Multilingual Story Boxes in the Early Childhood Classroom

PETAA: Primary English Teaching Association Australia

Kim Cootes & Dr Gill Pennington

Pembroke Junior School 9:30am-12:30pm Thursday 12 March, 2020

Responding playfully to stories.

I am in my 16th year of teaching now, and with my teaching background and especially after becoming a mother, I know how intrinsic play and playful learning is within children. All children learn through play. Multilingual Story Boxes was the name of the PD I attended on Thursday, I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation, however, this was not the first time I had come across this concept, and I’m sure it won’t be my last.

About 12-13 years ago, my previous primary school suggested “Play Boxes”, which essentially are the same thing as these Multilingual Story Boxes. A box full of books, props, trinkets, toys, costumes, etc. around themes of texts to benefit all learners at whatever stage of development. The teachers loved them, the children loved them and each staff member would add their resources to the boxes after use and share it around. A great concept with fantastic resources, ready for the staff and students to borrow and use.

I was glad to be reminded of this concept at this PD. In my new role as the EALD teacher at St Andrew’s, I often have classroom teachers asking me for resources to support their EAL students. Whilst I have happily shared printed and digital resources, readings and supported students in and out of classes, there just isn’t enough time in my timetable to give these students and teachers enough support! Here is what I took away from this PD:

“What is essential for EALD students is also beneficial for all learners”

If we are providing essential, language rich, playful learning tasks for EAL students this will benefit ALL students in the class. Differentiation is key. Do what you would usually do, and cater for diversity.

As a side note, I am aware that play-based learning is predominantly an early years and junior primary school focus, however, it can and should also be done in the middle and upper primary classes – just pitched at a different level. I taught Year 6 students for three years and was creative in my approach to play based learning, it just looked a little different with older students.

I loved the suggested texts recommended below; some I have used before and others were new to me. It is important for children to see themselves represented in stories and be able to connect with characters. Mirror Books was a term used in the PD, and our teacher librarian (Tracey Billington) had just spoken to staff about books being windows or mirrors for students. A “window” to see into a character’s life and empathise with them, or a “mirror” to see themselves reflected in the book as a character they can relate to.

Recommended Books: Ziba Came on a Boat, Four Feet, Two Sandals & Stepping Stones (Bilingual), My Two Blankets & Handra’s Surprise.

This video clip is of a Reception class that read and explored Handra’s Surprise and recreated the story. It’s wonderful!

Storytelling Resources (Pennington, 2017):

  • Personal to the teller in the form of memories or events, leading to the development of family stories.
  • Artefacts to which stories become attached over time.
  • Printed and online texts, TV programs and movies.
  • National and cultural myths and histories passed down over generations.
  • Stories which accompany religious practices and beliefs.

As educators we know the value of storytelling, not just reading books to each other. Storytelling comes from the home, from communities, cultures, families and friends. It is a way of life, connecting with others and making sense of our world. Children should be given the opportunity to tell and share their stories.

The clip below called “Helicopter Stories, Letting Imagination Fly”, was shared at the PD. I think this method of storytelling is fantastic. I majored in Drama at university and have always had a passion for the Arts and expression through performance. This is exactly what students should be doing to explore, create and tell stories. I would also highly recommend using puppets/ puppetry to explore this method.

This is an example of children telling stories in their language. The method involves the teacher recording the student’s story on one page only, then reading their story aloud in a group, allowing the author of the story to act out their story with friends. Love it!

Resources:

Attached is the PDF of the PowerPoint from the presentation by Kim Cootes & Dr Gill Pennington. There were many useful pages with resources, references to research and examples of the Multilingual Story Boxes texts and props. Multilingual Storyboxes Adelaide

Where to from here?

  • My goal after this PD is to create a sample Multilingual Story Box for my school. With the assistance of our teacher librarian, I hope to source a box and add resources to it, then model the process with a selection of Reception and Year 1 classes.
  • I’d like to share this learning in one of our staff meetings to reinforce the message that “What is essential for EALD students is also beneficial for all learners”. All staff have the skills to cater for our EALD students, they just crave some resources and support, which is completely understandable.

Thanks for reading, I hope you found this useful.

Certificate of Participation

Creating Digital Books & Student QR Codes

Hi Everyone,

It has been a while since my last blog post, I’ve been rather busy adapting to full time work after returning from maternity leave this year. I feel I’m managing quite well but my blog has been sadly neglected. Until now!

Recently I stumbled across this link to Julie Smith’s Blog called The Techie Teacher:

https://www.thetechieteacher.net/2019/05/how-to-create-audio-qr-kids.html?fbclid=IwAR1t01mnr_1RIsjgwJvc4tKLyT3-spPyt_UTmfi42Xa6zKlJbhltUCYMqvo

I have always wanted to do this with my students and thought Term 3 was the time to start this process. I have had staff at my school ask me about sharing how my class did it, so this blog is dedicated to my coworkers at St Andrew’s School.

Firstly, I decided what my intention for learning would be for this task. I have been focusing on developing greater fluency, expression and pronunciation when my students read aloud. With this in mind, I decided to create audio books for our school library. I told my students they needed to choose a picture book, read it for a week and practise their reading, keeping their fluency, expression and clear pronunciation in mind. We would be recording their voices, reading their chosen books and sharing them in the school library. Their books needed to be suitable for young children (ELC to Year 2), however older children may also enjoy listening to them.

After reading their books at home all week, they were ready to record! We used iPads and an app called Book Creator, which is a way of creating digital books. If you’ve never used it, I would highly recommend giving it a try.

Students took photos of each page of their picture book and then recorded their voices on each page. We then shared our digital books from Book Creator to Seesaw. Our school uses Seesaw as a tool for communication with parents and to document student learning in a digital format. If you haven’t used Seesaw before and would like to learn more about it, please visit my previous blog post about it. I presented at EdTech SA a few years ago about using Seesaw as digital portfolios. Here is the link:

https://jadevidovich.edublogs.org/2016/07/20/edtechsa-conference-2016-seesaw-and-digital-portfolios/

We exported the book as a video to Seesaw, which meant it would automatically play for our viewers. All we needed to do from here was share the QR Code, which Seesaw generates for you.

I screen shot their QR codes, printed them to a suitable size for our display and the children stuck them on top of the photos I’d taken of them, holding a mini whiteboard as shown here:

Once this was done the children cut out their pictures, glued on their QR codes and we laminated them and attached a large black binder clip to the feet to help them stand up. I also asked my students to write a brief summary of their book and a 5 star rating, we used Comic Life to get the speech bubble template.

Here is what our library display looks like:

I also created a step by step instruction guide for students to help them learn how to view our stories using the iPads. You can find the attachment of that document here and download it and adapt it to your task. It’s as simple as opening the camera on the iPad, holding it up to the QR code and then clicking the link that pops up to take you to the story.

Read a Digital Audio Book

I hope you can see the value of this task and adapt it to suit one of your learning intentions within your classroom. The possibilities are endless! I was speaking to our school Italian teacher, she could record students speaking Italian and share their dialogue with students and parents, create a translator or a set of phrases to assist with Italian pronunciation. Then I was talking with a passionate science teacher and suggested he use it for recording the methods of experiments, videos of the experiments, documenting the scientific process along the way. What about Music lessons, Art, Dance, PE? So many possibilities.

ACARA Links: English Content Descriptors:

  • Use software including word processing programs with growing speed and efficiency to construct and edit texts featuring visual, print and audio elements (ACELY1685 – Scootle )
  • Use interaction skills, including active listening behaviours and communicate in a clear, coherent manner using a variety of everyday and learned vocabulary and appropriate tone, pace, pitch and volume (ACELY1792 – Scootle )
  • Understand how to apply knowledge of letter-sound relationships, syllables, and blending and segmenting to fluently read and write multisyllabic words with more complex letter patterns (ACELA1826 – Scootle )
If you have any questions please post them in the comment thread below.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about digital books and QR codes.

Thanks.

Jade Vidovich

EdTechSA Conference 2016: Seesaw and Digital Portfolios

Friday 22nd July 2016: EdTechSA Conference

Hi everyone,

Today is my first solo presentation at a state conference. My presentation is about the use of Seesaw as a digital portfolio in schools.

Here is my workshop rationale:

My workshop is about using an app called Seesaw to assist with creating digital portfolios for students and parents. It is an app that allows communication from school to home but can also be used as on online learning platform within your class. Students can select work they would like to share with their parents via notes, photos, audio files and videos. The app is free and fabulous. Come to my workshop to learn about digital learning using Seesaw. I have been using this app for the last 2 years in Year 2 but am part of an ICT group at my school to assist with the roll out of the app across the whole school. Currently we have been trialling the app with Receptions, Year 2’s and Year 5’s. I have many ideas to share with you about how to use this app across age ranges and ability levels. Parents have absolutely loved this tool to assist them with understanding their child’s learning. It is a fantastic way to track your student’s progress and communicate their personal progress throughout the year. Please come along to learn about this digital tool for digital learning.

Here is a link to the PowerPoint that I used during my presentation: Seesaw EdTechSA 2016 (1)

Video Resources:

What is Seesaw?

Why Digital Portfolios?

My Seesaw Feed: Touring the features of Seesaw

Self Assessment using Seesaw: I found this video and thought it would be great to apply this process in all areas of learning. I haven’t used Seesaw in this way but aim to implement this process next term.

How to use the Blogging feature in Seesaw:

Here is a document with resources, Seesaw reviews and links to Seesaw schools in Australia. It’s worth having a read:

Seesaw Readings and Thoughts to Consider

I hope you have found this post useful and I highly recommend you give Seesaw a try in your own class. For more information about Seesaw visit their website: http://web.seesaw.me/

If you have any comments or questions about this presentation please leave a comment.

Thanks

Jade

Digital Citizenship in the PYP 2016

Digital Citizenship in the PYP Workshop: Wednesday 20th- Friday 22nd of January 2015 (24 hours PD)

For the last 3 days I have been involved in a workshop called Digital Citizenship in the PYP.

My workshop facilitator was Nathan Pope (@Chinaheadk12), he was great at catering for a diverse group of learners and was very open to sharing resources and his presentation with us. I learnt some new things about Digital Citizenship and many discussions reaffirmed some of my prior knowledge and allowed me to share content with the group.

So what is Digital Citizenship?

This image is a brainstorm chart of my group’s definition of Digital Citizenship.

It says: Being a digital citizen means having an awareness of how to be safe and responsible in the digital community. We also wanted to acknowledge a level of accountability for individuals.

A useful resource I have used with Year 6 students about Digital Citizenship: http://www.digitalcitizenship.nsw.edu.au/

My previous post (2 days ago) was a response to one of our workshop readings, which stimulated great discussion within our group about the use of technology in the classroom. This post is an overview of the course and the highlights for myself as a learner.

Some of my highlights included:

  • Some old and new Learning Engagement strategies, I particularly loved the Nearpod poll, (http://nearpod.com/) this allowed you to see results being generated from the class live. Nearpod is a tool for delivering content that I would like to trial with my students. You can set it to class mode and run through it as a group or set it to individual mode where students can work through content and tasks at their own pace. Something worth exploring for sure.

 Learning Engagements

  • Web 1.0, 2.0 & 3.0 and learning what these were and the difference between each. I had never heard of this before but it was something I enjoyed learning about. Here is a brainstorm image from the workshop explaining this. In short Web 1.0 is readable content we can view but not edit, Web 2.0 is writeable content we can collaborate with others on and Web 3.o is executable, artificial intelligence, computers communicating with computers to share content relative to our interests. Pretty amazing stuff. Please also view the video link for a more detailed explanation below.
  • Web1.0,2.0 & 3.0
  • After learning about Web 2.0 we were asked to choose a piece of technology that we use to collaborate and identify the opportunities and threats about it. I chose Seesaw as I will be using Seesaw with my class again this year as part of our digital portfolios and starting blogs in junior primary. Here is what I came up with:
  • Seesaw
  • Google a Day Challenge: http://www.agoogleaday.com/ I’m interested in using this with middle to upper primary students to assist them with searching tips using Google. There are some skills that need to be specifically taught and refining searches is one of them.
  • Are we disconnecting by being digitally connected? I stumbled across this video whilst searching for something else but thought it was just too good not to share. It’s about the issues we have today about being connected by technology but disconnecting socially in real life. I think everybody should take the next 20 minutes and just watch this Ted Talk by Sherry Turkle, especially those addicted to their phones!
  •  
  • We also explored Digital Footprints, Cyber Safety/ bullying, Grooming and Creative Commons and copyright issues (plagiarism). I have a bit of a background knowledge on these topics already but would like to add the videos I thought were quite good in relation to these topics.
  • Digital Footprint:
  •  
  • Creative Commons:
  •  
  • Cyber Safety resource for students. I’ve used this with Junior Primary up to Year 6’s: http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/cyberquoll/
  • Digital Citizenship Rubric: We discussed the importance of intellectual property and plagiarism. We defined plagiarism:Plagiarism is the use and copy of unacknowledged works. Works can include pieces of art, music, theatre performances, graphic designs, photography, film, published/ written works online, website content, programmes, graphs and digital representations. 
    • We then discussed ways in which we could educate students about plagiarism and how to check if their work was cited properly. This rubric can be used or adapted to suit your students, I think it’s quite good. Digital Citizen Rubric
  • Finally Policy Documents: We had the opportunity to look at policy documents from other people’s schools in the group. The big take away point was that staff, students and parents should be involved in creating the policy documents. Too often it is the responsibility of a senior/ leadership staff member to create policy documents and then they share it, ask people to read it and then it’s done. Some people will take the time to read the policies but I dare say that more people will not find the time to engage with them… So, getting people involved in the policy drafting process and then handing the ideas over to leadership or senior staff to finalise is probably a better way to go about it.
  • Resources: Here is a link to the course website that Nathan Pope shared with each of us. It has many great articles, videos, resource links and examples of policy documents. I hope you find them as useful as I do: https://sites.google.com/site/jadedigitalcitizensite/home

Final thought, we are all Digital Citizens, it is our responsibility to be great role models for our students and share our knowledge and understanding about what it means to be a good citizen, on and offline.

Thanks for reading, please post a comment.

Jade

No Computers to Be Found! No Screens at All! They’re Not Allowed in the Classroom!!!

Digital Citizenship in the PYP: Day 1 of 3

Workshop facilitator: Nathan Pope: @Chinaheadk12

Homework for this evening is to read this article:

At Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, Technology Can Wait – The New York Times (1)

Waldorf School frowns upon the use of computers and screens within classroom environments and discourages home use.

I had to go back and check the dates of this article and was amazed that this was only written in 2011… if you read the article you would understand my confusion.

The article goes on to explain that children do not need computers in education, instead this school is “focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans”.

My experience is polar opposite to this mindset.

Other points to note in summary of this article:

  • The debate comes down to subjectivity, parental choice and a difference of opinion over a single word: engagement.
  • Advocates for equipping schools with technology say computers can hold students’ attention and, in fact, that young people who have been weaned on electronic devices will not tune in without them.
  • “Teaching is a human experience,” he said. “Technology is a distraction when we need literacy, numeracy and critical thinking.”
  • And where advocates for stocking classrooms with technology say children need computer time to compete in the modern world, Waldorf parents counter: what’s the rush, given how easy it is to pick up those skills?

My thoughts on these points:

  • The word engagement is key. Student engagement should not be centred around the use of technology. I believe hands on, visual and human based interactions in learning are of the upmost importance. Technology should be used to enhance the learning experience, using the tech is not the learning experience. We are not teaching technology for the sake of the tools, we are using technology to support the learning process. If we are just using the technology for the sake of learning about a new tool we need to seriously rethink our approaches to teaching and learning.
  • The whole notion of working with children who have been raised with a dependence on electronic devices to maintain attention and engagement is frankly a scary thought! I believe that balance with devices is important and children require boundaries with the amount of screen time they have day to day. It seems that it has become socially acceptable/ tolerated for people to look at their devices at ‘inappropriate’ times, adults are just as guilty of this offence as children. What happened to the good old days of eye contact and having a lunch with a friend, or listening in a staff meeting, a friendly interaction at the grocery store with the checkout attendant, without the interruption of a mobile phone notification? I’m thinking that people need to be taught digital manners as well as digital citizenship! Working in Junior Primary I’m constantly reminding and supporting children with eye contact, body language cues, reading people’s reactions, emotions and expressions. Look up and engage with others around you! There is no need to use a device to engage a student, sometimes the tech does that but it is not the reason we use it.
  • Human interactions are of vital importance. We are more capable of connecting and collaborating with people from all around the world than ever before. We can learn from others, critically reflect on content that we are sharing and question how we could solve problems. Critical thinking and problem solving is a big part of digital interactions. We can do this in person, face to face and we can also do this digitally. Some children are better at communicating online than in person, I personally find that I’m a better communicator whilst online too! Not that I don’t enjoy speaking with people, it’s simply that I’m capable of clearly communicating my points of view after reflection and consideration whilst typing on my blog rather than in real time conversation. I’m a slow processor and appreciate time to think things over before expressing my opinion.
  • Lastly, just how easy is it to pick up computer and digital technology skills? If you isolate a student from using a computer and then introduce it to them at a later stage in their development they won’t simply pick it up and know what to do with it. We learnt about the phrase ‘Digital Natives’ during our workshop today, please visit the podcast and article: http://podcast.concordiashanghai.org/blog/2014/11/17/tech-talk-roundtable-72-digital-natives-use-digital-spears/
  • Students are not born with tech knowledge and they need to be taught how to navigate through a digital world. So much of what they will need in their lives revolves around being a digital citizen and learning the skills required to collaborate, create and critically analyse things that are online.

Another great video to watch after todays session to get this point across:

Enjoyed the reading and looking forward to sharing this post for further discussion in tomorrow’s workshop.

Thanks for reading

Jade