Australian Teachers: Books

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ART at school

I work in a school where we have a very active Arts Team and this week has been our Arts Week. We have one every two years and on alternate years we have our School Concert.

Our Arts Team have been preparing for a full on week of exciting tasks. (Unfortunately, I have been sick and at home for the last three days).

Our school started off with a Flash Mob with all the staff and the roar of the children was so loud (570 kids make a lot of noise). We wanted to prove that we would go out of our comfort zone in a safe and supportive environment. There is video evidence out there! '

Then for three one hour sessions we took workshops which the kids rotated through. Three hours of drumming is a looooong time.

Then on Tuesday we went to the local Art Gallery - we went on a walk to look at the local architecture, studied portraits, did some line drawings and saw an exhibition.

Wednesday was the day for class projects for the Art Display which was on Friday night.

My replacement teacher and my team supported my grade to put together our project.

Each grade was a given a letter of the alphabet - we got Y.

We had to research and come up with an idea for that letter for an arts project.

Ours was 'Yummy Food'

We used plasticine to make mini models of food.

The QR code is the artist's statement.

Art is everywhere

The conversations we have about art allows us to have a real connection to others and their interpretation of the same piece - it is a window into perceptions of our world.

Our first interactions with art is in picture story books.

We are never too old to fall in love with picture story books.

We are never too old to read them and wonder about the illustrations.

Through illustrations we get to see and talk about animals, landscapes and how we move within them.

We get to share in traditional stories, see how kids cope with issues and look at expressions on faces and try to work out how characters feel.

We fall in love with an author, a character and a story...

We are challenged by world issues and we get to try to understand why history repeats itself or how we learn from world events.

We get to learn about collections, we get to manipulate materials to show our learning. We explore maths concepts through art.

We draw characters and see if we have the same impressions as our classmates.

We try to make sense of texts through art.

We do art just because it helps to make sense of things or just for enjoyment.

We use our skills to design, to create and to build.

A world without Art would be a scary place.

Art Resources

Art Attack has a great website (when I was a kid they had a TV show too)

Pinterest has amazing ideas and this will take you to a board I have just started.

Art Books for kids, just a few...

Have a great time exploring our world through Art.

Paula from Paula's Place signing off

Paula’s Place

Book Week 2016 is nearly here! Book Week is one of my favourite school events on the calendar, and this year I'm the Book Week Coordinator at my school. I thought I'd share some ideas and activities for Book Week.

Hi, it's Jem from Jem's Bright Buttons. I love books; that's my classroom bookshelf in the picture above - and that's not the whole bookshelf! Book Week is a great opportunity to celebrate reading! I think it's really important that all students are exposed to lots of opportunities to read, explore books and other texts, and respond to them.

The Book of the Year is announced on the third Friday in August, and Children's Book Week starts the following day. This year Book Week is Saturday 20th August to Friday 26th August. The theme this year is:

It's a great theme with lots of possibilities.

At my school we will be having a Book Parade on the Monday morning. All staff and students are invited to dress up as a character from a book (we accept pretty much everything though!). This year, because it's close to the Olympics, and because we are holding it in the first week of our Inquiry on the Earth & Space Science curriculum, we will be encouraging students to dress up as sportspeople or as something to do with space. We sit together outside (if the weather is ok), play fun music, and each grade parades around in a circle to show off their wonderful costumes. It's a very well supported event! And it's so much fun!!

As the Book Week coordinator at my school I share a list of possible activities for teachers to complete in their literacy times during Book Week. This means that teachers choose what will suit their students, and it can be less disruptive to an already very full curriculum. Below are some of my suggestions/ideas. Some of the ideas link to the theme, but I also think Book Week is just a fantastic opportunity to celebrate literature and reading in any way possible.

Mystery readers – invite some parent volunteers to come into your classroom at an appropriate time to read their favourite book, or a book you’ve suggested, to the class
Book Swap – run an ‘in-class’ Book Swap. Students bring in some books they no longer want (with parents permission), and swap their books for others that have been brought in
Read Dreamtime stories and connect the stories to the Australian land (linking with the theme)
Students could make their own mini story books and read them to students in a different class (emphasising that everyone is an author)
Read a different shortlisted book to your class every day (or one of your favourite books every day). Shortlisted books can be found here
Link literature and your Inquiry/theme/topic by reading and exploring books about the Inquiry/theme/topic
Read back through previous award winners or shortlisted books (can be found here); read well-known stories by Australian authors
Ask students to draw the front cover of their favourite book and make a display
Make an anchor chart of different ways we read and different things we read (read the text, read the pictures, retell the story; read books, magazines, newspapers, catalogues, websites, games, etc.)
Ask students to bring in a book that their parent/aunt/uncle/grandparent loves, and share them with the class
Play ‘Celebrity Heads’ with well-known book characters
Get students to write ‘Who am I?’ clues for their favourite book characters
Have groups of students practice and perform well-known stories, or readers theatre activities
Have an extra ‘independent reading’ time every day during Book Week for students to enjoy books; allow them to pick different books, or different text types; spend some time reading and sharing books from the school library
Have an in-class reading challenge – who can read the most books in the week? Who can read the widest variety of texts? Who can read to the most number of people?
Hold a class discussion about stories: what are they? Where do they come from? How do you know if they’re true stories? Are there different types of stories? What do stories tell us? How do we tell stories?
Write a rhyming poem after reading Piranhas Don't Eat Bananas (find a YouTube video of the story here)
Make a comic strip to retell a favourite story, a Dreamtime story, an Australian story, a fairy tale, etc.
Use toys or paper puppets to construct a scene from a favourite story, photograph the scene, print the photo, and have students write about what happened before the scene and what will happen next
Ask students to write a story about Australia
Look at wordless books (like Window or Where the Forest Meets the Sea by Jeannie Baker) and have students tell the story in their own words
Write a journey story about visiting somewhere in Australia
Complete the My Dead Bunny word search (find it here)
Film/photograph any of these activities and share them on Seesaw or ClassDojo, or another parent communication tool, like your school newsletter

You might like to do some directed drawings of Aussie animals like Sheri from Early Years with Sheri did with her class:

For some other great ideas check out these three posts from The Book Chook: Focus on Storytelling, Educational Activities, and Resources.

I hope these ideas might spark some fun, enjoyment and love of literature and reading during Book Week 2016!! I'm definitely looking forward to coming up with my costume, and making our reading lessons for the week all about the love of literature.

Thanks for reading!

Jem

Hello Everyone! It's Stephanie from Fishing for Education here and in case you didn't know, I'm originally from Florida, U.S.A. I moved to Australia in June 2014 and started teaching in Australia that November.

I was doing relief for a few months and was exposed to a variety of "new to me" books. When I was hired full-time I was exposed to more and found joy in creating lesson plans around some awesome books.

Here are a few books I've really enjoyed along the way! Hopefully this will help new to the country or new to teaching be exposed to some amazing books.

My Favourite Books

This was the first true Australian book I was exposed to. I was in a Year 3/4 split class and our History curriculum had us explore early settlers and the impact they had on Australia. It also focused on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history. This is such an AMAZING story. This was great for my Year 3s as it exposed the story and helped explain both sides of the story. My Year 4s were able to extend their thinking and analyse the story and imagery. The IMAGERY! So much detail. We spent a few days analysing each spread and discussed what they were implying.

I'm in a Year 4 class this year and my team teacher and I wanted to expose the students to chapter books. This book has a good 6 chapters, so it wasn't too long for the students. There are TONS of great vocabulary words related to the time period and boating. My students were amazed to learn this to be a true story and living in WA they enjoyed the fact they knew what Fremantle was and instantly shouted out "I've been there!" It has a great theme of courage and determination, not to mention anyone can make a difference.

We were talking about characters and understanding characters based on actions, thoughts and what they say. My students were good and understanding fictitious characters. This book was a great transition into biographies, which we've noticed non-fiction was challenging for our Year 4s. This book doesn't come off as your typical biography. The images really seem to come alive as you read and my students thoroughly enjoyed the story. We then took some time to research more about Banjo Paterson and they were amazed to see him on a $10 note. (I'm finding myself learning more Australian history than some of my Aussie friends!) She also has a whole series of famous Australians. I definitely plan to get some more books in this series.

Here in WA we're now on your School Holidays and ANZAC Day right after our last day of term. Since the students wouldn't be in school for this day we decided to have our ANZAC service this past Thursday. We've read a variety of books, but most of my students felt the books to be too sad or overwhelming for them to follow along. When I read this story I grabbed everyone's attention, even my special needs students who don't like stories about ANZAC as they found it too violent. The students told me they really enjoyed hearing about the stories just like how the boy in the story did. We used the books we had read to write about "What is ANZAC Day and why is it important?" Majority of the writing in my class had information from this book specifically.

I'm still getting exposed to more and more, especially the books on The Children's Book Council of Australia.