Literacy Resources

I am currently in the process of writing a book about using film to support learning in literacy.  The book is divided into chapters that relate to the BFI areas of focus in film:

• character

• composition

• colour
• camera
• cutting
• category
• setting
• story
• sound
• symbolism
• sequence

I am particularly interested in creating film and have developed a range of activities related to each of the above headings.  If you would be interested in trying out one of the activities then leave me a comment letting me know which year group or groups that you teach, your  email and which which area of focus and I will send you the activity.  In return I would ask that you give me feedback about the activity and access to the films that the children make as a result of trying the activity.  Films can be uploaded to Vimeo and I can then reference them in the book.

Each activity is in the first draft and so there will be typos and may not be expressed in the clearest way. This is part of what I am looking for feedback about.

There are three ways in which you can leave me your email and details of the focus area you would like to try and age range.

Twitter – I am @joysimpson

Facebook

A comment on this post.

If you are interested in trying out an activity, please contact me.

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.

I have written before about the the authors that would be great to study in the authors and texts block that Yr6 have. Now I want to increase the variety or range of  suitable authors by adding an animator to the list of suitable authors – Lotte Reiniger.

Lotte Reiniger lived from 1899 – 1981 and in that time produced a great body of work in silhouette animation, something that is very accessible to children.  She also concentrated on traditional stories such as Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk.  I particularly like the animations that she created for the Post Office.

One of the best videos is The Art of Lotte Reiniger because it shows so clearly the process she goes through to animate which would be great to share with children.  There may be a use for those obsolete OHPs in this type of animation as well!

The characters are rounded and archetypal and and the sound tracks generally consist of music and voice over, again something that it is possible for children to emulate.

There are several books that are illustrated through silhouette illustrations, most notably Jan Pienkowski.  I think his fairy tales book would be a fantastic to include in this unit because fairy tales were such a huge part of Lotte Reiniger’s work.

Lotte Reiniger’s work can be seen on our YouTube channel, on Daily  Motion and can be purchased on DVD from the BF!.

I am in the process of writing a teaching sequence based on this unit of work and Lotte Reiniger and will share it when it is ready.

We had a wonderful day on Monday at our Animation conference.  Oscar Stringer and Helen came along to show us how to animate and we used the wonderful software Zu3D and Hue webcams.  You can see the animations that the teachers made here.

One of the things that I didn’t get time to share on the day was a draft progression in animation.  I  have tried to write this previously but as time goes on, you look back at it and realise that it is wrong.

So here goes for take 2.  This time I have taken the headings emergent, developing, experienced and expert as  has been done in the great book Beyond Words: Developing children’s understanding of multimodal texts.

Once again I must stress that this is a working idea and is not the final outcome.

Early/emergent

• take turns to speak and ensure everyone contributes
• explain their views and listen to others and agree next steps
• create short, simple texts making adventurous choices
• combine images and sounds
• reflect on own work
• plans are focused on images and are not always referred to when animating

Developing

• organise roles and take on different roles, actively including others
• distribute tasks and check progress
• create texts with a beginning, middle and end
• show imagination through humour, atmosphere and suspense
• choose and combine images and sound for particular effects
• if used, voice over is clear and well-paced
• reflect critically on own work
• planning acknowledges image, sound, time and number of shots

Experienced

• plan and manage a group overtime
• understand different ways to take the lead
• understand and use a variety of ways to criticise and respond to criticism
• vary the pace and develop viewpoint
• create multi-layered texts
• use a range of techniques to engage the viewer
• integrate sounds and images for different purposes
• where appropriate, layers of sound are used
• planning is an integral aspect of animating containing all relevant information

Expert

• adopt a range of roles when needed
• acknowledge others’ views and adapt/modify own views in light of what they say
• use and experiment with a range of devices to hold the viewer’s interest
• develop pace and emphasis
• use terms appropriate for critical analysis
• entertain and interest viewers
• where appropriate, create animations that are open to interpretation
• planning drives the creation of the animation

What have I missed out and what doesn’t fit with what you know about children animating?

Happy New Year to you all.  2011 looks like being every bit as exciting as 2010 did.  I thought I would start off the year as I mean to go on and  therefore want to share a great new book with you.

The Beasties by Jenny Nimmo and Gwen Millard is a fantastic book that can be used in a couple of different ways but both related to talk for writing.

The book follows in the long tradition of children’s literature about night time and not being able to get to sleep and the worries that the dark can bring.  Daisy is a little girl that finds it difficult to get to sleep, lying awake listening to all the sounds of the street and not noticing the three creatures, could they be monsters, that creep into her room and start to look at all their treasures.  What these three creatures do is pick out one of their treasures and tell a story around it just like storytellers do.  When Daisy finally plucks up the courage to look under her bed, where they are hiding, she finds three very very small beasties and is encouraged to make up her own stories.

This book would make a great model for children to create their own version of in groups with each child writing their own story based around an object.  What you will need for this is a story telling bag with lots of objects in it such as rings, unicorns, special keys, bowls etc that a story can be built around.

The book could also be used however to develop children’s  ability to add detail because each of the stories is in reality a bare bones.  This would mean that the children could learn the bare bones and then using games such as ‘Tell me more about…’ they could add  detail and description to each section and then tell their version of the story.  They would provide a good opportunity to consider how the reader is to feel during each section and how that can be achieved.

This book is suitable for Yr2 or 3 pupils and will be added to our texts that teach fiction list.

What new texts will you use this year in your literacy teaching?

A colleague recently received a wonderful pop-up book from Secret Santa, The Twelve Days of Christmas by Robert Sabauda.  This  reminded me of the time I made pop-up books with my class in design and technology lessons and had a great time with the children producing  quite sophisticated pop-ups.

I wanted a pop-up book that could be used as a core text in literacy and came across Trail: Paper poetry by David Pelham.  This fantastic book gives us a poem of a snail’s journey through the undergrowth with fantastic pop-ups on each page.

The poem is revealed by turning a dial on each page and consists of descriptive phrases and clauses that follow the snail’s trail providing a great model for children to innovate upon.  The poem is particularly strong in adverbial phrases as it details the snail’s journey which is embossed on the white pop-ups in a silvery line.  It would be great for children to make a pop-up book of their own minibeast that can be found in the school grounds.  It would involve observations of the minibeast and descriptions of its habitat.

There are many sites that show how to make simple pup-ups which the children can try out before going on to design and make their own such as Robert Sabauda’s site.  One book that I would use to show children different ways of making pop-ups is the ABC3D by Marion Bataille.

And here is a set of instructions for reviewing a pop-up book.

What is your favourite pop-up book?

It’s that time of year when every magazine that I open contains pages of possible presents for children, men, teenagers, grandparents etc but very rarely teachers.  Quite a few of my friends are teachers and we like to give each other something small but useful for work  at Christmas.  As I am trying to do most of my shopping online I thought I would share a few of my favourite things.

I don’t know if you remember making pencil holders out of toilet or ktchen roll inners.  I have certainly received a few in my time but I think this pencil holder goes one step further – a pencil pot made out of a recycled telephone book.  Not only is it fantastic but it also comes with a great set of instuctions which are always useful in a literacy classroom.

This next present is always useful.  A Fatbear memory stick.  I love the colours and shape of them and have quite a collection myself.  Because of their colour they are not as difficult to lose as some of the other memory sticks I have had.

I can’t even begin to count the number of cups of tea that have gone cold before I have managed to drink them, so this little gadget is a winner.  A USB mug warmer.  Simply plug it into a spare USB port and hey presto a hot drink waiting for you.

In the literacy centre there are often bits of fruit rolling around the desk and work table, usually left over from lunches with teachers.  What we need is something attractive to put the fruit on and I particularly like this fruit dish – or to give it its proper name a silicone fruit holder.  No more rolling around now!

And finally many staffrooms that I visit have glass mugs so a tea inffuser like this wouldbe a real treat.  Open it up, pop your tea leaves in and then let if float around the mug.  Brilliant.  Perfect for herbal teas as well as normal tea.

What are you buying this year?

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.

I can’t quite remember how I came across this great tool so if you have already blogged or tweeted about this thank you because I probably heard about it from you!

I love Live Binders!  It reminds me of Jog the Web because it is basically a way of collecting a group of websites together and recording a commentary about them.  What makes this differerent and therefore more usable, is what you can do with your Live Binder once you have created it.

The letters aspect of this literacy unit of work can be one of the greatest challenges when looking for  a text to base the work around.  Thanks to the ReadKiddoRead site, I have found Dear Miss by Amy Husband.

This wonderful book shows the letters between a teacher and pupil, Michael, and the reasons why he doesn’t want to come back to school after a holiday.  The reasons for not returning get more and more fantastical, although the teacher’s letter needs close reading to realise what is going on.

This book offers a great model for Yr3 pupils to write their own letters about why they can’t do something and to let their imaginations run riot.  The book models simple and compound sentences well and frequently uses but as a conjunction.  The book lends itself to story mapping and can easily be used for innovation.  I would want children to make an actual book with a cover just like the original one with an envelope flap to close.

I am not sure that many children will be familiar with the telegram in the middle of the book but this could be changed to a text if children want to create their own version.

This book will be added to our texts that teach lists.

Which book do you use for this unit of work?

See other posts about texts that teach.