Literacy Resources

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.

As part of our animating project we wanted to work with the kit that schools already had as this can be one of the barriers to creating animations in the classroom.  In the end we didn’t but that is another story!  However, on my travels through animations Tim Brook told me that 2Animate can be imported into Windows MovieMaker and he was right!

The trick is to import the animation as a picture not a video as the animation is saved as a .gif file.  This was where I had been going wrong.  So now  we can do more with the animation.  Fantastic.  And just to show you here is a dreadful animation I made earlier.

Somebody else told me that you could use a webcam with 2Animate but I can’t find a way.  Is it possible?  If so please let me know.

I have been on a hunt for online animations to use in Literacy teaching and have come across some fantastic ones.  They are all available on YouTube and sometimes on other hosting sites as well. The easiest way to use the animations is to download them.

My all time favourite has to be Father and Daughter by Michael Dudok de Wit.  You can also see it here.

Oktapodi directed by Julien Bocabeille and Francois-Xavier Chanioux made me laugh out loud.  It reminds me of Finding Nemo.  See it here and if you can’t access YouTube try here.

I am becoming a little obsessed with animations made using sticky notes.  Yellow Sticky Notes by Jeff Chiba Stearn is wonderful.  Thi s would be a more interesting outcome for the Yr6 unit on biography and autobiography.

To see all the animations that I am collecting go to our YouTube channel and subscribe so that you are notified when new video is added.

As an authority we are taking part in an animation and poetry project entitled Persistence of Vision.  Through a group of schools, consultants, animators and academic mentors we are working together to create a framework of progression in animation that can be used by all primary schools.

Today was our first day and was really about the basics of creating an animation with Oscar Stringer.  We used I Can Animate software and Hue webcams.

One of the issues that we are exploring is what impact does watching animations have on children’s own animations.  We watched Laughing Moon from the BFI Starting Stories and Love on the Wing from Story Shorts 2. These two animations were chosen becuase of the links that they had to the poetry units in Yr 2 – Patterns on the Page (Laughing Moon) and the use of imagery in Yrs5 and 6 (Love on the Wing).

Learning and Teaching Scotland has some interesting ideas for creating animations in powerpoint that follow on from Laughing Moon.  And this idea using sticky post-its is fantastic for playing around with patterns!  This video, Trade Tatoo, from the GPO film unit is yet another great way of using patterns.

Below are the animations created by the teachers working in pairs.

Next session we will work on sound.

So much has been happening recently that I thought  I would highlight some of the best resources that have been shared with me recently.

The first idea is from a school that is looking at writing instructions.  We decided to cook (and write) like Jamie Oliver and so looked for video clips that could be shown in school.  Here the Sainsbury’s advert for fishcakes gives a taste of what he is like.   When you read Jamie’s recipes it is the verb choice that really stands out.  Verbs that you might expect to find are cut, chop, slice, mix and pour.  What you find is something a little different, e.g. pile up, tear, chuck in, smear and glug.  These were in the Jamie Oliver in Italy.  For other recipes look here.  I like the introduction to each recipe.  These make a great model for children to use.  I’m looking forward to cooking in the style of Jamie!

Stories of the Dreaming is a wonderful Australian storytelling site.  After each video is a transcript of the story and a commenting section.  This would be a great way to introduce children to australian storytelling and commenting on sites.  Well worth a visit.

And finally, a word game to use with KS2.  DeepLeap the fast-paced time wasting word game.  The letters look like scrabble and children can call out the words they can see for you or another child to type in.  Let us know what your highest score is.  The Devon Primary ScITT trainees achieved 785.