills and Issues

Colin Marsh

Advances in Web Based Education; Personalized Learning Environments

George D. Magoulas and Sherry Y. Chen

The toal values of the books is something around $400 and I managed to snag them for absolutely nothing! From a quick look through, the books look great and my hope is that I can use them for assignments, further resourcing and during my actual time in the classroom.

Most are the second latest edition, so my guess for their removal from the library is that they have bought the latest edition. My only complaint so far is that I had to lug all of them home in my handbag!

Stay tuned to see reviews when I get a chance to really scour them, perhaps I'll even use my new bookmarks from Knock Knock stationery!

Does your university give out free books?

What have you been lucky enough to find?

Wish your university gave out free books?

Send me a line at any of the LMST sites!

Miss Tracy xx

Assignment File - The Author Illustrator Presentation

Hello again everyone!

This post focuses on one of my assignments, which I am very proud of, for a Children's Literature unit I undertook last semester.

For this assignment, I had to create a presentation on an Australian  children's author. My partner and I chose to focus on Mr. Paul Jennings. The assignment description doesn't give away much but we approached the task enthusiastically.

With an assignment like this, we saw a lot of Powerpoint presentations. Not that these weren't great, but these sort of presentations got repetitive and seemed to follow the same format. Times this feeling by about 15, one for each group, and this lead to a lot of people in the tutorial fidgeting and quickly losing interest. 

We also saw a Prezi. This type of presentation was definitely a breathe of fresh of air and the girls responsible did a lovely job presenting. But my partner and I still wanted to try something a little different and out of the ordinary.

So, in the end we came up with this...

http://edla-168.wix.com/paul-jennings

Above is a hyper-link to the website we created. We decided to compile an interactive website containing of all the information we needed to display plus some interesting extras, such as an animation, books reviews and some videos.

Taking this approach allowed us to be more flexible in the order we presented plus the different types of media meant that it wasn't always us talking which hopefully kept the class awake and interested!

We decided to stick to the more traditional format for our handout and in the end, it looked very much like the one you can see here.

I was extremely happy with the final product, how it looked and how the class responded to it, and by the look of our final mark, as was our tutor!  

What do you think of our assignment?

Have a question about wix.com and its features?

Thinking of using this idea for your next presentation?

Leave a comment below and feel free to share this post and follow the LMST blog!

Miss Tracy xx