Literacy Resources

I love infographics so many thanks to @literacyadviser (Bill Boyd) for sharing this one with everyone via twitter.  It is American but still interesting to see what the favourite books are at the moment.  I wonder what a UK version would look like?  Probably pretty similar thinking about Harry Potter, but I think that Dr Seuss would be replaced by The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  What do you reckon?

I have often thought about presenting Devon’s data using infographics (every year when we get our new data in fact) but have never managed to get round to it.  Perhaps that should be a challenge for me!  If you want to make your own, try visual.ly   I’m off to play with the site.

Via MAT@USC: Become a Teacher

Dear Educational Publishers,

Just recently you have really improved your provision of phonically decodable texts.  It is not easy to write a book that contains only the sounds /s/ /a/ /p/ /t/ /i/ /n/ but you have done a stirling job. This one can be used after week 5 of phase 2 of Letters and Sounds.  The quality of the resources is so much better.  The illustrations are rich and compliment the text well one example of this being the Traditional Tales from Oxford Owl.

I do however have one suggestion that would make all of our lives so much easier.  Please don’t put Book Band colours on your phonically decodable books.  They do not relate to each other.  If you can read words using sounds in phase 2 of Letters and Sounds, you can not read pink Book Band books.  You can learn the pattern of the book and use the images but you can’t use phonic strategies to read (decode) the words.  I am not arguing that we need only phonically decodable texts.  We don’t but Book Bands and phonic levels do not go hand in hand.  In fact they do not correlate at all!

This false use of Book Band colours on phonically decodable texts is confusing for all.  As professionals we need to decide which type of text  to use to teach children the next step in reading, phonically decodable texts or patterned texts (book banded books).  Sometimes it looks like children are going backwards when we move between the two types of text and this can be distressing for parents and for those children who have realised what the colours stand for.  In future please keep the two types of book separate with book bands used for patterned texts and phases only for phonically decodable texts.  It would make our job so much easier.

Here’s hoping.

Joy

I have long been a fan of David Wiesner, enjoying many of his wordless picture books.  My favourite one has to be Flotsam.

In this book a boy finds a camera washed up on the beach with a film inside.  I have to say the colours on the roll of film do remind me of Kodak but I am not sure how many children in primary schools will still be familiar with the concept of film and taking the film to be developed.  The photos that are revealed tell the tales of incredible goings on under the sea.  But the last picture proves to be even more of a puzzle because it shows a girl holding a picture from the film and this image goes on and on and on.

Using a microscope these images reveal that the very first picture was taken a long time ago.  The boy continues the idea of taking a picture of himself holding the last photo and then returns the camera to the sea where it continues on its fantastical journey.  This is a wonderful book where every page is a visual delight.

I love the fantastical side of the book with the sea creatures taking part in human activities, sitting on the sofa reading or flying in a balloon of puffer fish.  But I am also interested in the theme of eyes and lenses that runs through the book.  It reminds me of The Viewer by Shaun Tan Gary Crew and another book about the Kraken which escapes me at the moment.

There are several ways in which this book could be used.  It could be used as for children to retell the story adding text or it could be innovated upon.  If children took the underlying story: something is found on the beach, it reveals something unexpected, it is returned to the sea then there are lots of ways in which a similar story could be developed especially if children are taken down to the beach to see what they can find on shore.  The book could be used to develop the idea of character through showing not telling.  ‘What do we know about the boy?’  would make a great investigation for children as there are many clues to be interpreted.  There is also something interesting to be studied in the framing of the pictures.   I particularly like the six small frames that show the boy’s boredom/excitement whilst waiting the hour for the pictures to be printed.

Another possible way to use the book is to take the idea from Houghton Mifflin and create a promotional video for the book.  A tool such as Photostory would be ideal.

This book would work well with almost any unit of literacy in KS2.  Obvious links are imaginary worlds and familiar settings but if you like the book you will make it work anywhere!

Have you used this book in literacy?  If so, how?

When Night Didn’t Come by Poly Bernatene is a wordless picture book which offers a considerable level of challenge to read as well as being a visual feast.

The story tells of a village when the sun goes down and the panic when the moon doesn’t rise.  There are wonderful pictures of the mechanics of making the moon rise with villagers pulling up large bags of stars and throwing them into the sky.

The colours used in the pictures are rich with glowing oranges set against darker blues, greens and purples giving a slightly theatrical, if not magical feel to the story.  It is this element that reminds me of Leon and The Place Between by Grahame Baker-Smith.  In fact it would be wonderful if children could tell the story of night not coming in the style of Leon and The Place Between.  The language in that book is rich in patterning with a magical air about it.

I think this book would be most suitable for Yr4 children, particularly the imaginary worlds/fanstasy unit of literacy.  Wonderful!

Fans of wordless picture books will be familiar with Jeannie Baker’s work;  Window, Where the Forest Meets the Sea and Home.  The book of hers that I would most like to use in a literacy sequence is Mirror which I think fits very well with the Yr5 literacy unit stories from other cultures.

The book opens out to show two stories, one on either side of the cover.  Each book tells us the story of a child and their family, one living in Australia and one living in Morocco.    I think the book works best if you turn the pages of each story at the same time and read the two stories together comparing and contrasting what you can see and what you understand.

The images are created in Baker’s normal style, collage, and are packed full of detail that takes a while to observe fully.  The stories do cross when the Moroccan father travels into the market to sell a carpet and then the carpet is collected and placed in the Sydney home.  A way, I suppose, of asking us to consider where the things we buy come from and that we are linked in all sorts of ways.  It would be a great discussion with children to consider all the different ways that the title Mirror is reflected in the book.

There are several websites with teaching ideas for using this book.  Walker Books has a set of activities which are worth dipping into, particularly as they were drawn up with Jeannie Baker.  I would use the book to retell one of the stories but I would ask children to tell it in the style of The Day of Ahmed’s  Secret by Florence Perry Heide and Judith Heide Gillilan.  The writing in this book is rich with description and quite lyrical.  Whenever I have used this book with children they are always really surprised by the secret, it being such an every day act in their own lives.

Working with some teachers last week, we started to explore the power of wordless picture books and how they can support children’s writing.  Here are some of the reasons that we came up with about why we should be using them:

• they allow children to tell their own story based upon their own understanding of the images
• the allow children to control a whole story thereby embedding story structure
• they allow us the opportunity to teach the aspects of writing that children need to get better at in a controlled context, e.g use of speech, figurative language etc
• they allow us to teach visual literacy skills and the ways in which they can enhance writing
• they allow children to orchestrate a greater degree of complexity in character, setting, plot, conflict and theme
• they develop speaking and listening skills

So why aren’t we using more of them?

Over the next few weeks I will be reviewing wordless picture books that will appear on our texts that teach list.

The first one I want to look at is Shadow by Suzy Lee.

This is an incredible book telling the story of a little girl in a garage who switches on the light and starts to make and play with the shadows.  The shadows become more and more fantastical showing a rich imaginary world.  There are only two colours used in the book, black and yellow, the yellow becoming more predominant as the shadows move further into the realms of fantasy.

What I really love is the way in whcih the book is designed with the little girl on one side of the double page spread and the shadows on the other, meeting at the centre of the book so if you hold up one of the pages it really does look like shadows on a wall.  The fold represents the line between reality and fantasy.  There are similar themes in her book Mirror.  Click on the link to the slide show to see what they are.

I can think of several ways of telling the story in this book.  The first way that springs to mind is the way in which Rosie’s Walk is told.  Sparse text telling the reality of the story but that leaves out all the interesting fantasy elements so I think I would like to retell it in the style of Think of an Eel by Karen Wallace and Mike Bostock which is a text with a dual voice.  One text told in straight forward report style and the other told in rich, alliterative language.  I think they would work well with Shadows.

What are your favourite wordless picture books?

We have been leading a lot of phonics work recently; training, supporting, demonstrating, working alongside and using the lesson study model of support with much more to come this term.  One of the ideas that we are very clear about in phonics teaching is that you need a small number of  games/activities which you and the children really enjoy.  This means that the focus of the session can remain on the phonics skills and knowledge rather than learning to play a game.  So here are our top 10 phonics activities not listed in any particular order:

The B refers to an activity for blending and the S for segmenting.  The page numbers refer to the description of the activity in Letters and Sounds.

Which activities do you think are high value in terms of phonics learning?

We quite often visit Lyme Regis for a walk and a meander through the town stopping of course for a cup of tea and usually a cake.  The landscaped gardens above the beach are one of my favourite places.  This part of the coastline is fossil heaven and so there are lots of places to see fossils that have been discovered in the area.  There are several children’s books based on Mary Anning and fossil hunting,  my favourite being Stone Girl Bone Girl  by Laurence Anholt.

But Lyme Regis is also one of those rare places nowadays that has an independent book shop and you know what that means!  Today’s visit was no exception.  I bought a wonderful little fold-up book of the skyline of London illustrated by Sarah McMenemy produced by Walker Books.

The book folds out to show the outline of the London skyline with text for each building that stretches into the sky.  And because you never stop being a teacher, I thought that this would make a wonderful model for children to create their own version about the local environment or any environment that children are looking at.  Anyone familiar with Paul Johnson’s work will be familiar with making folded paper books like this. I am very taken with the boat in the last picture on his site.

It would also be a great way to present the outcome of an author study by producing a book of the characters in the author’s book or settings or anything else that is a theme in the writing.  The book has two different types of pop-up so it wouldn’t be too difficult to show children how to make them.  You can also make the little box that the book fits in.

It is a long time since I last made a folded paper book so I am off to have a go.  Here’s hoping that you are inspired to try something new/old/different this holiday.  Happy Christmas everyone.  See you in the New Year.

I have long enjoyed Carol Ann Duffy’s work, a fact which was brought home to me when I read her  poem Achillles about David Beckham.  I loved the way that she brought popular culture and laureate work together.  Something she has continued to do.  I hope that I am to receive her latest book The Bees for christmas.  I have dropped enough hints!

What I do have however, is copies of the little christmas books that she has written and I have collected over the last three years.

The first of the trio that I bought was Mrs Scrooge.  This is an uptodate version of the story with Mrs Scrooge googling information about the way that turkeys are reared for the christmas feast.  It also contains credit cards, protests and developers.

Up the echoing stairs to slippers, simple supper, candles, cocoa, cat, went Mrs Scrooge: not scared, but oddly comforted at glimpsing Scrooge’s knockered face.

The language rolls and trips off the tongue, rich with alliteration and assonance.  Christmas past, present and future arrive to show Mrs Scrooge the life she has had, has and will have with a happy ending of family near by and developers thwarted.

Posy Simmonds provides the illustrations and they mirror the warmth, detail and emotion.

Another Night Before Christmas is illustrated by Rob Ryan: he of the wonderful paper cutting.   This is the story of a little girl trying to stay awake to see if Santa is real.

The hushed street was in darkness.  Snow duveted the cars – a stray cat had embroidered each roof with its paws.

An owl on an aerial had planets for eyes.  The child at the window stared up at the sky.

I an not quite sure how you pronounce ‘duveted’ but I do love the way that christmas is described; the flirting of the tree in flickers of green and crimson, the reindeer whose breath chiffoned out into the cold and the aeroplanes that sped to the east and the west like a pulled cracker. There are again references to contemporary life with the droning motorways, people in blankets with nowhere to go, cashpoints glowing like icons of light and the satellite filming famine and greed.  The story is however timeless.

The Christmas Truce tells the story of the football match on the 25th December 1914 when war was suspended and Christmas spread.

So Christmas dawned, wrapped in mist, to open itself and offer the day like a gift for Harry, Hugo, Hermann, Henry, Heinz….. with whistles, waves, cheers, shouts, laughs.

The illustrations by David Roberts are so evocative showing a  devastated waste land of spiky shapes and  red cold noses and cheeks.

These books would make fantastic stocking filler.  Let’s hope there will be many more.

Happy Christmas!

Spelling is just one of those things – it seems so hard to get it right and to have an effect upon children’s writing but often  that is because we need to have all three of the following things in place in order to make a difference.

1. Teach – choose a spelling programme that has progression and suggests activities and ways of working.  Make sure that is pays sufficient attention to strategies for learning and remembering words, and if it doesn’t add them in.  Make sure it focuses on patterns in our words rather than learning lists of words.  Model being interested in words, investigating why things are spelt the way they are so that children understand that there is a reason for our spelling.  Assess what children  are learning about spelling patterns and how they articulate what they know. This does notnecessarily mean setting a list of words to take home and learn.
2. Apply – model for children what they should do with spelling at the point of writing.  Children need to take the responsibility for this.  So show them how to use a have-a-go sheet, trying out different spellings for the words until they can get as near to a spelling as possible.  Use that spelling and draw a line underneath it in their writing to show that they need to come back to that word and work on it a bit further.  At no point in this process should children  ask you as the teacher if it is right.  Model using a have-a-go sheet whenever you write and across the curriculum.  Model using a wide range of strategies to get to the correct spelling (analogy, letter string patterns, linking it to other words that have similar meaning or come from the same family, mnemonics used etc).  Give children time to try and find the correct spellings of these words after writing and then if they can’t, and only then, help them.  Give children time to learn these spellings and if parents insist, send these words home to be learnt.  Teach children how to work in pairs to test each other.
3. Assess – how are children spelling in their writing?  What words are they struggling with and therefore what patterns should be included in your teaching.  How is what they are doing now progress?