Literacy Resources

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.

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.

I am not a reader of graphic novels but decided that I needed to investigate them.  I feel deprived if I don’t learn something new in the summer holidays!  As ever, I wondered whether I could use them to help children develop meaning making skills and ’see’ devices that can be used in writing.

The first thing I did was to read Adventures in Graphica – Using Comics and Novels to teach comprehension by Terry Thompson.  The one thing this book did was reassure me that the skills and knowledge I had aquired as  reader were equally relevant in graphic novels.  What he does very clearly is set out what is special about this form of novel or non-fiction by describing the conventions: layout, panels, speech bubbles, narrative boxes, lettering, directionality, importance of the pictures and the gutters.

With these in mind I decided to do a bit of reading of grahica.  I chose BabyMouse - Puppy Love by Jennifer Holm and Matthew Holm as I was interested in those that were written with girls in mind, and Clan Apis by Jay Hosler.  This is a non-fiction text about bees and their life.  This is particularly pertinent as my allotment neighbour  has just set up his first hive and swarm of bees.

BabyMouse is written in black and white with shades of pink used throughout.  The pink denotes when BabyMouse is dreaming about or imagining  items of desire (cakes and pets).   There is a very all-knowing narrator (omniscient ) who quite often questions BabyMouse to move the story on especially when it might be take too much time to draw what is happening, e.g. Where did they all go, BabyMouse?’. A character study of BabyMouse would be interesting.  Self-centred is my opinion but the clues to this are really quite subtle.  I am hooked!

Clan Apis is written by an expert in bees.  I had no idea that graphic texts also covered non-fiction.  From the reading of this I now know an awful lot more about bees.  This book is not read as a  non-fiction text using a contents or index page to find  the information that you want but is read from cover to cover as a fiction book would be.  The additional facts about bees are written in  a traditional non-fiction form with  graphics as diagrams.

This is a much longer book and is divided into chapters.  I was  more aware as I read this book of the panels and graphics and how they directed your eyes to the next section with a much greater variety than BabyMouse.  This is not a value judgement, merely a comment on the differences.  As the story of Clan Apis is much more complex than BabyMouse you might expect a wider variety of  shapes and positions on the page to be used.  I intend to go back and study these in more detail, investigating how the panels show pace in the text.

Have a look at the end story of Clan Apis and what happened to Jay Hosler whilst studying bees.

So what next?  I need to read more graphic novels/comic books and I need to start using them in guided reading because it is usually children who show me what I need to know about books.  I’ll let you know what they teach me?

Related posts:  Comics

We launched our boys writing project today.  It was a good morning where we explored some of the ideas that might be investigated in the classroom.

We are using the lesson study model of CPD for this project.  I first read about lessons study in a wonderful book, The Teaching Gap by James Stigler and James Hiebert.  The researchers compared maths teaching practices in Japan, Germany and America in order to look at teaching and how to improve it.  Part of their argument is that teaching is a cultural activity determined by our beliefs and habits and that these are stable and not easily changed particularly when the system is so complex.  And teaching is complex.  They also argue that in trying to accomplish too much we may well have sacrificed opportunities for small, cummulative improvements.

Japan however, gives great value to small improvements. Lesson study is based upon long-term, continuous improvement, maintains a focus on pupil learning, focuses on improving teaching in context and is collaborative.  Teachers who participate in lesson study see themselves as contributing to the development and knowledge about teaching as well as their own professional development.

We have slightly adapted the model to suit our cirucmstances but are uisng the plan, teach, observe and review structure of the Japanese model.

• Plan – we are working in a  team of 3, 2 teachers and 1 consultant and together will plan a lesson. this lesson will be anchored within a teaching sequence.   We will be thinking about the barriers to learning for the boys and how we might overcome them.  Because we have all planned it, this lesson belongs to no-one thus taking the focus off any one teacher.  We may well have done some reading of research into boys writing  to inform us and provide some ideas to trial.
• Teach – one of us will teach the lesson or part of a lesson.
• Observe – the other two will observe the children, in this case boys, making notes about their behaviours, learning and difficulties
• Review – finally we will discuss our observations of the learning in detail, what worked, what didn’t and why. Time will be then spent thinking about how what we now know will impact on the next lesson.
• And finally teachers share what they have learnt.  We have set up a blog for teachers to discuss their learning with others in the project.  This is private at the moment because only 1 person out of the 30 people present has blogged before.  As confidence grows we will share some of the posts and learning on this blog.

We are looking for those small steps in learning and change in practice that are sustainable.  After all , I am sure you know the saying ‘When a butterfly flaps its wings in…..’

I recently read English at the Crossroads, OFSTED’s latest publication about English.  There are some  interesting statements about the use of ICT in English with the main thrust being that the most effective schools are the ones that  recognised  ICT had fundamentally altered reading and writing.  As technology changes so do the literacy needs of the children.

As we are just about to launch into a project focusing on boys and writing, these thoughts are particularly pertinent to us.  From the research into boys’ writing we have drawn out some common points that seem to have an effect upon their writing and then thought about the sorts of ICT that might support in that area.

Working collaboratively - tools that will support this way of working would be wikis, Etherpad, myWebspiration and Google docs.

Readers responding to writing, providing feedback - blogging, use of a visualiser and email

Presenting work in different ways – News generator, Glogster, Prezi, Jing, Xtranormal and piclits.  There are also a growing number of sites where you can choose an image and incorporate your own text on it.  These would be useful for younger children who are writing captions or labels or children who will not write much.

Planning - MyWebspirations, Photostory 3 and some 2Simple software such as 2Create or 2Create a Story

Bridging writing between home and school – blogs and wikis.

Writing as an expert - blogging, creating own wikipedia and creating own websites.  If you know of a safe, free place where children can create a website please let me know.

Retelling texts prior to writing - Audacity, Gcast and digital dictaphones.

Note collecting - Edmodo, Wallwisher, MyWebspiration and Evernote for older children.

Visual literacy – there are so many suggestions for creating books with images plus the use of film and computer games.  There is also the area of graphica and creating comics and cartoon strips online.

What have I missed out?

Linked posts: Digital Storytelling and blogging

Day 11 of 20 days to better blogging is thinking about how we write hyperlinked texts and how we can share this with children.  Budtheteacher has been thinking about hyperlinked writing  and has, over time, created a series of posts about it. In fact, what did you do about the hyperlinks in the previous sentences?

I have read several papers about hyperlinked writing being a new genre but I am not sure about that.  A set of instuctions is a set of instructions whether it has hyperlinks or not.  At the present time I am more inclined to think that it is a new way of writing already known genre, but I am open to being persuaded that I am wrong.

For me, hyperlinks introduce me to the blogs and articles that have been part of the idea formation for the post.  They give me a trail that shows how thoughts have come together and they provide extra information.  In fact they give a text depth and a richness that I miss when reading online and hyperlinks are not used.

So, the question is should we be teaching primary school children how to write hyperlinked texts?  I am sure I am hearing an overwhelming YES.  Below are some ideas to support teaching about hyperlinking:

• when planning a post, create a mind-map that draws in the resources that you have used
• give all children the same piece of text and ask them to add hyperlinks where they think they would be important.  These can then be shared and the differences explored in relation to the experience for the reader
• when reading blog posts, try to draw up a list that categorises why people have hyperlinked.  What are the conventions of hyperlinking?
• read hyperlinked posts in shared reading and discuss whether to click on the hyperlink or not and what you are expecting if you do.  What happens then?  Do you return to the text or follow other lines of enquiry?

Your challenge today is to explore hyperlinking with children and to model writing a post that includes hyperlinks.

Image Cat’s Cradle by Steve C

I was asked earlier this week what my favourite online collaborative tool was and although I did suggest one, I didn’t really want to miss some others out.  So here are my top 5:

1. Wikis - these are, I think, the most flexible tool of all.  They can  be used just for text but are best when images, video and podcasts are included.  Think wikipedia and then try out that model with your class.  Can you produce a page about a river in your area, an event that is happening, a period of history being studied, a story?
2. Etherpad – this is a great tool for producing text that a group have collaborated on.  Etherpad will allow upto 8 people on at any one time.  Each person selects a colour so that writing can be identified.
3. Voicethread – here images are put together and then comments can be recorded through speech or text.  There is an education section that schools and classrooms can sign up for.  Voicethread 4 Education is a fantastic wiki that shares how teachers have used Voicethread with examples as is Voice Thread Resources and Ideas.
4. Blogs – although there is only one author usually on a blog, the collaboration here takes place between the writer and the readers of the blog.  The comments boxes are used to continue a discussion that the blogger has started.  Fantastic tools for developing children’s voice and allowing them to write about their own interests.
5. Mind-mapping – I have been a fan of mind-mapping for some time and there are now online tools that allow you to map collaboratively.  MindMeister is currently my favourite one.  This tool allows you to invite others to collaborate on the mind-map and is so simple to use.  I use the free basic version but there is an academic version at a much reduced rate.  Please feel free to collaborate with me on the mind-map I am creating for a short talk on why children should blog.

The 2009 Horizon Reort: The K12 Edition discusses the reasons why collaboration is so important and also mentions some tools that have proved to be useful and reports about their use.  Well worth reading.

Linked posts: Collaborative Writing with Children and Collaborative Writing

This is the second post in a short series about collaborative writing.  It was written collaboratively using Etherpad at http://etherpad.com/XHq0OmeA0o .

Collaborative writing is a new skill for many children.   Letting go of your own writing and allowing others to adapt/change/edit it can be an uncomfortable feeling.

So what can we do?

@AngelaStockman  suggests several ways of collaborating on writing. “Sometimes, we’ll remix three word videos or six word memoirs. I think having the examples there helps at first, but once kids have had experience with this, they are more confident blazing their own trail. I’ve also watched teachers start kids off small on a wikispace and then invite them to continue shaping the piece.”

1. Give children collaborative writing experiences offline.  Angela’s idea for this is great because it removes ownership of the writing by cutting up and mixing around the words/phrases being used.
2. @markw29 suggests starting in very small collaborative groups, gradually adding more collaborators over time so that children become used to this way of working.  Children often work in pairs so this would be a good starting point.
3. Allow time for children to actually play with the collaborative tool being used and to get used to what can be done on it.
4. Teach about responsibility when working collaboratively.
5. Try cumulative activities where collaborators add an idea, sentence, line, paragraph one after another.  This means that previous writing is not changed but collaborators must consider cohesion and style to maintain the flow.  Flicktion on Flickr is a great example of this.  If this doesn’t get through the school filter you can still borrow the idea and not use Flickr for it.
6. @scottfisher74 took the opportunity to address preparation for SATs creatively and gave his class a writing starter that they then went and collaborated on an answer.  The children were in friendship groups.  A good way to group for a first go.
7. Create the bare bones of a text and ask collaborative groups to improve it.
8. Here is a great idea from  Diplomacy in Action for a collaborative reflection after working on a piece of writing.  In the group each child is assigned a letter A, B, C etc.  A briefly describes how their participation has affected the group’s work.  2-3 mins and no questions permitted.  B either asks A a probing question or paraphrases them.  B then describes how their particpation affected the group’s work and so on round the group.  This would be a real challenge but would start to get to the heart of effective collaboration.
9. Story MashUp offers an interesting model for collaborative writing – here the collaboration is between reader and writer.  I do like this idea.
10. What ideas do you have?  Please share them.

Linked posts:  Collaborative Writing, Using Etherpad in the Classroom, Kent ICT (@mbarrow)has a great page of ideas created collaboratively and from Etherpad itself more ideas.

Written by  @AngelStockman, @markw29, @scottfisher74 and Sara, Jenna and Mo who are trainee secondary English teachers and @joysimpson

Update: a great post about reasons for writing collaboratively

Image recaptioned from lolcats

Day 9 of 20 days to better blogging with children has arrived and it is now time for them to start posting.  You will have written a couple of posts and should be ready to start with children.  This means time for shared writing where we show children how we write a post and link to other sites.

So, what to write about?  How about an event or experience the children have recently had, something that has excited them, something they feel strongly about.  Bloggers write about what interests them and use it to share ideas and also to develop their ideas.  In a sense this is writing to learn.  Many thanks to Paul Nichols  for sharing the article on twitter.

Model writing the post, how to make links and how you refer to the person behind the link.  Talk about what decisions you are making, about what to include and what to leave out.  Explain why you think some things work and others don’t.  Discuss what you hope the reader will get out of your post. And most of all share the excitement of publishing to the world!

Make sure that you have let a couple of people know that you have written a post and get them to comment on it.  The children will be excited and want to read what is written and together you can compose a reply that will keep the discussion going.  Try writing several posts with the children.

Image Post-it-face by flowers and machinery