Literacy Resources

I have never really been sure about how to use the animation  Flat Life, first seen on the BFI Story Shorts 2 dvd.  However, today I think I might have found an outcome for the film.

Through the post I received my own copy of Building Stories by Chris Ware - a book that is definitely not for children – and fell in love with it.  It has a lot of things that I like; beautiful visuals, tactile appeal, an unusual structure, a very appealing front cover/box and a range of text types but all in graphics.  Many thanks @literacyadviser for the tweet about this book.

The ’book’ comes in a beautiful cardboard box and consists of 14 different types of book/booklet/poster/newspaper and so on. I think it is like Black and White by David Macaulay on steroids.

 I haven’t started to read them in detail yet.  I am just scanning my way through everything to  sort out how it works and what order I should read them in.  I understand from the reviews that it is probably best to read them in order.  What I do know is that the book tells the story of inhabitants of a block of flats and it is this that reminded me of Flat Life.  It seems to me that the children could create booklets about the characters in Flat Life, using the animation as a starting point and through a series of drama/role play activities, develop the characters and their lives further.  They could then tell these in graphic form either by drawing or by using some form of comic creater – Comic Life springs to mind.

It also reminds me of the book 99 Ways to Tell a Story by Matt Madden.  99 different styles of comic telling the same story.

What have you seen this half-term that has caused you to make new links?

Our most visited post on this blog is our list of guided reading books for levels 3 – 5.  Over the summer we took the opportunity to update the list and have added many new titles.  So here they are!

Below level 3

Smile! Starring Sunny McCloud – Leigh Hodgkinson

That’s Not Funny – Adrian Johnson

Level 3

I want to be Famous by Laura Adkins and Sam Hearn

Three by the Sea by Mini Grey

Pillywiggins and the Tree Witch by Julia Jarman (higher level 3)

The Sprog Owner’s Manual by Babette Cole

A Child’s Garden a story of hope by Michael Foreman

The Worst Princess by Anna Kemp and Sara Ogilvie

Something Else by Catherine Cave and Chris Riddell

The Pirate Lord by Terry Deary (higher level 3)

Major Glad, Major Dizzy by Jan Oke

Six Men by David McKee

The Three Pigs by David Wiesner

Crazy Hair by Neil Gamon

Refugees by David Miller

Level 4

Ottoline and the Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell

The Rumblewick Letters by Hiawyn Oram and Sarah Warburton – read alongside one of the Rumblewick Diaries

Lord of the Animals by Fiona French and The King of the Birds by Helen Ward – use both books to explore the theme

Spooky Devon by Helen Greathead – short stories located in Devon.  Entertaining end papers,  interesting index and short stories to dip in to

Highway Robbbery by Kate Thompson

Short Too! By Kevin Crossley Holland – short stories

Little Wolf’s Book of Badness by Ian Whybrow

Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears by Emily Gravett

Ghostly Beasts – Joan Aiken – short stories

The Monster Diaries by Luciano Saracino

The Shadow-Cage and other supernatural tales – Phillippa Pearce

The Viewer by Gary Crew

Level 5

Farther by Graheme Baker-Smith

Me and You by Anthony Browne – explore the 2 stories, why the illustrative style is used with each story, the cultural context of the setting for Goldilocks and stereotypes

The Heart and The Bottle by Oliver Jeffers – also available as an ipad app for those schools with ipads.  The level 5ness of this book can be found, amongst other things, in the use of the bottle as a metaphor and the idea of an empty chair and what it symbolises

Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories – would be a good book for each child to take one story, prepare it and then tell the rest of group about it so that common themes can be explored.  Also interesting to explore the style of illustration in relation to the story.

The Unforgotten Coat by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Black and White by David Macaulay – an end of year  KS2 book

Cloud Busting by Malorie Blackman

The Paradise Garden by Colin Thompson

The Boy Who Climbed Into The Moon by David Almond

George and the Dragon and a world of other stories by Geraldine McCaughrean – also in the series, Robin Hood and a world of other stories and King Arthur and a world of other stories

What we do intend doing is linking the books on this list to cards from our resource Think Reading.  This will mean that you have suggested texts and ideas .

What are your favourite texts for guided reading?

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!

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?

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!

I just loved Brain Selznick’s latest book Wonderstruck.  I love the way the text and the images tell two stories that cross, link and move backwards and forwards through time until finally coming together.

I love the way the images start by zooming into the wolf’s eye and out again when we see Lillian May, the actress.  Very filmic, which of course is so true of Selznick’s work.

I hate the way that the girl, Rose,  has to reach out to her mother the actress Lillian May and the way in which she rejects her.  The facial expressions tell the story of a mother who does not want to be reminded of anything less than perfect in her life.  The end of silent movies here reflects the end of the mother and daugheter’s relationship.  It can’t be a coincidence that Rose, the daughter who is deaf, has her story told through images rather than words.

This is definitely a book for guided reading – so much to discus and puzzle over.  One for children reading securely in NC level 4.

And to top it all I see the The Invention of Hugo Cabret has been made into a film which is due out in November (in America).

Other books that would be suitable for guided reading can be seen here and here.

Most teachers who look at persuasive texts use adverts for at least one of the units so here are some of my favourite places to look for texts that are rich enough to base a unit of work around.

1. www.tellyAds.com is one of the best places for ads seen on televsion.  The quality is often better than those found on YouTube and there is an enormous range.  The Yeo Valley farmers rapping is one of my favourites but there is so much on here.  We use the Corsa Hide and Seek advert for our persuasive teaching sequence.  Although expensive, there is an option to buy the adverts on DVD and for those schools where gaining access to these sorts of resources is tricky, this might be an option.
2. www.advertolog.com is a very rich source of adverts having television, radio and print adverts.  This is a subscription service so you can’t access the film adverts but you can search and find out titles.  I use this site for print adverts.  There are lots of ways of seraching – by media, by content, by advertising agency etc.  I have several favourites on here but some include the Golf R series,  the Mercedes Benz left and right side series and the Honda Jazz Grandmother advert.  These would make great texts for guided reading.
3. http://www.impawards.com type a movie into the search box and find a movie poster.  These are fantastic and suitable for guided reading focusing in on the text and its position, colour, light and framing.  Many of the posters I looked at have a blue to black colour scheme.  That would make an interesting literacy investigation.  Which is the most commonly used colour in children’s movie posters and why?
4. Be Adwise from smart media is a great online resource for teachers.  Module 1 is an introduction to advertising for 6 – 11 yr olds.  It focuses on the language of tv advertising, creating your own tv advert, how an ad is made, selling celebrities and what happens when ads get it wrong.  This is an excellent resource.  The site requires a login but is free to use and download resources.
5. Film Education has to have the most comprehensive range of generic activities and those linked to specific films for children.  It is a real treasure trove.  One of the resources available is a booklet about Teaching Trailers. This site is a must for all teachers interested in teaching about and creating film.
6. http://www.visit4info.com is a rich source of tv adverts easily searchable by alphabet or type of advert.  One of the best things about this site is the ease with which you can download the ads.

Do you have any favourite places to find persuasive texts?  Do let us know.

When children start to move away from reading schemes it is very important that they find books that are at just the right level that they will enjoy.  One of the best ways of doing this is to introduce children to books in series as this means that there is a good chance that if they like one, they will like some of the rest.  They provide a safety net for the newly fledged reader.  Below are some of my favourites which I have tried to put into some order of difficulty but it is very subjective.

Blue Bananas

This is a great series for young readers written by real authors.  The books are  quite small with only a few lines of text on each page with the pictures playing an important role in the stories.  Books  for Keeps has a great detailed review here.

BabyMouse

I have long been a fan of these great little graphic novels. Each one features the life and adventures of BabyMouse and is aimed at girls, being very pink.  They are great stories, quite often with a moral tale to them about how life should be lived.  The most recent one I have bought is BabyMouse Cupcake Tycoon which I especially enjoyed because it was about generating money for the library and books.

Rockets

This series is told through small amounts of text on each page spread between the text and comic like illustrations.  These are set out in a linear fashion so it is quite obvious what order to read things in, which can sometimes be a bit of a challenge in some series.  These books have short chapters.  One of my favourite  in this series is Stan and the Crafty Cats by Scoular Anderson. This is the story of Stan the dog and the two cats who come to stay.  Told from the dog’s point of view, I love the names that he gives to the humans and the title of each chapter, first helping, second helping, third helping etc.

Walker Books Starters

I particularly like the variety of ways in which these stories are told.  Some consist of text and comic like sections whilst my favourite, The Dragon Test by June Crebbin is told through letters from a princess to her father about becoming a dragon catcher.  There is not too much text on each page and once again, like the rockets there is a great deal of humour in the books.  Delightful.  (The Dragon Test is good enough to appear on our texts that teach list)

Yellow Bananas

With books written by Kevin Crossley-Holland, Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo and Penelope Lively, who can complain that these are not real books written by real authors.  These books dmand more reading and stamina than the blue bananas, occasionally having only text on a page but they are not overwhelming and many pages have both images and text.  Some are divided into chapters.  My favourites are Storm by Kevin Crossley-Holland and Scaredy Cat by Anne Fine.

Sprinters

This series from Walker Books moves away from the comic style to just text although most pages do have an illustration on which breaks up the chunk of text.  The books are divided into chapters and are written by well–known authors; Michael Morpurgo, Jan Mark, Dick King-Smith and Anne Fine.  Favourites are Lady Long Legs and Taiking teh Cats Way Home both by Jan Mark.

Colour Young Puffins (scroll down the page to see the titles)

These are the next step for readers having slightly more and smaller text on each page than the sprinters.  Most pages do have an illustration to break the page of text up and divided into chapters.  The illustrations are however in colour rather than just line drawings.  Again written by well-known authors.

What are your favourite books in series for fledgling readers?

There have been several interesting reports published recently.  The main one being the recent white paper about education from Michael Gove.  I am fairly  sure that anyone who was interested in the white paper has already had a quick read so it does not appear in this list.

Reading by Six: how the best schools do it

This report from OFSTED looks at how schools who achieve excellent reading results teach reading to primary aged children.  If you have read the Rose Review the principles which the twelve schools included in this report have based their teaching of reading on will be very familiar.  What this document does do though, is show how schools have interpreted the Rose findings to suit their own contexts.  The one aspect that shines through for me is the part leadership plays in all of these schools.

Could Do Better: using international comparisons to refine the National Curriculum in England

This report from Cambridge Assessment is interesting because it might show us the way forward in terms of national curriculum changes.  As stated on Cambridge Assessment’s website :

” This paper offers a concise analysis of some of the problems with our current National Curriculum and helps explain why so many other nations are outpacing us in educational performance. The debate about our National Curriculum now has to be seen in an international context. The best-performing education nations deliberately set out to compare themselves against international benchmarks – learning from each other and constantly asking what is required to help all children do better.”

Teaching Reading: what the evidence says

This report from UKLA and the International Reading Association offers a slightly different view point to the OFSTED report based on research from both sides of the Atlantic.  Thye argue that phonics is not enough and that a more comprehensive and flexible approach is needed.

What have you read recently?

I was discussing author studies a couple of weeks ago with a teacher, thinking about why we have them and who would be the best authors to use.  At present they appear in Yr2 – significant authors, Yr3 – authors and letters and Yr 6 – authors and texts.

Why should we have an author study?

• to become familiar with the range of work of an author
• to introduce children to authors outside of their experience, or
• to develop a deeper understanding of an author that is already familiar
• to identify patterns across an author’s work

and implicit in all of this is to experience the joy of reading.  Ideally when looking for an author it needs to be someone who has a range of work that can be accessed by all children in the class.  Usually author studies tend to be based around fiction but there is absolutely no reason why non-fiction shouldn’t be chosen.  So I am going to start off my top 5 list with two non-fiction authors and include a poet.

David Macaulay

I have been a big fan of Macaulay’s work and have blogged about him before.  He has a range of work,  mostly non-fiction but also includes some fiction.  As an author and illustrator,  there are very definite patterns across his texts about construction and in the fiction confusion.  The previous blog post shares a video of Macaulay talking about his work.  I think this is an author for KS2 (Yr3 and Yr6).  See his full range of books here.  It would be a great idea for children to produce a book in the style of Macaulay about the school building and would definitely be an author to use if there is building works going on somewhere near the school.

Steve Jenkins

This author/illustrator is new to me but I now have quite an extensive collection of his books and some of his titles appear in our texts that teach lists.  There are very definite patterns across his texts in terms of what he writes about, his illustrations,  and why he writes about these things.  I particularly like the idea that he is often stimulated to write about things that his children have commented on or asked about.  The books that I am enjoying at the moment are How To Clean a Hippopotamus, Down, Down, Down and Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest.  See his full range of books here. This author would make a suitable author study for Yr2 or Yr3 andwould enable cross-curricular links.

Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross

Both of these author/illustrators are prolific in their own right but also together.  They have produced the marvellous Tadpole’s Promise and the Dr Xargyle series.  Again there are patterns across their texts, humour being one of the main themes, and in the illustrations. See their full range of books here.  Suitable for Yr2 and Yr3.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes is an amercian poet from 1902 – 1967.  I first came across his work in the wonderful book Classic Poetry An illustrated collection selected by Michael Rosen.  His poetry has a song-like quality and clearly expresses his feelings about social injustice and what it meant to be black in America at that time.  Many of his poems can be found online.  This is a poet study suitable for Yr6.

Catherine Rayner

Catherine Rayner has full range of books, some of which appear on our texts that teach lists.  Her books are gentle and beautifully illustrated.  Augustus and His Smile is also published as a dual language text in a whole range of languages and English making this author accessible to many children.  See some of her books here.  This is an author suitable for Yr2.