Sunday Scoop 26-4-15

Hello!

I can't believe that it has been nearly a month since I last managed to link up with the amazing

 Teaching Trio for one of my favourite linkies! 

The first item on my HAVE to list is one I am really going to work on this week, especially as I am posting over on Adventures in Literacy Land on Thursday!

Here is my scoop this week:

It's a pretty busy week with me leading some staff training on engagement along with some other staff tomorrow and then attending training on moderation on Wednesday and on Feedback on Friday. I don't mind the training but I know you will all feel my pain with regards to the cover notes and preparation I will need to do!

I had taken a few things down in my classroom a week or so ago and when I sat and took stock of the walls early last week I realised there was NOTHING there I liked and that truly supported the learning in my room. I was horrified! I quickly got this display up:

It supports some of our work on fractions but every other wall needs revamping. We have observations on Thursday so ideally by then...

With all that going on I really HOPE to hear more readers this week. My class are coming on so well with their reading and I want to hear as many as I can individually over the next couple of weeks. 

Please also wish me luck reaching 10000 steps each day and leave me audiobook recommendations if you have any!

Thank you again to the Teaching Trio for hosting The Sunday Scoop - don't forget to link up and share your plans!

 Have a great week!

Thank you to the Teaching Trio for hosting The Sunday Scoop!

Spring is Here Poetry Hop!

Hello and welcome to my stop on the Spring is Here Poetry Hop! 

I hope you've been picking up loads of great freebies and poetry ideas as you've been hopping through!

Today I want to share with you an amazing little poem I stumbled across when I was looking for some new ideas for teaching animation in our computing lessons. Last year we worked on a variety of animation ideas (which you can read about here) but I thought I would focus in on stop motion animation this year as it is a lot of fun to create! 

That led me to finding this beautiful animation created by Péter Vácz which was inspired by a Hungarian poem by Zsolt Miklya.

It is called Stream School and it follows the journey of a young girl (Dora) from a little stream to the vast sea. It is all about growing up and is told through some lovely imagery which is made all the better by the clever animation.

There is some great personification of the mountain, valley, sky and stream at the start of the poem and then other beautiful imagery throughout which makes the poem a perfect starting point for a unit of work or a one off lesson on personification or figurative language more generally.

 

You can also watch the making of the animation over on the blog: Péter Vácz  

I plan to use this poem to create a cross curricular unit of work based on objectives I need to cover in computing (animation - we'll attempt to create our own stop motion animations in this style!), DT (using textiles to create pictures) and literacy (poetic style and language).

This may well be slightly too ambitious for my little learners (6-7 years) but even if we don't get close to the end goal I have in my head, I'm sure we will have fun trying! Make sure you are following my blog to get some updates on our progress and success!

I have created a little freebie for you inspired by the idea of personification in nature which would work well alongside a study of this poem.  Use the flaps of the interactive notebooks to jot down ideas for each inanimate object in the photo. Use the blank notebook to choose your own objects to personify and the blank frame to draw your own scene to describe!

Also included is a page to publish final poems – this would make a great class anthology or display!

If you download this resource and enjoy it then please consider following my blog and TpT store:

Now it's time for you to hop on over to Ms Jordan Reads for some great ideas on using poetry for fluency and comprehension!

Fonts and graphics: Hello Fonts, Educlips and Epiphanous Owl

Let me know what you think of the poem by leaving a comment below. I'd also love to hear if you have any favourite poems for teaching personification (or know of any other great stop motion animations I can show my class!)

Happy hopping and thanks for stopping by today!