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

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