I have had a play with it today and am testing the embedding tool. My next job is to sort out the sizing of it!

I remembered something which I first built back in the summer of 2010 when I was exploring the use of Google Maps to support literacy teaching. The idea behind it is that the map shows the main location of the events in a children or teenage book.

Please use it with your class as well as adding any new books which you think other classes might enjoy!

View World of Books in a larger map

I think that I have met all of the children (with the exception of our Reception who start next week) and am already beginning to recognise their many qualities. Before the children came in on Wednesday we had our two training days looking at our new progressions in writing and mathematics. The maths has been written by our Maths Subject leader and the writing is something I have developed with some amendments by our Writing leader. I am keen for these to develop in the light of comments made in the Excellence in English OFSTED report that schools which excelled in their English provision had developed their own frameworks and progressions.

We have already identified some issues including an urgent need for reading stock and development of our ICT hardware. Whilst I am no fan of knee jerk reactions or purchases I already looking at guided reading stock and books to engage all of our readers. At present, as well as bringing in books from the best authors out there, I am looking at Scholastic’s  Read, Respond, Engage series of texts and Rising Stars ebooks. I would be really interested to know what you are using in your schools.

Going through the site I have come to the conclusion  that my posts fell into three main areas – curriculum ideas, reading and general discursive pieces.

As a result I have built two archives to collate the curriculum ideas and reading posts which can be accessed  from the bar across the top of the site.

IWM London

I have decided to extend this work to develop a slightly more cross curricular set of links to resources and web links although as ever the main thrust will be Literacy and ICT but I have sought to include resources for a wider curriculum.

In this post I am looking at the Second World War.

Books

My secret war diary – Marcia Williams: It is almost impossible to describe the wonder of this diary. It is of such quality that it really could be the true diary of Flossie Albright recounting her war years, as the daughter of a soldier fighting in France, whilst she lives on a large estate encountering rationing, evacuees, land girls and other key elements of World War 2. With photographs, captions, diagrams and illustrations the book is as powerful a non fiction tool for study of the period as an enchanting read.

The Greatest Skating Race – Louise Borden A beautifully illustrated book telling the true story of Piet who has always wanted to skate in the Elfstedentocht ice skating race on frozen canals. It is 1941 and he  finds himself skating taking two young Jewish children to safety away from occupied Holland.

The Little Ships – Louise Borden and Michael Foreman Another beautifully illustrated Borden book telling the story of the little ships and their evacuation of a third of a million troops from the beaches of Dunkirk.

Across the Pacific – Louise Borden This time Louise Borden tells the story of her uncle and his war-time experiences serving on a submarine.

Rose Blanche – Ian McEwan and Roberto Innocenti I am sure that most people reading this blog will be aware of this wonderful book by Ian McEwan with the evocative illustrations by Innocenti. This is one of those books which could support  some incredible dialogic work around war-time experiences.

Erika’s Story – Ruth Vander Zee and Roberto Innocenti Translated from the original Dutch this book is another picture book brought to life by Innocenti’s illustrations. Erika and her family are sent to almost certain death in a cattle rail truck and they try to save her life by throwing her to safety. Erika was taken to a woman who risked her life to care for this baby giving her a new life and safe identity. This is Erika’s story of survival and courage during World War II. This would need some discussion and time but a great book for older junior children.

World War II – Simon Adams Another book which is probably known to many British readers but a good staple non fiction book with excellent images as well as text.

The Boy in the striped pyjamas – John Boyne A book which would also go into the list for excellent transition from book to film. A wonderful book to read to children  not to study, not to deconstruct but to simply to listen to and be transported to another world.

Party Shoes – Noel Streatfield An old classic written more than forty years ago telling the story of Selina who is evacuated to live with her aunt and uncle. The story is set with a background of the war but centres around her receipt of a party dress and shoes from her godmother in America.

The Machine Gunners – Robert Westall Another classic of the Second World War which should not be overlooked. This is an edgy book which should be matched carefully to the right child. It tells the story of Chas McGill who lives in the North East and whose life revolves around moving up from having the second best collection of war souvenirs in his town of Garmouth. Then one night a German plane crashes into the woods and Chas adds the shiny, black machine gun to add to his collection. This story works on a whole range of levels and covers many of the issues of living in war-time England. It also includes the wonderful quote “Some bright kid’s got a gun and 2000 rounds of live ammo. And that gun’s no peashooter. It’ll go through a brick wall at a quarter of a mile.”

The book was dramatised by the BBC schools department for radio transmission in 2008. It is available with teacher notes here.

I have found some wonderful clips on YouTube from the BBC dramatisation of the book which was made in 1993.

Episode One Part One

Episode One Part Two

Classic moment from the series and book

Fathom Five – Robert Westall The sequel to The Machine Gunners finds Chas and many of the characters from the first book suspecting that there is a German spy in Garmouth.

Linked website – Westall’s War.
Steve Bunce of Vital very kinded tweeted me a link to this wonderful site created by the Tyne and Wear Archives Service and the Gateshead Grid for Learning.

At 11.12 pm on Saturday May 3rd 1941 the Air Raid Alert sounded over North Shields. Locals hurried as usual to the air raid shelter beneath Wilkinson’s lemonade factory. At midnight, a single bomb from a lone German raider scored a direct hit on the three storey building. Walls, machinery and debris collapsed into the shelter. 107 people, 41 of them children under 16, were killed. It was the worst bombing incident in North East England during World War II.

The site is the most incredbily detailed recount using a range of sources and archive materials to allow pupils to research what happened, the implications and the impact. A highly recommended resource even if your class is not in the North East.

Westall’s War

The D-Day Experience – Richard Holmes (in association with Imperial War Museum) This box set written by Professor Richard Holmes in conjunction with the IWM and with access to many of their resources and archives. This will bring to life the enormity of the D-day invasion  through to the liberation of Paris with facsimiles documents. The box set has a detailed book and then copies of many different resources including maps, RAF pilot’s flying logs, copies of soldiers note books, letters and guarantees of Safe conduct for surrendered German troops.

The book could be used in conjunction with clips such as this below from the History channel

Johnnie’s Blitz – Bernard Ashley I love Bernard Ashley’s writing and don’t think he ever gets it wrong! This book tells the story of blitz torn London and a young boy called Johnnie branded a thief and on the run who takes on the care of a traumatized three year old girl called Shirley. She has no-one to look after her and he takes her to safety meeting a range of people.  Like so many of these books the war provides a strong setting to explore the human spirit and how people react at times of crisis.

The War and Freddy – Dennis Hamley This book tells the story of Freddy and how he is affected by the war at the age of 3. This book works very well with lower juniors (aged 7 to 9) in bringing to life the enormity of the effect that the Second World War had on everyone in Britain.

Hitler’s Canary – Sandi Toksvig Another book which could be used with Lower Juniors this tells the true story of the author’s grandparents. It is a warm and realistic recount of how life in Denmark was completely changed by the war and how the Toksvig’s eccentric family took part in one of history’s most dramatic rescues – smuggling Denmark’s Jewish population, across the water to Sweden, and safety.

Friend or Foe – Michael Morpurgo A fantastic book for reading aloud but also one which could drive a topic in Lower Juniors. It tells the story of two boys who are evacuated from London to the safety of the countryside well away from the war. Then one they hear the noise of an air raid and then the war comes to them and brings them face to face with their hated enemy. It also forces them to consider whether they can overcome their hatred.
The book gives great opportunities for speaking and listening activities and taking this into drama. This could include recreating the scenes of the children leaving home and arriving at the village hall prior to finding out who they would live with. After role-playing this in detail and taking images of the drama work and making sound recording this could be taken in work on plays creating a class playscript.

Billy the Kid – Micheal Morpurgo and Michael Foreman A book, told in flashback,  where Billy the Kid is 80 today, and looks back over his life. His adventures include going off to war, living rough as a tramp, and best of all, being picked to play football for Chelsea. A perfect mixture of Morpurgo’s prose and Foreman’s sublime artwork.

The Silver Sword – Ian Serraillier A classic novel from 1957 about the flight from Warsaw of three children whose parents had been taken away separately. It is a tale of hope, friendship, character and love. They travel together towards Switzerland, where they believe they will be reunited with their parents, they encounter many hardships and dangers. This extraordinarily moving account of an epic journey gives a remarkable insight into the reality of life in war-torn Europe.

Goodnight Mr Tom – Michelle Magorian This book is now almost 30 years old and is known and loved  by many readers across the world.  The book in simplest terms tells the story of Willie Beech evacuated to live with the eponymous Mr Tom who neither knew that he was going to receive a child nor wanted to do so. The book is a real journey as we see Willie develop under the care and love of Tom. This is not a comfortable read and should be saved for Upper Juniors or older.
The reach of the book was also widened by the ITV adaptation of the book for a TV drama in the UK starring John Thaw. The film was well received but did simplify the book omitting some of the important sub plots and agendas. It is important that, where the book is used, children experience the whole text before accessing the film. It is also important that they do access the whole book and that the film is not used instead in order to show extracts from the book in isolation and out of context.

These clips from the TV film may be useful to accompany reading the whole text.

Interview with Michelle Magorian

War Boy: A wartime childhood – Michael Foreman
Michael Foreman tells the story of his own childhood growing up in a quiet seaside town in Suffolk, right in the front line of the German bombers in World War Two. There’s the gang life as the Hill Street gang try to outwit the Ship Road gang, there are games to play with gas masks and, above all, there’s the delight of giant gobstoppers. A glorious portrait of a childhood from an extraordinary time.
A clip of the author reading an extract

After the war was over – Michael Foreman This book is the sequel to War Boy and sees Foreman living in a world where the war is ending and the country moves forward. The Victory celebrations give way to a clear up (of bomb sites and defences) and big changes in lifestyle for the nation. From Foreman’s viewpoint as a young boy we see him growing up and discovering girls, music, football and art. This book provides a wonderful introduction for children to this historical period.

Carrie’s War – Nina Bawden Another story of evacuation which studies the relationship of the characters within it. The three evacuees of the story Albert, Carrie and Nick find themselves in a strange world of which they try to make sense and to make better. The story is narrated by the adult Carrie to her children as she remembers the events and her actions from years before.

The play adaptation of the book is touring the UK in the autumn on 2010. Details

Interview with actors and author before the opening of the stage adaptation.

The Lion and the Unicorn – Shirley Hughes No list of books about the Second World War could be without this beautifully illustrated book by Hughes. Lenny’s father goes off to fight in the second world war and he gives his son a brass badge with a lion and a unicorn on it. Lenny keeps it with him when bombs are dropped on his street and when he has to be evacuated to a big house in the country. During his unhappy time he escapes the misery through visiting a secret garden which has a stone unicorn. A touching and challenging story.

When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit – Judith Kerr The true story of  young girl and how her understanding of the world and her life is changed by the onset of war. It is the story of a childhood which can never be the same and falls into the must read category as combined with the historical setting, the reality of the situation there is a warmth and humour which captures children from right at the start until the end of the book. A great read aloud.

Once – Morris Gleitzman
This book and the two sequels are inspired by members of Gleitzman’s extended Jewish family who lived in Krakow in Poland. Whilst it is a fictional account of the life of a young Jewish boy, Felix,  after his parents place him in an orphanage as a safe haven during the war.  The book is told in first person narration by Felix as he decides to run away to find them and so begins the trilogy. On the journey he finds Zelda (a 6 year old girl) who takes under his wing and who he has to placate with stories on regular occasions during their ordeals. A book which allows you to step into the mind of a young boy in perilous circumstances.

Question and answer session with Morris Gleitzman on the BBC Newsround site

Hear the author read the first chapter

Then – Morris Gleitzman
In this sequel to Once, Felix finds refuge for a time with  Zelda. Grumpy turnip-digging Gernia takes them in to her farm as nephew and niece, bleaching their hair and re-naming them as non-Jewish-sounding Wilhelm and Violetta.

Hear the author read the first chapter

Now – Morris Gleitzman
Gleitzman brought the story to the present day by visiting the Felix’s grand-daughter, Zelda, and her life. This time Gleitzman based his story during the appalling bushfires of February 2009 when several townships near Melbourne were totally destroyed by fire. Although not set in the Second World War it would be wrong not to complete the trilogy and experience more of Gleitzman’s powerful writing.

Hear Anne-Marie Fahey read the first chapter
Read the first chapter

Morris Gleitzman cites a range of texts as the inspiration and texts he read on his journey to writing this trilogy. (These are of interest to the teachers rather than being intended to read to children)

Tail end Charlie – Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom From one of the better pairings of author and illustrators in the UK we have Manning retelling the stories he heard in his childhood from his father who had served as an RAF airgunner in the Second World War. They have lovingly recreated each of the stories for their children (Charlie’s grandchildren)  and children all over the world.

Memorial – Gary Crew and Shaun Tan A Moreton Bay Fig tree, planted as a memorial to Australian soldiers killed in World War I, looks set to be cut down by the local council. A young boy tells the moving story of the tree, as related by his great-grandfather, grandfather and father, each of whom has participated in wars over the years. Whilst the book commemorates originally the sacrifices made in the First World War it explores the service of Anzac soldiers since then and how communities remember their fallen.
Poetry (Please use these for reference rather than sharing with children due to the adverts on the sites)
Poems for Remembrance Sunday World War Two poems

The National Archives

The National Archives provide wonderful source materials and resources to use during history topics and should be an early port of call for any school looking to study British or Commonwealth history.

Here are some of their resources which could bring a World War II topic to life:

The Art of War

The Home Front

Lesson resources
There are three sets of resources designed to get children using primary sources to come to conclusions about events in WWII.

The British response to V1 and V2 rocket attacks

Evacuation to Shropshire

What was it like to be an airman in WWII?

Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujii

The amazing story of an Indian Sikh who decided to travel across the world to fight in the Royal Air Force as a fighter pilot.

Mahinder Singh Pujii

Blogs

Chotie Darling A wonderful blog project where the love letters of Lt. R.K. Williams to his wartime sweetheart are being released in real time 70 years to the day of their writing. A wonderful resource and insight into war-time experiences.

Click to open the site

Additional film resources

World War Two told in 80 seconds

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMuTrB4JeS0&feature=PlayList&p=8E0B6B702D90677D&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=24]

Rare colour film of the D Day invasion

Videos of evacuees

The evacuation of shipbuilding town of Sunderland – one of the most bombed places in the UK.

Speeches
Peace in our time

Chamberlain’s declaration of war

Churchill speech “We shall fight them on the beaches…” (post Dunkirk evacuation)

Churchill speech “Never in the field of conflict…”

Churchill speech on German surrender

World War Two sites on Google Earth

Second World War Art

Propaganda Posters

Keep Calm and Carry On

Keep Calm and Carry On

Book Chook suggested the web site Keep Calm and Carry On website which allows you to create your own poster – unfortunately you do need to be careful with the use as it does archive previous posters by other users some of which may contain swearing so the site will need to be supervised for children’s use.

Second World War Music

Vera Lynn – When the Lights go on again

Vera Lynn – White Cliffs of Dover

Vera Lynn – We’ll Meet Again

303 Squadron

This wonderful online game from Channel Four  brings to life the story of 303 Squadron: 34 Polish fighter pilots who overturned RAF prejudices to earn their chance to fight in the Battle of Britain, in which they shot down 126 Luftwaffe aircraft.

The game is here

Further details

Museum websites

Imperial War Museum
The Imperial War Museum is the source of many resources and artefacts. They have digitized many of them and made them available online including the art work of Edward Ardizzone. By clicking on the image on the site below you will be able to access the collection.

Imperial War Museum Collection

It is important to remember that the Imperial War Museum has several locations which could be locations for school visits. They also have more specific resources on their websites.

IWM London

IWM HMS Belfast

IWM RAF Duxford

IWM Churchill War Rooms

IWM North (Manchester)

Stockport Air Raid tunnels

Did you know that Stockport sits on top of mile upon mile of tunnels? The network of tunnels, nearly a mile long, was hewn out of the red sandstone hills on which Stockport stands, to provide air raid shelters for 6,500 during the Second World War. The link will take you to the website of the museum which has some amazing facts and images.

Stockport Air raid Shelters

The RAF Hornchurch Project
Website of one of the most significant British war time airfield (for both WWI and WWII).

What was life like in the Second World War?
An excellent resource aimed at Junior aged child to use independently or as a whole class.

The Second World War Experience Centre
A website which collects and collates the personal experiences of people who lived or fought in the Second World War. A good resource for teachers.

The Second World War in Northern Ireland
This website lets you explore how the Second World War affected people in Northern Ireland.  It provides access to objects, documents, images, audio and film that bring their experiences to life and testify to their courage.

Johannes Koelz

The artist who refused to paint Hitler
This is the online version of a popular exhibition by Leicester City Museum Service. Fragments of a Koelz triptych were given to the City by Koelz’ daughter who lived nearby. This generous act began a growing exhibition project which has resulted in a re-appraisal of the work of a courageous and significant German artist.

The Battle of Britain
MSN has teamed up with Shoothill to present an interactive overview of the Battle of Britain. Zoom into a mosaic of archive images and documents; compare present-day maps with maps and charts showing bomb damage during the Blitz; and view high-resolution Photosynths of iconic RAF aircraft.

Redcar becomes Dunkirk
In 2007 the film ‘Atonement’ based upon the book by Ian McEwan was released. It depicts, at one point in the film, the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940. The town of Redcar in the North East of England was selected as the most appropriate location to take back 60 years with more than 1,000 extras.

This website shows how they recreated Dunkirk using explanations, photographs and interviews.

Turning Redcar into 1940 Dunkirk

Purple Mash

I was contacted on the comment section of the blog by Anthony Evans of 2Simple who has shared some of the new Purple Mash resources to support work on the Second World War.

Evacuee letter writing

Rationing in the Second World War

Newspaper report on the blitz

Blitz poem

War on Film (National Archive)
This resource is a wonderful collection of films about war time. You can download the films or stream them from their website.

Carve her name with pride

The Longest Day

The Great Escape

The Man who Never was (Story of Operation Mincemeat)

Hope and Glory

Useful educational web links

BBC

Woodlands Junior School site

CC Malenkov in Exile

I was speaking at a CPD session and chatted with a teacher about her forthcoming topic which she was calling “Space – the final frontier” which she was going to work on with her mixed Year Five and Six class. I put a few ideas together whilst we were chatting and made a request on Twitter to my PLN.

The idea of the plans is to give the teacher resources to deliver a cross curricular topic which is an extension of the traditional earth, moon and sun topic. I have sought to provide a mixture of texts, quality films, websites which can develop an exploration of space with a less traditional approach.

Books
My first suggestion for a text is the wonderful M.P. Robertson’s ‘Seven Ways to catch the Moon‘ in which a young girl tries to catch the moon using tactics such as riding a shooting star. We suggested that the book could be used as a stimulus for Design Technology work which could be a stimulus for talk and writing. The children could design and build their own ways of catching the moon (this could be extended to testing them out if all of the models were built to the same scale.)

Other books which could be used are:
The Sea of Tranquility which is written by Mark Haddon (author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time) and illustrated by the incredible artist, Christian Birmingham (who has also produced illustrations of Wombat goes Walkabout, Windhover and other books).

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel which is actually the fantasy story of an airship which is hijacked by pirates. Although not about space travel it would work wonderfully as an ongoing text to be read to the class for pleasure and could be combined with Airman by Eoin Colfer.

Films to use

I thought of two short films to use which could be used to fire up the topic firstly the BFI film Baboon on the Moon the animated film by Christophe Duriez which is available on the collection of films to be used in the class, Starting Stories. It is available from the BFI education department but may be a little young for some classes. Details here.

My other suggestion is the lovely film, Rocketman,

which starts with a little girl opening up her favourite pop-up book and then moves into an animation which brings it to life. Again this book could be used as a direct stimulus for literacy but could also lead to exciting cross curricular work including building pop up books, making stop animation films or developing diagetic and non diagetic sound to accompany the film.

watch?v=zXxxLbXq19o

One of my Twitter PLN Carl James made the excellent suggestion of using Star Wars as a way into the topic and to fire children up. He wondered whether it would be better to use the animated version Clone Wars. Personally I think that this is an excellent idea as they are well constructed stories as well as being visually engaging.

watch?v=23oH1Gie11I

It did occur to me that another possibility could be The Lego Star Wars animations. Lego is a wonderful construction system which could engage reluctant learners. Lego Star Wars

watch?v=eOp8-G40nPA

Twitter

NASA Education website

Next I thought about other ways of engaging young learners and remembered some I did a few years ago using the education section of the NASA website. There are some excellent resources which we used including their resources supporting work on the Moon and Mars.

I then received a tweet from Neil Adam reminding of the twitter streams written by NASA astronauts which would definitely bring going into space to real life for the children.

It is important when using Twitter in class to ensure that children are fully aware of e-safety implications and to have a discussion with school management before allowing children to view it. Schools should not be squeamish about using this social networking site as long as it done with full awareness of how to ensure that the children are trained in its use.

Astro Mike

Astro Mike is Mike Massimino an engineer and NASA astronaut who is is a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions, including the historic final Hubble Space Telescope  repair mission.

Mike keeps his followers up to date with his work as an Astronaut.

Other tweeps to follow are the Johnson Space Center (@NASA_Johnson) The National Space Center is “the lead center for space shuttle and International Space Station activities, and is home of the Mission Control Center and NASA astronaut corps.” The tweets are contributed to by interns in the astronaut corps and other Space centres as well as Johnson. It is regularly updated and will often include hyperlinks to further information.

The NASA_Astronauts twitter stream is a place to access all of the tweets by all NASA astronauts. This is well worth accessing as it contains such a mix of information and insight.

The Moon

What shape is the Moon?

I researched several websites and was lucky enough to have some suggestions from Tom Sale and Dawn Hallybone for which I am really grateful. These included some brilliant resources for study of the moon including What Shape is the Moon? from BGFL. Another such site is Sun, Earth and Moon from Simple Science.

The resource is one of those which has been developed to support knowledge acquisition of science facts around the QCA schemes of work. This is something of which we need to be aware but I also thought that teachers would already have many of these so thought of things which might be slightly different or promote work in a different way.

We choose the moon

The first site I was recommended was We choose the Moon which came from Ian Pratt who tweets as @sciencelabman. It is a visually engaging site which celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the Lunar Landings and is divided into 11 different stages using animations, archival photos, simulations, video and audio from mission control. The user can use the mission tracker to move through the mission at their own pace.

This set me to thinking that we were assuming that children would accept the moon landings without question but there may well be children who were aware of the claims that the moon landings were a hoax. This is something which has entered popular culture through the internet and films such as Capricorn One.

This set me to thinking that we were assuming that children would accept the moon landings without question but there may well be children who were aware of the claims that the moon landings were a hoax. This is something which has entered popular culture through the internet and films such as Capricorn One. So we present the children with the challenge of proving or disproving that the moon landings actually took place. They could think about the points made by conspiracy theorists and use images to prove or counter them. IWB software will massively support this.

The points made by people claiming that the landings never took place are explore on the How Stuff Works website http://science.howstuffworks.com/moon-landing-hoax.htm/printable. They take each point and rebuff them.

1. There are no stars in the background
2. There is a rock in one of the images which appears to have the letter C imprinted on it
3. There are shadows of differing lengths
4. The American flag appears to flap in the breeze
5. Technology was not sufficiently developed to keep the astronauts alive on the moon
6. The landing module weighed 17 tons but left no impression in the sand whilst the astronauts left footprints behind
7. The moons brought back from the moon are identical to those collected in Antarctica
8. When the landing module took off from the moon there weren’t any visible flames.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether you or the children believe whether the moon landings were real or faked as long as it provides the stimulus for a lively debate.

The children could use a range of images to annotate with evidence to prove their point. This could lead to the work being presented in a range of ways from simple word documents, homemade books, posters, annotated images, film presentations using Photostory, MovieMaker or similar applications.

Resources to support this could include this article on the conspiracy from the Daily Telegraph and this from The National Geographic debunking ‘myths ‘.

Testimonies
There could also be some mileage in looking at some of the testimonies cited on conspiracy sites to share with children. They could be used as a prompt for discussions or for writing.

One example is taken from the site UFOs-aliens http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html

The residents of Honeysuckle Creek, Australia, actually saw a different broadcast to the rest of the World. Just shortly before Armstrong stepped onto the Moons surface, a change could be seen where the picture goes from a stark black to a brighter picture. Honeysuckle Creek stayed with the picture and although the voice transmissions were broadcast from Goldstone, the actual film footage was broadcast from Australia. As Una watched Armstrong walking on the surface of the Moon she spotted a Coke bottle that was kicked in the right hand side of the picture. This was in the early hours of the morning and she phoned her friends to see if they had seen the same thing, unfortunately they had missed it but were going to watch the rebroadcast the next day. Needless to say, the footage had been edited and the offending Coke bottle had been cut out of the film. But several other viewers had seen the bottle and many articles appeared in The West Australian newspaper.

Imagesto support this work

Taken from pollsb.com

Taken from www.howstuffworks.com

Panoramas.dk
If anyone is not aware of Panoramas then they should check it out. It is an online collection of 360 degree panoramic photographs of many different places and events some including audio. I have used several as a stimulus for writing with classes. Julian Wood (@ideas_factory) made me aware of their panoramic photographs of the Apollo lunar landings. The children can move the images and pan round a full circle and can select from each of the Apollo Lunar landing missions. Here are some examples:
Index

Apollo 11 – Lunar landing module with audio

Apollo 14 with audio

Apollo 17 – astronaut walking on the moon

Rocketlaunching

I returned to less controversial thoughts after this and thought about activities which could fire up the children’s excitement. In my last job we looked to get the Year 6s (all 100 of them) involved in something which would be enjoyable, slightly competitive and bring about learning in the weeks after their SAT tests and a colleague talked about a school which had built rockets with the children. This was brilliant as the children researched the best design, the best angle to use and then had to adjust their thoughts as they saw competitor rockets fare better or worse than they had thought!

Boing Boing image (www.boingboing.net)

The rockets work by half filling a 2 litre bottle with water and then using a foot pump to push air into it until the air pressure is so great that the rocket takes off. Sinclair MacKenzie (@mrmackenzie) recommended rokits which are available from www.rokit.com

I tweeted about this and received messages from Dawn Hallybone, Nicky Newbury and Jen Martindale who all taught me about the wonders of building rockets out of camera filhttp://lordlit.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=643&action=edit&message=10m canisters, a small amount of water and alka seltzers. This is new to me so I found this link to Cool Science which shows you how to do it. It really does look fantastic!!

UltimatelyI would love to see children making rockets like the image on the left.

Websites

I also found these websites which could be very useful.

NGfL Earth and Beyond

The Solar System

BBC Explore the Solar System site

Google Sky

The wonderful NASA collection of images of planets is well worth visiting.

NASA Planet image collection

Stellarium – Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. You will need to download on to your laptop or PC.

Stellarium

http://www.stellarium.org/

Films

Launch of the Space Shuttle from inside the cockpit (I love the high fives t 50 miles above the earth!)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwfsFtpACFw]

A space shuttle landing

watch?v=YOxZsbyjSb8

NASA’s first ever space walk

watch?v=7K5DiKsZhTk

Today (16th November 2010) Brainpop shared this photo from their twitter account (@brainpop_uk)

The immediate kneejerk reaction to what is often kiteflying by Michael Gove, Nick Gibbs or the mandarins behind them is often one of negativity. I was intrigued by this announcement because I am soon to become Headteacher of a large Primary school in a rural community and am aware that in future years I may be in a position where we struggle to appoint teachers. This is due to the traditional difficulty of rural schools to woo students from city based Teacher training institutions. Therefore this announcement was of interest to me in the same way as I am following the development of teaching schools.

The reaction amongst people I follow on Twitter was largely negative or at best remaining unconvinced. One point which was made several times was that it was intended as a ‘back door way of saving money and dumbing down of a profession.’ This runs counter to the DfE statement that it expected ”the vast majority” of teachers to have the qualification, but that the change will allow head teachers to bring in professionals with “great knowledge and new skills”. These sit in direct conflict – one suspects that this is about taking on the unions and creating a greater body of teachers who potentially have not come through traditional forms of training.; whilst the other is about getting people who have high level degrees in important subjects or life skills which will help them to engage pupils.

My personal confusion is over the fact that two years ago Michael Gove was talking about the need for teachers to have Masters degree level qualifications and now we have an announcement allowing degree graduates to enter the profession without any training. These, again, lie in direct contradiction to each other and possibly suggest a watering down of the initial announcement.

It was with interest that I read this blog post Dumbing Down: The Tory Way by Andrew Old (who is rarely shy in giving his views but always back them up with evidence, research or examples.) I do not always agree with Andrew’s views but try not to miss his blog posts.
Here are several quotes which resonated with me:

Now I don’t want to overdo the value of QTS. Some PGCE courses are dire. The training signified by QTS is not always worth a lot. However, what QTS does represent is a commitment to join the profession.
Deprofessionalisation can never improve teaching. It will, however, make privatisation easier (by removing the need for private education providers to recruit qualified staff) and reduce the bargaining power of unions over pay and conditions.

Andrew is very much focused on Secondary and I recognise that the main emphasis of this rule change is aimed at this age group but I do wonder how this would work for Primary. It was with interest that I saw a discussion on Twitter involving Sam Freedman Special Policy Adviser (SPAD) to Michael Gove about the announcement. Sam Freedman is very open to discussing policy announcements on Twitter although he has a trick of dismissing those disagreeing with him of being opponents of autonomy or objecting to what others want.

Sam was in a discussion about the lack of qualifications in entrants to teaching and his opening gambit was to use Alex Ferguson as an example as he doesn’t have the UEFA coaching qualifications held by most football managers and coaches. The analogy is interesting but forgets the fact that Ferguson has always appointed the best coaches possible to instruct the footballers such as Steve McLaren and Carlos Quieros. Unless we are going to give every unqualified teacher a highly skilled Teaching Assistant, of course!

Sam’s comments on the subject included:

Nothing will happen unless education professionals decide to use this new freedom.

This seems to suggest that this is absolutely something which will only affect schools which believe that they can benefit their students by appointing unqualified teachers.

…that we want to give a little bit of extra autonomy to schools.

Again, this suggests that this is about giving more power to schools (in contrast to the accusation that education is being nationalised by a Secretary of State who is accruing increasing powers.)

(pupils) could get a great teacher they wouldn’t have otherwise had.

they could get great teachers who they otherwise might not have had.

This I found of huge interest. His use of the word ‘great’ as opposed to good or outstanding (OFSTED categories) was no doubt deliberate as it is more of a superlative than classification. However, it does seem to be a claim of some confidence that schools could appoint someone with a high degree and no teaching experience who would be a great teacher. Sam didn’t say by when they would be a great teacher. So it could be argued that, like someone on the Graduate Teacher Programme, SCITT or PGCE, an unqualified teacher could develop into a ‘great’ teacher. My view is that there is needs to be some evidence that those entering the profession without qualifications are or have the potential to be great teachers.

I don’t think that the comparison with private schools holds on most occasions as there are differences in class sizes, pupil support and the intrinsic motivation of many of the pupils.

Having watched the debate I entered the fray asking a question about evidence:

Sorry to butt in – where is the evidence that there is a stock of graduates who are already great teachers?

I received no reply and so sent a follow (presuming that Sam had missed it in the flow of tweets)

Does the lack of response to question imply that there is no evidence that there is a stock great teacher graduates? (I am aware that this appear terse but the semantics of Twitter sometimes don’t play well in blogs)

To date I have not received a reply from Sam which would suggest either that he has blocked me in the past and didn’t see it, missed the two tweets or chose not to reply.

My view is that there is no evidence to suggest that unqualified teachers are going to be better than those who are qualified. I do not believe that there is evidence that they will be great and this is actually a further announcement from the DfE designed to play to a very specific audience of disaffected Tory voters who are unhappy with the coalition. I am not convinced from reading Sam Freedman’s tweets last night that he even is fully committed to it (his defence was fairly tame compared to previous debates on Twitter involving him).

Do I think that it will dumb down education like Andrew Old? Firstly, I try to steer clear of pronouncing on secondary as it is massively out of my spectrum of knowledge but I do think that schools in cities may find transient employment for owners of good degrees who want to boost their CV without doing Voluntary Service Overseas – this would beg the question of what Teach First is doing wrong to not be involved  in this rule change. I suspect that there will not be a huge queue of graduates at Primary School doors but do wonder if artists, linguists and mathematicians may find some peripatetic work without qualification.

I don’t think that the government intend that this will dumb down, Michael Gove probably thinks that this will raise the quality of teaching in a small number of schools.
There are rumours amongst many politicos that Gove is manoeuvring himself into a challenge for the leadership of the party at some point in the future and this would appear to me to sit alongside his challenge to Leveson, his defence on the BBC of the Lords reforms and his alleged briefing against other ministers. This is, I suspect, not intended to massively undermine the profession nor to flood schools with unqualified schools – it is probably about flexibility and playing well in the Tory press. But, I believe it is a bad move as it is not based in any academic research or evidence and this is something which Gove promised from his comments and briefings whilst shadow minister. He has not stuck to this choosing to change his evidence base of choice as he is found out over the years and he should be called out on this.

I will, of course, put any evidence on here once Sam Freedman does reply.

I was working with a teacher today preparing a sequence of work on data handling. We were keen to develop a sequence which got the pupils (who are working between 3A and 5C) talking about and interpreting the data. We were not looking to avoid data collection and graph drawing entirely but the emphasis is on stretching this group of mathematicians.

Our key focus was on identifying opportunities to present and interpret data to answer related questions. This will then lead to the pupils developing and posing further questions.

The stimulus we chose for this work was the Olympics and as I wanted to personalise the work I suggested we went for the Javelin competition. This video will open the work with a discussion of how the javelin final worked.
It will be keen for the children to understand that there were 12 competitors in the final, 4 of whom went out after 3 throws and 8 of whom went through to throw a total of six throws.

When looking at using data from international competitions it is always worth looking to Wikipedia as it is an amazing source of Olympic data.

Using the data from the final I copied the table below which to suit our needs has each throw rounded to the nearest whole metre rather than being to two decimal places.

2008 Javelin Olympic Final

       I am sure that looking at this you will be able to think of many different approaches to take but  this is what we went for. For ease and speed I am going to bullet point them.

•  The pupils will find the mean of each athlete’s throws (no throws are marked as X and will not be counted)
• Next the children will construct simple line graphs showing the mean throws. The X axis will be the competitors by name or number of their final position and the Y axis will be the distance thrown. (Pupils will need to make sensible choices about where to start the Y axis and the increments of numbers)
• 

However thanks to Susie Arnott I have realised that this is mathematically incorrect as it shows links between each throw which are actually discrete data. It would be more create to show the data on a scattergraph or some form of bar chart.

• The children will then answer questions about the data. We anticipate that they will find it mystifiying that Kovals (who came 2nd) only ranks 5th with his mean throws.
• Pupils will be asked to rank the athletes by mean throws
• Other tasks will also be finding the range, ranking by their first, last or shortest throws.
• Finally we also looked at really pushing the most able pupils and will ask them to make or write a commentary of the final. I try to ask children to tell the story of data and so this presented a perfect opportunity to do this. In the activity the children will be given opportunities to risk take and show their knowledge. They will use the data from the top eight athletes and represent them in the way that they think is the most effective. The teacher will question, prompt and probe without leading the children in their decision making.
• We anticipated that some children will create a line graph with eight different line graphs to represent each throw by  each athlete whilst other might record the positions after each round.
• This will then lead to further questions and explanations.

The next step would be to take the children out onto the field to recreate the final with foam javelins. We decided that the children might need to start on an imaginary 60 metre line to compete with the Olympians.

I hope that this is useful!

]]> http://lordlit.com/2012/06/13/olympic-javelin-maths/feed/ 0 http://lordlit.com/2012/06/06/choice-driven-story/ http://lordlit.com/2012/06/06/choice-driven-story/#comments Wed, 06 Jun 2012 14:36:44 +0000 Bill Lord http://lordlit.com/?p=1189 As so many schools are covering the Olympics and Greeks this term I have been playing with an old idea to support literacy work. I was a great fan, many years ago, of the Fighting Fantasy books and have enjoyed working with pupils on developing choice driven stories.

I have developed a story in PowerPoint so that pupils can guide themselves through it and another with only the first half in place for them to develop their own ending.

Opening page

The story opening with our hero (the player) moving up a hillside.

At last you came to the top of the crest and were able to see over the whole of the island. It had taken you a lot of effort to get there. The smell of wood on the light wind told me that there was a forest to be discovered. Taking a deep breath, you strode forwards towards it. In the distance, there was a clearing. You knew that you had no choice but to explore it. 

In the story you meet Odysseus and encounter several Greek creatures such as Giants, Centaurs and Ipotanes.

The story is written in the past tense, which differs from the Steve Jackson / Ian Livingston approach from Fighting Fantasy, mainly to support the pupils who mainly write narrative in the past tense and also to avoid tripping over the switch of tenses.

Choices to make

The story then becomes choice driven as the user selects one of four steps to take in the story – but beware not all of these will be successful! There are several characters to meet but the ending of the story remains to be changed by the pupils.

I have also written a version of the story which has only the development of the story ready for pupils to develop on their own or in groups.

If anyone would like a copy of either of these please contact me through Twitter (@Joga5) or through the comments on this site.

All I would ask is any completed version are then shared amongst users of this site.

Choice driven story by Bill Lord is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

As someone who has worked for years trying to make the teaching of writing as engaging as possible, I have been fascinated looking at work taking place around the globe looking to bring gamification to the classroom.

Reading the engaming blog has a this from  Deterding, Dixon, Khaled and Nacke  who define gamification as “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts“. This is often in the context of business and rewards for consumer activity. I have also been interested in reading the thoughts of Doug Belshaw on the use of badges in education.

At the same time I must thank Oliver Quinlan for the time we had discussing gamification at Leicester University recently, Kevin McLaughlin for challenging me in my thinking and Julian Wood for telling me I had to write the blog post.

I have been looking for ways of introducing some gamified approaches into the teaching of writing to go alongside the work I have been doing in Games Based Learning using the DS and Wii. The one thing I was clear about was the fact that I wanted the work to be paper based and not electronic.

I have worked with three classes looking at using what I think are gamified approaches and would be really interested in seeing what you think. I have also included the resources for one of the project so that you can try them yourself.

The bottle smashing on the ground brought him to his senses.

The first piece of work took place in a Year 5/6 class with 22 children operating between National Curriculum Level 3b and Level 5C. The children were grouped by ability and told before we started that they were going to work on a writing project which would be different. I worked with the class teacher on developing a piece of writing which allowed the children to show their writing at its best, receive personalised support, combine non fiction text types with narrative and mainly to succeed in writing whilst enjoying it.

Our starting point was to read a story start with the children. There was little teaching at the start of this session instead the teacher began by reading out aloud the provocation.

The child were then given time to work in their groups deciding where their stories could go. The adults in the room prompted and questioned without leading the children.  After five minutes the children were given large sheets of sugar paper to start developing story planning ideas – some of this was linear in a story hill style whilst one group brainstormed.

This is all sounds very quick and simple but doesn’t show the breadth of the discussion and the questions which we developed together.

Questions developed by the children

This is where we introduced the first ‘random’ or gamified element to the session as we invited children to select non fiction scenario cards to develop their stories. This was slightly differentiated with the more able groups choosing the cards face down so that they didn’t know what they were getting whilst other groups were able to negotiate about where they wanted their stories togo.

Gamification cards

The different groups were only allowed to choose cards of different colours and so there was the potential for children developing completely different stories.
The choices were:

The children made their choices and then tried to work out how they affected their stories. Immediately the most able writers complained that they didn’t like one of their cards. We had anticipated this and so gave the children another gaming element unveiling some new rules.

• if the pupils didn’t like their cards then they could earn a card change through good work using chance cards
• the children would be given chance cards each day to earn teacher help, extra help or a card change
• the teacher would only teach the children five times during the three week sequence
• the children would only have five pieces of support from the teacher and would have to earn more through self assessment

What we intended by this was that the teacher would give the children a quick five minute oral and mental starter style opener mainly based around sentence structure / grammar issues identified in previous lessons. The rest of the sessions would be writing workshops where the teacher would intervene based upon the individual need of the children.

Children’s initial planning

Planning for gamification

By the end of the first lesson all groups had developed their intial ideas and then started working on their own. Over the next week each child started developing their story in stages with individual and group guided support from the teacher. As soon as the children started writing they were encouraged to ‘win’ support from the teacher by self assessing their writing against one of their writing targets.

This is where the first problem came! The children were so fired up by the work that they kept self assessing their work and so kept earning lots of support. On the days when I popped into the class there was a fantastic working buzz in the room and the pupils were entirely on task. On one occasion there was silence with an explosion of noise from one table as they argued about where their stories were going and then as suddenly as it had come the noise died down to a working level. Talking to the teacher this typified how the work developed over the two weeks.

She has very kindly allowed me to post an anonymised copy of one child’s work for you to look at. I am sorry for the watermark but I need to protect the child’s work.

Conclusions

• The teacher was very fired up by the work and the children clearly derived great enjoyment from it. All children produced a piece of work of which they were proud although the least able group found the independent challenging and received more support than other groups.
• The lack of a formal shared session meant that children produced more work independently and so the teacher was able to intervene in one to one or small group support which meant that she felt that she had moved the children further in their writing as a result of this than she normally would.
• The teacher felt vulnerable as the planning was very different as it was informed on a daily basis by the work done by the children each lesson.
• The progress made by the children was ahead of what we would have expected but I would prefer to wait until the end of the academic year to look at how sustained the improved have been before sharing them.
• The children were able to show a clear understanding of how they could use the non fiction elements to develop or change their narrative and so most had, by the end, created a story with three additional elements.
• The strongest gamification element of the project was the initial random selection of their additional elements whilst most children did not ‘buy’ or ‘win’ extra support as they were regularly checking their work.
• There are implications to be considered that the children needed to be confident in using each of the text types before starting. In another class there could be a greater need for shared class or guided group teacher input in another class.
• The teacher did state that whilst she had seen great benefit from the approach she would be nervous to use in an observed lesson.

Other uses

• I have used this in other narrative sequences – in Year 2/3 the class had met a range of Roald Dahl books and characters and, having written a whole class setting, were given a choice of different characters to place together in the same place. For example,  how would Mr Twit and Miss Trunchbull behave if they were thrown together
• Another example is a Year 4/5/6 class studying the Greeks in History were given a gamified project where the children were asked to write what would happen if Greek Gods and Heroes were  paired up in scenarios given to them. These were on cards placed face down which the children picked up. So for example one child paired a Hydra up with Theseus to take on the Minotaur.

Final question

• I know that these pieces of work have motivated the pupils and excited the teachers. I am pleased with how I have challenged teachers to become more creative in their teaching of writing whilst maintaining the drive on standards and ensuring that there was sense of achievement and enjoyment. However, is it gamification?
  I would be really very interested in any thoughts or comments whether positive or negative – I want to move this work on further but think I need to bounce it off other people.