Literacy Resources

I wasn’t quite brave enough to make the title Have you Seen my SpicyNodes?  However, have you?  My thanks to Tim Rylands who blogged about the pinball machine on the BBC site.  I haven’t had the time to work it out fully but did explore some of the sites that it suggested and Spicy Nodes was one of them.

Spicy Nodes is a bit like a mind-mapping tool where each node contains snippets of information, video clips, images and links to other places.  It unfolds to reveal the nodes and therefore the information.  One way I think it could be used would be make a good front page for a website.  The nodes could link you to more information located within the site. You can display this in a much bigger site than the space a blog will allow so it may appear a little squashed.

As part of the boys’ writing project that I am involved in, we interviewed the boys to find out what they thought about writing.  They didn’t disappoint!  They like to ‘do’.  They dislike writing because of the physical aspects, holding the pen/pencil,  scruffy handwriting, stamina related to arm ache etc.  But what one of the boys did like to do was create comics – usually by drawing.  When I said that there were sites on the internet where you could create comics he became very excited.  His teacher and I trawled the internet and came up with the following comic  sites that we thought suitable for a child in KS2 (7 – 11 yrs old).

There were certain points that we considered:

• it is probably best not to use a site that allows comics to be stored online. It increases the likelihood of children seeing unsuitable material
• check the age at which children are allowed to use the site – many good ones are for 13 years and older
• explore how children can get access to a comic that they have created – is it only through printing or are there other ways?

Here are some that fit the bill.

• The best one is comic life. This is a programme that must eventually be bought but is available for a 30 day free trial through a download and then only costs £11ish for one user. With this programme you can upload your own photos to create a comic with.  It is the most flexible.
• Make Beliefs Comix which can be saved by printing and by emailing the comic to friends and yourself.
• Captain Underpants! Oh yes and full of toilet humour! This site asks for hometown, gym teacher’s name and first name when you click to enter. This information is then included in some of the text that you can add to the comic so there is no need to put in accurate information. It provides a good talking point about what info children should give out. In this instance you could all agree what should be inputted. This site allows you to email the comic to yourself or friends. Great fun.
• Superhero Marvel Squad All of the characters here and the facility to create your own text. With this site you can create a comic strip or book. Amazing. The comic can be printed or saved as a pdf on your computer. It saves it as something strange but when you open it you are asked what programme you want to use. Choose Adobe pdf and it opens beautifully. This is what I used for the comic image at the top of the post.
• ReadWriteThink is for creating comics that have people rather than monsters or heroes. It can only be saved by printing but is in black and white so is less heavy on printer ink.
• Digger and the Gang – this is for younger children and is much more limited. The children choose 1 of 3 stories with the images already chosen and then add the text.

What are your favourite comic sites?

More posts about using comics .

I have recently become much more aware of the vast number of resources on YouTube that can be used in a primary classroom. YouTube is blocked from the majority of schools meaning that downloading is the only answer if you want to use something from the site.

My latest finds are Snap and Storytime.   Snap from LequeaxRoberto is a great short movie of a chase.  And aren’t chase scenes hard to write whether you focus on the person/object doing the chasing or being chased.  To use this film watch it through several times so that the children bocome familiar with it and then divide the class into two.  Half watch the person being chased and half watch the chaser.  Generate words and phrases to describe what they see in the chase, the movement of the body, what the chase is passing, the sounds etc.  Now use these ideas to create one or two paragraphs to describe a chase.

Storytime is an advert from The Calgary Public Library.  Because of some of the titles you can’t show this clip in the classroom but it would be a great idea to make your own out of titles in the school/class library.  Children would get to know more about what is in the library and would also have the opportunity to invent stories that incorporate the titles.  A great way of developing the inventing part of Talk for Writing.

To see more video that we think can be used in the classroom visit our YouTube channel – Primary Literacy

I had forgotten, and then rediscovered photopeach!  Since I last visited photopeach has added the facility to include a quiz.
Working Walls on PhotoPeach
Children under 13 must have the registration form completed by a parent/guardian.  There are a myriad of uses for teachers.  What do you do with all those photos taken during trips or of the up and coming christmas play?  I find it easier to use than Animoto although there is not the same choice of music available to accompany the film.
Enjoy!

We talk a lot about working walls and model them on our talk for writing training so it is fantastic to get some feedback from teachers about what they are doing in their classrooms.

A working wall is a temporary display for any or all curriculum areas that shows the build up or progress towards an outcome. It is not a neatly presented, double-backed display but an ‘in the moment’ display captured whilst working, that becomes a scaffold for children and an explicit visual support of the journey. In literacy, by the time the children get to the writing stage there will be many supports for the writing on the working wall and teachers will be modelling how to use the ideas and practises that have been generated.

I particularly like this series of images because they show so clearly the place of talk for writing in the teaching sequence.  Can you spot the story-mapping, warming up the word and the support from visual images?  They also take the children through the stages of imitation and innovation.  So many children need to linger longer in the imitation phase in order that they embed the language patterns and start to find their own voices.  Children will then naturally move into the innovate and finally invent phases.

When talking about book displays in  The Reading Environment, Aiden Chambers states

they deeply influence the mental set of the people who see them.

I see no reason why working walls should have any less of an influence.

Our thanks go to Mark Cole at West Croft Juniors for these wonderful pictures of his working walls linked to talk for writing. It would behard hard not to succeed at writing in this classroom.

Which aspects of talk for writing have had the most impact upon your children’s writing?

We now produce a regular newsletter letting people know the new resources that we have found or created, courses that we are offering and ideas for teaching and learning in literacy.  If you would like to receive a copy please complete the form below using the tab button to move down the form and click on submit.

I am a big fan of found poetry and have suggested it as an activity several times on this blog.  On Wednesday I read Andrew Motion’s recent found poem An Equal Voice created from a variety of sources.

Found poetry allows us to magpie (I know it’s not really a verb!) words and phrases from other writers and to put them together in our own ways (usual words in unusual combinations).  It is a very supportive way of creating powerful poetry with children whose own vocabulary might be limited.  It allows them to roll the language over their tongues to see how it fits and eventually, if it is  said and read enough, the words and phrases become their own.

Found poetry can be created from fiction and non-fiction texts equally well and can be derived from one source or across a range of sources and can therefore be cross-curricular.  They can be created from speeches, letters, scientific and research papers, road signs, adverts, websites and picture books.  In fact anything that has words can be used.

Here’s a found poem derived from this post.

Lost and Found

Magpie.

Rolling the language

To see how it fits.

Words and tongues

Creating a voice.

Poetry.

So how would you go about creating found poetry with children?  One of the easiest ways to start is with a text that you are using  somewhere in the curriculum.  Allow the children to collect, on post-its or whiteboards, words and phrases that they like or think have an impact.  Pool these so that there is a large bank which could be displayed on the working wall.  Model  selecting some of the post-its and trying them out in different combinations seeing which work and which don’t.  Read them aloud.  Take some out and add more in until you have something to share.  Other ideas are to:-

• photocopy part of a text and allow children to highlight text that they want on it.  Cut this out and rearrange.
• give children different texts based on a theme to collect words and phrases from and then pool them to create with.
• set up a display of words and phrases that children can create poems with.  Record each of the poems created and explore the similarities and differences.
• the recording of the poems could be by photograph.  Take a look at the Flickr Found Poetry group.
• How about Haiku from error messages?
• And why not have a blog of found poetry?  Find the poems by clicking on the categories.

Yesterday I worked with a group of teachers thinking about developing children’s inference skills.  As we talked about the range of strategies that we needed to offer in our classrooms, I was reminded once again of the power of synonyms in reading.  I quite often see synonyms being taught for writing purposes, e.g. other words for ’said’ but rarely for reading purposes.

Coherence inference looks at how we make sense of a text as we move through it; how pronouns link back to nouns and how we use anaphoric reference, in other words how we use synonyms to refer to objects or people throughout a text so that we don’t repeat the same word or phrase. For instance the text might mention ‘the ship’ towards the beginning and then move onto ‘this vessel’, we might have tigers, big cats and  these animals. In both these instances as we move through the text the synonym becomes less precise or more generic. This can also be linked to antonyms which are opposites. I remember my class sitting an end of KS2 reading test and thinking if only they understood the title of the reading paper ‘Friend or Foe’ they would get so much more understanding out of it.

So, how can we help children extend their understanding of synonyms?

• One of the first places I would explore with children is a thesaurus.  Have a look at the synonyms for the noun ship in the concept thesarus
• collect synonyms and order them along a continuum.  These could then be recorded on those paint sample cards to show degrees of intensity.  What order would you put these synonyms for cold; arctic, bitter, chilly, brisk, nippy?
• There are several games that are worthwhile for children to play try here and here
• for a get up and go game give each child a piece of paper with a word at the top.  Everyone writes one synonym for that word on their piece of paper and then on the say so all move seats and write a synonym on the piece of paper they are now sitting at.  Keep going for as many moves as possible. Go back to original word and share the synonyms with a partner.
• Using non-chronological reports, text mark all words used to refer to the object that the report is about.  For example on this great website there are several synonyms for lions in the first snippet of information. However in the longer text, which you can see as you scroll down, the word lions is used each time they are referred to.  For me as a reader it feels a bit clunky.

We have been following up our Talk for Writing training by working with children in schools and have started to develop banks of games and activities. 

Warming up the word activities can be played at any point in the teaching sequence and whenever there is a spare 5 minutes.

If you have any activities that could be added please email me, leave a comment or contact me through twitter (@joysimpson) and I will add you to the presentation.

I talked to a group of boys today about writing and how they felt about it.  Their responses were perceptive and showed a way forward for those of us working with them.

What do you like to write about?

This brought up the usual things such as aliens, the future, dragons and comic heroes.  When I suggested that they could make comics on the web they didn’t really believe me.  My favourite place to do this at the moment is ArtisanCam’s Super Hero Comic Maker.

The group wanted the freedom to write about what they were interested in and it seems to me that this is one place where blogging could be useful.  If we introduce children to blogs and start to comment on them  we will eventually create a blogging community within the classroom.  Then we can talk about the different types of blog and the children can write about what interests them.

What helps you to write?

Here the boys were adamant that they needed to ‘do’ things and then write about them.  I would not dispute this fact and many teachers are actively engaged in providing first hand experiences for the class.  But how do we move children on from this to being able to write about the thoughts and ideas that are in their heads rather than those that they have directly experienced?  Pie Corbett has some examples of developing the ’seeing’ inside your head and doing that ‘mad stary thing’ where you focus your concentration on the images in your head and find words to describe them.

These ideas will certainly give us something to think about as we plan the next few weeks literacy sessions.  What do your class think about writing and what do they like to write about most?

Whilst I was looking for the comic url I came across the picture book maker. This is fantastic.