This term the Prep teachers and I wanted to really focus on visual literacy skills and hands-on activities to get the Prep students actively looking for meaning within the illustrations of the books we read. Visual literacy skills are so important in this world of screen media and magazine advertorials, and picture book storytime is a fantastic opportunity to explore and develop these understandings with children.

Last week we used the two ebooks hosted on the Little Big Book Club site to explore stories on the iwb. The book Cat by Mike Dumbleton and Craig Smith was particularly good for this activity – the endpapers of the book present a birds-eye view of three suburban backyards, typical of any older town in Australia. Asking the children to name the things they could see gave them a list of the characters and objects they could expect to find in the story: a cat, a dog, grass, fences, a ladder, trees, a bird, people, a hose. This was particularly important for our students as Hong Kong is a city of medium to high-rise concrete apartment blocks, where even balconies are highly unusual, so items such as the sprinkler on the end of the hose, or the Hills Hoist clothesline, would be strange to many of our students.

Reading the story together there were many opportunities for the children to interpret the pictures, especially since the text in this book is both minimal and very repetitive! We invited the children to explain what had happened every time the cat or another character said “Thank goodness for that!” – for instance they needed to put into words that the cat ran up the tree to escape from the dog.

We did not provide a paper-based activity with Cat, but instead relied on having the children read the text as a chorus, and discuss the meaning of the illustrations. Also, this being an ebook, there was the added bonus of built-in sound-effects – by hovering the cursor over parts of most pictures we discovered that we could play the sounds of the different animals and events in the story, prompting lots of barking and meowing noises from the children!

Now lets talk about finger puppets!

This week we read a different book, coincidentally about another cat: Mr Muggs the Library Cat, by Dave Gunson. This book lent itself to discussing perspective, particularly the second double-page spread where the viewer is floating high up in the rafters, looking down into the Library. The rats sitting on the rafters look very big and the people down below look small, so this prompted the children to comment on their size and use explanations such as ‘things that are close look big, and things that are far away look small’.

On another page the story talks about the cat wanting to stay in the nice warm Library, but our view is of the street outside, where it is dark, raining and windy – the children have to interpret the angle of the rain across the page, and the way that people are clutching coats and umbrellas to understand that it is cold and windy, giving us the reason why it is a good idea to stay inside where it is warmer.

When we finished reading this story I handed out small pieces of paper and asked the children to draw Mr Muggs on one piece, and Pablo his rat friend on the other so that everyone could make finger puppets. Next week the children will be able to retell a bit of the story, or make up a new conversation between Mr Muggs and Pablo, using their finger puppets. I think that this simplest of activities is going to prove highly engaging for all of our students – this is important as for many of them English is their second language, so giving them opportunities to re-enact parts of the story is a way to enrich their vocabulary and develop their confidence.

Other plans this term include:

• making predictions about what will happen next, and splitting the story over two weeks to keep the suspense level high;
• comparing two wildly different characters, such as in the book Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley
• creating a visual Character Map, where the children add words and pictures around a drawing of the main character to show what that person likes, dislikes, does, looks like etc.

We don’t have any particular genre or theme planned, just wonderful books that lend themselves to these activities.

It promises to be a fun term with Prep Library, full of creativity and rich thinking!

All images sourced from the publishers’ websites wherever possible, or from a bookseller. These images are copyrighted by the original illustrators, and are used under the Educational Fair Dealing clause of the Copyright Act 1968 – used for the purpose of education and review. As an Australian teacher working in an Australian school I abide by the Australian laws regarding copyright.

It is Easter Holidays for us at the moment, so I have been enjoying some quality reading time.

I have read:

• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Re-reading this was interesting – it is certainly a fairly classic tale of a child being saved from awful circumstances and then blossoming into a stronger, better person through making good friends and having a healthy lifestyle. In some ways the writing is very dated and almost parochial – the constant references to the perfection of the Yorkshire countryside and pure air blowing health into the child provoked a smile or two from me. I have lived in some lovely places, none of them Yorkshire – but I have to say that Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, is not high on my personal list of places to raise healthy, outdoorsy children. However as a mother and as a teacher I can’t help thinking that much of the main tale has a ring of ‘truthiness’ about it – fresh air, exericise and wholesome food are very important for growing children’s bodies, and having something meaningful to do (eg reclaim a neglected garden) does provide a child with goals, a sense of self-worth and also an unselfishness that cannot be taught in any other way.
• Troll Bridge by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple. I enjoyed this quick little modern riff on some traditional fairy and folk-tales. This is a Fractured Fairy Tale for an older audience, fast-paced, just detailed enough with taking spelling-it-out-to-you tone, some of the enjoyment relies on your understanding of traditional fairy-tales. Princesses, heroic rescuers, trolls, trickery, rhymes, the power of music to hypnotise the savage beast… I will looking out for other books in this vein by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple.
• The Coming of the Whirlpool by Andrew McGahan. I loved this one! A great fantasy read, with elements of Vikings and hints of the naval exploits of England, France and Spain drawn together. The main character is following a fairly classic path of destiny-through-heritage, but in this tale he is destined to be a mighty sailor rather than soldier or slayer of dragons. He is of course part of a subjugated people, but various events bring him first to a harbour village where he learns to sail, then he becomes the first person every to sail into and out of a stupendous whirlpool which of course brings him to the attention of those in power – and not in a good way. The book ends with him sailing off to face those even higher up the chain of power, under the protection of an honourable captain but in company with a number of people who would happily see him dead and done with. Some passages of this book actually made me homesick for the scent and feel of ocean winds on my face and the scratch of sand between my toes.
• A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. I picked this up almost idly, and read it pretty much in one day. The tale of four people who meet by accident on a rooftop, each of them planning to kill themselves by jumping off the building. Other than despair or desperation these four have nothing in common – and yet the weird circumstances of their meeting keep pulling them together again as they each seek to evade or exorcise their personal problems. Definitely an adult book in its examination of the bleakest emotions, but no sex or violence. Whilst one character is profane to the point of being almost unintelligible at times, even that becomes a piont of humour when she and the others follow each swear word with an apology. What I particularly enjoyed about this book is the lack of a neat, tidy, happy ending – no-one is magically cured of depression by Twoo Wuv, they all prove that there is no going back in time to fix the past no matter what their situation. What they do show however is that a bit of time, maybe trying something new or taking a new perspective, making tiny differences that can be sustained in their daily lives, can lead them away from the point of utter despair.

So that was some of my reading this holidays – an eclectic mix, but satisfying!

Back again – at last! This year my school has a theme for the year of “Believe You Can Achieve”, tying in with the Year of Personal Discovery. I am certainly lining up the opportunities for myself, aside from the obvious part of being in Hong Kong: this semester I am enrolled in a 9-week ESL/EAL course, tackling the Level 1 ActivInspire online course, and  yoga, and am going to be a relief teacher for the English Language Saturday School next term. We only have 9 days left of Term 1, and I’m not quite sure where the first 7 weeks went…

Other points of discovery this term have included how to ask Wikipedia to unblock our school’s open proxy so that Year 6 can add carefully researched information to specific articles, and how to export a ppt file into a wmv and embed it into a page on our Moodle-based Online Learning Platform to provide a tutorial on completing the Online Reading Record for the NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge.

I am also making time to read more – spending as many lunchtimes as I can with my nose in a book, sitting somewhere in the middle of the Library so as to be available and obviously aware of what everyone is doing. The last book I finished was Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick, another breathtaking blend of text and illustration brought together in a marvellous piece of storytelling. I deeply enjoyed his first book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and pounced on this new title excitedly when it arrived. One thing I found particularly interesting was that switching between text and illustration seemed to actually slow me down – I ended up savouring the story at a more leisurely pace, examining the pictures for details to provide the visual equivalent of adjectives and adverbs.
Image courtesy of ShuttrKing|KT on Flickr “The Other Side“ Used under CC licence.

It’s been quite a while since last I posted to this blog, which is not to say that I haven’t had anything worth sharing – simply haven’t made the time to log in and begin!

Working in an International School continues to have its challenges but also rewards. Simply listening to the students and cruising through the fiction collection is introducing me to new authors and stories I might never have come across in Australia. I am also looking to reacquaint myself with classics of children’s literature, discovering along the way that many of these books ‘hit the spot’ for children who, due to their expat life and friends, are willing to explore more widely. I even found out that my Year 3 students had never heard of The Day My Bum Went Psycho by Andy Griffiths! We are currently remedying that situation… Some of the terminology has to be explained (that was the first time I had ever needed to explain the term ‘mooning’ to a child) but that hasn’t stopped them from enjoying it – one boy was literally rolling on the floor with laughter! A struggling reader, I am sure that this is one book he will be aiming to read for himself, and may perhaps be a powerful motivator for other disinterested children too.

A few of the books borrowed by year 5 and 6 students after the Blind Speed Book Dating:

• Boom!  by Mark Haddon (Amazon)
• Teacher’s Pet by Morris Gleitzman (Morris Gleitzman website)
• Bumface by Morris Gleitzman (Morris Gleitzman website) (x2)
• The Borrowers by Mary Norton (Wikipedia)
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkein (Wikipedia)
• Blinky Bill by Dorothy Wall (Wikipdeia)
• Sounder by William H. Anderson (Wikipedia)
• Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett (Wikipedia) (x2)
• Tiger, Tiger by Lynne Reid Banks (Amazon)
• Somewhere Around the Corner by Jackie French (Jackie French website)
• There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom by Louis Sachar (Wikipedia)
• Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (Wikipedia)
• Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster (Wikipedia)
• Unmentionable by Paul Jennings (website)
• Ace by Dick King Smith (Amazon)
• Don’t Pat the Wombat by Elizabeth Honey (review)
• The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (Wikipedia)
• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (Wikipedia)

I find it interesting to see that the range of books being borrowed includes more demanding classics  such as The Hobbit or The War of the Worlds, humorous titles eg from Morris Gleitzman and Paul Jennings, and animal books like Ace and Black Beauty. Some books have been in hot demand, with students placing reserves on titles snaffled early by their classmates.

I think it will be really interesting to follow this up further next week, through asking students to comment on the book they chose from the blind date – has been a good read? Would they recommend it?

Off to grab a book for the weekend!

To begin Term 4 the primary grades had a professional development day with Kath Murdoch (of whom more later), which has led staff to rethink some of their plans, thus leaving Library time somewhat unfocussed.

What to do when the plans haven’t fruited yet? Grab a great one-lesson-wonder and run with it! Thus today I ran Speed Dating with two different Year 5 classes. I found a great timer online (don’t worry about the ads on the front page, they are removed when you choose the full-screen view) and filled the IWB screen with the countdown. The first class were instructed to choose a good book to bring to the circle, and we set the timer for 1 minute. Something I noticed was that the children tended to select popular and familiar books, and thus much of the class already knew about many of the books being passed around the circle. Also the 1 minute time limit was a little bit short, I thought, and didn’t allow for anything more than the most superficial taste.

The second Year 5 class immediately afterwards became an experimental contrast group – instead of letting the students choose, I consulted with their class teacher and selected classics, both modern and less so, of a variety of genres and thicknesses – eg Judy Blume, John Marsden, Paul Jennings, Moya Simons, Black Beauty (review), Hatchet (reviews), Danny the Champion of the World. I upped the time to 90 seconds, thinking that the style of some of the older books would take a little longer to draw in the students’ attention. Scanning the range of thumbs up/sideways/down after each book, this second group seemed to have fewer whole-hearted “loves” each round. However, at the end of the lesson almost half the class chose to borrow one of the books they had met during the speed dating. Compared to the first group this was an increase of about 5-6 students, which I feel is a significant difference. Perhaps the popularity and familiarity of the books chosen by the first group actually made the activity less effective? I think that this speed dating technique is likely to be most effective when all the books are complete unknowns.

Next I will try the Blind Date variation of this activity – where the students only have a page of the book to read, and do not know anything else about the book until all is revealed in the last ten minutes. I have done this before with coded post-it notes on the books and photocopies, but perhaps I can come up with something else – maybe brown-paper lunch bags to hide the books, and the photocopies glued to the front and back? I shall have to think quickly – my next Year 5 class is second lesson tomorrow.

My theme this weekend is YouTube. Specifically how to make the best use of YouTube videos in the classroom. Did you see the announcement of YouTube Teachers? I spent an hour or two clicking through all the links on the Teachers’ page, joining up (to see what develops), following the advice on setting up my own Channel, reading other bits and pieces.

Things I learnt:

• How to set up my own background theme for My Channel
• How to create a playlist
• How to edit an old PowerPoint video to add a soundtrack from those freely available via YT

I have created a playlist of videos about Pete the Cat videos (see end of post), and plan to spend some more time learning how to value-add to playlists.

Why this sudden video-awareness? It was the combination of showing Pete the Cat on the IWB to my Prep class and reading about the new YouTube Teachers initiative, all on the same day. I feel that I haven’t made much effort up till now to explore the possibilities of linking hands-on reading experiences with online variations – partly due to lack of equipment, partly due to just not getting around to it. For children growing up with so much of their lives linked to television or computer screens, it is not hard to understand their desire to see the animation or video of a story. I would like to spend some time thinking about how to match videos and reading in order to bring a richer experience of story to my students. So many books have complementary videos, songs and websites now that I could find myself guilty of negligence if I do not find ways to weave different media together when exploring a theme, or books by a particular author or illustrator.

So far I am talking only about videos etc to support the reading of storybooks – partly because it was on my mind this week, partly because there is so much information already out there (and indeed in the 10 Tips section of YT Teachers) on using a variety of formats to enhance teaching and learning activities. For instance I took a brief look at Charlie and Lola online, but didn’t find much of value – I need to investigate and see what else is there before reading a story to my students.

So, I shall leave it at that with the intention of exploring further ways to mingle traditional print media with online resources to create a more varied and enticing world of story for my students.

To send you on your way with a smile on your face and a song on your lips, I give you Pete the Cat and his White Shoes!

Looking around me at work this week I am reminded of the French quote above, and little swift googling seems to indicate that it originated with Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr.

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”

Why start a post about working in Hong Kong with a quote famous in French literature? 1) I don’t know any Chinese idioms yet and 2) it just captures the moment so well!

Neurons in the brain; CC licence courtesy of Rebecca-Lee

With my classes at the moment it is the same routine of getting to know the students, establishing boundaries and guidelines, and talking about library topics as I would have when beginning at any school. Today I used the “I went shopping” game technique (Google Books excerpt from the book where I probably discovered it) of stringing names together one after another to start to memorise the names of all the students in my classes – so that would be approximately 150 students across 6 classes today. Honestly I could feel my brain physically throbbing with the effort of creating all those new neural connections!

As well as learning names I was book-talking – for Year 5 I am highlighting Colin Thompson this week, displaying some of his novels and picture books, and pointing out intriguing features that may encourage some of the audience to try out his work (hey! The Floods have their own website!).

After lessons with Prep, Year 2, 3 and 5, I would go back into my office, put a few things away, check what I was doing next, and go back out to get ready. Within the Library there are no real differences – the role of books in promoting reading for pleasure, the provision of a variety of resources for information gathering, the balance between providing a welcoming space and keeping that academic focus. Stepping outside I am reminded that I am in a very different place – 5th floor of a 9 story building, with a view (on clearer, less smog-filled days) across the suburbs of Kowloon to Hong Kong Island, the rumble of traffic and splashes of brightly coloured signs in a language I do not understand providing an exotic backdrop for a familiar role.

Coming up for my classes are activities looking at locating materials on the library shelves, series fiction, genre, wide reading passport, understanding CC, and some as-yet undecided units for the younger grades – could be author studies, could be Encyclopedia Britannica, still to be finalised.

This week has been Chinese Week at school, to coincide with the Mid-Autumn Festival, marked by a Lantern Festival on Monday night – please follow this link to see the Guinness World Record lantern sculpture! I went to the festival with my family on Monday night, and it really was spectacular!!

Naturally we have had a display of culturally relevant books in the Library, and with the younger grades I have been reading a picture book by Colin Czernecki entitled “Paper Lanterns” – and was very pleased to read the list of people he consulted to ensure that his book was a realistic and respectful representation of this aspect of Chinese culture.

"Paper Lanterns" cover, linked from author's website

The last page of the book is a picture of glorious scarlet lanterns emblazoned with a Chinese pictograph each, which together create the Chinese word for friendship 友谊  (you-yi) – my key learning for today. What a lovely image to finish a story!

I cannot imagine how she manages to fit it all into a working week, but Joyce Valenza is an inspirational ‘Shifted Librarian’… watch and learn.

Joyce Valenza

View of Hong Kong: "Vibrant" by Gabbian, CC licensed (click to view original)

We have now been in Hong Kong for 18 days, and Friday marked the end of my first week of teaching at AISHK. I have now met almost all of the classes from Prep to Year 6 (there were a few interruptions for various things), and truly and honestly it was lovely! The majority of the children are happy, friendly, reasonably polite, quite a few are precocious in their conversation, and seemed quite interested in ‘The New Library Teacher’! I have to give a huge vote of thanks to the outgoing Teacher Librarian (I haven’t asked her permission to name her, but believe me she deserves the recognition!). She has left behind a school of children who have been immersed in advanced research skills, exposed to referencing and inquiry skills at every year level, who see Library lessons as something to look forward to, and has left me with a very high standard to meet!

Walking around the school on the preceding Thursday and Friday I detected a certain level of anticipation and foreknowledge in  the cries of “Hello Mrs Reid!” and “Hello New Library Teacher” from students of various heights. This led me to implement a Plan for my first lesson with every class – I did not introduce myself.

The Plan: Step One

The students obviously all knew who I was, and the class teacher (they stay with their class for Library) would often tell the students to greet me, so self-introductions seemed a bit superfluous. Instead, I asked the classes to tell me what they already knew about me – this was usually an entertaining 5 minutes Generally we covered:

• where I had come from
• the major climate differences between Hobart and Hong Kong
• my previous school
• the fact that I’ve been reading boys books for 3 1/2 years due to previous school
• my 3 children
• my 2 dogs

with occasional diversions into my previous life as a Japanese & French teacher, or my award last year (kind of embarrassing hearing about that multiple times during the week!).

The Plan: Step Two

Next I told the children that as I was so new to Hong Kong there are lots of things I need to know, which they could teach me. I asked the children to Think-Pair-Share to come up with things they thought were important, and gave them about 20-30 seconds. I’m really pleased with this activity – the children got to share with me their local knowledge, it was a very inclusive way to start our teacher/class relationships, and I learned a great deal in a very short time! Also it didn’t get boring because as the week went on I warned each class that I had had X number of classes giving me information before their turn, so they had to be creative! Things I learned:

• the name of just about every major shopping mall in the Hong Kong metropolitan area.
• the ice rinks and cinemas therein
• that we have to try Dim Sum (which Australians refer to as Yum Cha) – they were saddened to discover that we already had, somewhat by accident, when looking for lunch that was not too expensive and not in a Food Court
• go to Shenzen, but don’t shop on the main tourist drag
• all the local markets – we are only a few blocks from Temple Street, which has already yielded good results!
• where to go at Stanley markets to find the Aussie lolly shop (Whizz Fizz!)
• Megabox
• the nightly light show
• the Peak, and the walks, trams, restaurants, and vantage point it provides
• which are the good beaches
• that I need access to a boat to get to the good beaches
• that barring a close friendship with someone wealthier than your average teacher, I should sign up to the staff junk trip – which is equivalent to a harbour cruise, I gather – in order to visit or even see any of these beaches
• Groupon – email discount coupons for everything under the sun
• the second-hand book market
• that frozen yoghurt is fabulous
• that Milk Tea is kind of like ice coffee – very milky, very sweet, and something I will approach with caution
• that I should try the dai pai dong eateries for great food
• and lots of other snippets, such as if you are being pushed by other people in the crowd – on the MTR (subway), street or anywhere else, you have to just shove back
  

  Grabbing the world! Image by woodleywonderworks (click to view original)

As I said above, I’m really glad I took this approach – it let me start by showing respect for the experience and knowledge that children bring with them to my classroom, and it gave me a fabulous list of things to do and see around Hong Kong!

This coming week will see me diving into a lot of reading promotion activities, while I get a handle on the students, on how the Library program can complement classroom work, and how things work generally at this new school. I’m having fun designing a Reading Passport for Year 3 – looking at a Blooms X Multiple Intelligences framework to inspire different and creative ways to respond to books in a format that will fit within a folded A4 page.