Category Archives: PYP

Exploring Refugees through picture books

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Teaching about refugees

The use of the picture book can be underrated as a resource once students are beyond Year 2 or 3. In my mind picture books are useful as teaching and learning tools even in Secondary School and beyond.

Currently Year 6 students are inquiring into the life of  refugees.

The following resource is designed around picture books suitable for this inquiry and age group.

Picture Book Evaluation

The Picture Book evaluation page has been structured for students to consider the purpose of the book and to try and consider from the perspective of the refugee.

The students examine each picture book for the following elements.

Who are the main characters? Why are they leaving their country?What tells you this in the story? What events forcedeach individual toflee their homeland? Consider the linguistic features – imagery, emotive language, personification, symbols, exaggeration, puns and sarcasm.

This simple resource sheet is one way to analyse a picture book.

This PPT file explains how to analyse a picture book.

Teacher Resources

Teaching about refugees and migration through picture books

Global Education wiki

Resource Kit – Refugee 

Useful resources – Refugee Council

Picture Book list

Sharing the planet: Using apps to express and explore

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The Prep students have been growing a garden as a part of their inquiry into Sharing the Planet.The students have been using tellagami, Scootle and iPads to share their learning.

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See below for links to these apps and some tutorials.

Apps

Tellagami

Scootle

Using Scootle in Education Ed Of ICT wikispaces resources

Qwiki

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Telling our stories

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Year 1 have been inquirying into stories and storytellling.

The central idea is:

People use a variety of stories for different purposes.

Some of the students have written wonderful stories that we have ‘published’ using apps.

So far we have experimented with the following apps

  • MyStory
  • StoryKit
  • PixnTell

 

See below for some examples for the stories.

StoryKit  – click on the audio icon to hear the students reading their story aloud.

StoryKit App 

Story 1

Story 2

Story 3

Click here for a StoryKit tutorial.

My Story – Book Maker for Kids

My Story app

Story 1

Story 2

Story 3

PixnTell

PixnTell app

The Pixn Tell app allows you to design your story and then publish it. Once published it is created into an audio file (MP4).

Story 1

Story 2

Story 3

Story 4

 

There are so many fantastic tools for creating digital stories.

Some of my other resources about teaching this can be found at my diggo digital storytelling links and Online Stories page at my JSSALC wikispaces.

 

 

 

Feature Picture Book – Tree: From Little Things Grow

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The story of TREE: From little things big things grow is beautifully written by Danny Parker and illustrated by Matt Ottley.

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This tree was photographed in Tasmania.
Information about Tasmanian forestry.

TEACHING IDEAS
Find teaching notes using the QR code below.
This story book is perfect for the Units of Inquiry related to
• Environment
• Life cycle
• Seasons
• Sustainability

Additionally TREE reflects the Learner Profile of BALANCED.

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STUDENT LED CONFERENCES IN THE JS LIBRARY

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When the classes visit the library for Student Led Conferences in a few weeks time they will have time to explore the library using  the PYP Concepts.

Each year level has a suggested PYP concept to explore but of course students can choose what they would like to do in this time.

These videos were created using Powtoon (which you are clearly told at the end of each animation).

Powtoon might be an excellent tool for Year 6 students and their upcoming Exhibition.

 

Transdisciplinary Learning PYP Workshop

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Junior School teachers are currently participating in the PYP Workshop – Transdisciplinary Learning.

The Specialist teachers were to review the final session for Day1.

To do this the following presentation was designed using these apps

Photo Comic

Word Foto

Word Collage and

Tellagami

The Transdiciplinary Learning blog for St Andrews is here.

ASK A LIBRARIAN and EFFECTIVE QUESTIONS

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SEARCH – ASK – LEARN – CONNECT

ASK

Term 2 is focused on asking questions and what it means to ask questions.

Sometimes the question is more important than the answer.

What does this mean?

Students have been asked to ask me their questions (about anything) and I will endeavor to find an answer. Part of this process will be also demonstrating my research to find this answer (or answers).

STUDENT QUESTIONING

As a PYP school we encourage students to ask their questions and to direct their own inquiry.

One concept based on student questions is the PASSION PROJECT and GENIUS HOUR.

TEACHER QUESTIONING

Jamie Mackenzie has many books and blog posts about types of questions and how to formulate the right questions. This is the link to his QUESTIONING TOOLKIT.

This approach to developing effective questions is often coined as ungoogleable and it is essential that we support students “move beyond the cut and paste“.

DIGGO LINKS QUESTIONING

Read more about PASSION PROJECTS