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 [...]

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 [...]

As we are about to start the new school year here in the UK there is one thing that is certain.  Times are tough, budgets will be squeezed and yet we still want to engage and motivate our children.  I am always amazed by the amount of money that some schools are prepared to spend [...]

class1a on animation from Matty Dawe on Vimeo. During an animation project that has spanned this year, I have been concentrating  on what progression in animamtion looks like.  Now that I have a little time I want to spend some time reflecting on what the animation did for literacy learning.  I want to think beyond [...]

I have enjoyed watching teachers’ faces as they read Tadpole’s Promise by Tony Ross and Jeanne Willis. Usually they are shocked as the book lulls us into a false sense of security thinking that there is a happy ending. Even the bubbles on the front cover lead us this way.   But in a tragedy, [...]

I have to say a big thank you to @mtechman for sharing this resource but now we have digital poetry from Poemsthatgo.  This is poetry that is written especially for the digital age and only works digitally. Poetry that Goes is kinetic poetry, i.e poetry that moves and stems from concrete poetry.  The site details [...]

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 [...]

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: Wikis – these are, I think, the most flexible tool of all.  They can  be used just for text but are [...]

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 [...]

 With the development of online collaborative tools there are now so many opportunities for collaborative writing.  So wanting to make the most of these opportunities this post about collaborative writing has been written collaboratively using Etherpad  http://etherpad.com/XHq0OmeA0o . I am going to split the writing into two posts: models of collaborative writing and collaborative writing with children [...]