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 

Assignment File - The Grammar Booklet

Hi all,

I completed a lot of assignments last year but this one was one of my favourites, which is saying a lot! The task was to complete a set of concept maps for a list of grammatical items we were given.

We were given the list at the beginning of the semester and the due date was set sometime during Week 10, after our vacation week. Each week during our tutorials, a group of 2-3 people would present a short PowerPoint on the grammatical item of the week and we were expected to take notes, ask questions and prepare the appropriate mind-map in our own time.

For our presentation, My partner K and I chose 'Type of Nouns' and rather then a PowerPoint, prepared a Prezi to share with the class. These presentations were worth 10% of our final grade and the both of us walked away with a HD.

We had the choice of how to create our maps and I went with Lovely Charts. I had used the online program in high-school on a PC; I loved how clean and professional the final product looked without using default fonts like Times New Roman and Verdana. So when I revisited their site and saw that they had an app, I looked into it. Now usually I only go for free apps, but at $5.50 I knew how good this program was and happily clicked 'buy now'.

The app is painfully easy to use and the part is its save function; you can email the diagram to yourself in a variety of formats. The only limitation I found with the app was the color schemes available; while there a plenty of nice colours there, I would have liked to be able to customise and mix the schemes. Besides that, use your fingers to draw shapes, use two finger to connect shapes and one finger to drag. There it is, painfully simple!

The original idea I had was to do two mind maps a week when I had the time but as things worked out, I majority of the work until the vacation week. Luckily I finished and had about 17 mind maps at the end of my ordeal which looked something like the one below...

But creating countless mind maps was not enough for my tutor, we had to make a grammar BOOKLET. So off to Officeworks I ran to get this piece of hard work bound. I choose the Pro-Click binding for this assignment as we were permitted to bring this into our exam and had I made a mistake, I would like to have had the option to change my mind map. One of my favourite components of this assignment was the fact that we had to include an acknowledgment thanking our classmates for their input since we used information from others presentations. I was really happy with my final product and thankfully, so was my tutor which reflected in my mark, another HD!

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

Resource Find - 365 Activities

Hi everyone,

So you remember a while ago how I posted about 501 TV Free Activities for Kids by Diana Hodges?

While op-shopping a couple weeks ago, look what I found...

Only $5 for both! That's a total of 1,231 DIFFERENT ACTIVITIES (I checked). I could not believe my luck!

I am really excited, I have just started implementing planning for my focus child so these books will really come in handy and provide me with some inspiration.

Where do you find inspiration for planning experiences?
Any op-shop finds to share?

Comment, leave me a note, send me a PM!

Miss Tracy xx

Resource Find - 501 Activity Book

Growing up, our house was filled with books. Living in family of avid readers meant that a love of reading was instilled in me from a young age. It also meant that you could find a variety of books in our house; many of these being ‘activity books’ saved mainly for rainy days and school holidays. 

From the selection above, courtesy of my crowded bookshelf and hoarding ways, you can see that these books have a variety of themes ranging from party planning to gender. But reading through these books now, I realised that most of them are aimed at parents or children as an antidote to boredom. I couldn't really find any book within my collection which had an overt appreciation for learning through the play and exploration.

It was when I stopped at my local bookstore that I found the book of my dreams... 

501 TV Free Activities for Kids by Diana Hodges 

This is an activity binder filled with different ideas and plans on how to entertain and delight children of various ages.

One of the biggest things that sold me on this book was its setup. It has tabs for the types of activity including areas such as outdoor, indoor, science, maths, and words as well as others. The tabs make appropriate activities easy to find under what subject area you want it to focus on or what the children under your care are interested in. It's like having eight books in one! Since the book is spiral bound on a large coil, it is easy to lay flat and look at and this setup prevents damage to the spine and pages of the book as a results of handling and use.

The actual activities in the book use everyday household items which are not difficult to get your hands on and when applicable, lists substitutes which can be used. Depending on the activity, notes are also given on how to can be progressed or simplified depending on the children's abilities and/or the materials available.

With these features plus easily identifiable symbols used throughout the book as a visual representation of key elements used in the activities, this book can be of value for both parents and educators. It was an absolute lifesaver for my last Early Childhood Curriculum and Pedagogy unit when looking at planning for individual children plus I plan on using it as my bible for placement! 

On sale at my local bookstore, it only cost me $13.00 (RRP 24.99) but it is available online at Booktopia. For those outside Australia, Amazon does stock new copies at varying prices. The book is even available off iTunes!  

With so many sources for activity inspiration, especially those to be found online, this book spoke to me as a physical collection of ideas I can take around with me. Whether I use it when babysitting, on placement, during an assignment or even in the workplace, this was definitely worth the buy.

Do you have a favourite source for activity inspiration?

Care to share?

Drop me a line, ask some questions or just follow the LMST blog!

Miss Tracy xx