Cleopatra

I'm going in to talk to some staff about the Ancient Egyptians this afternoon. Besides all the usual stuff, I'll mention a book on Cleopatra that the children love because of the kissing (UGH!) and blood (YEAH!). It is the one below written and ilustrated by Polly Dunbar

Children's books for teaching about Cleopatra include:-
Cleopatra by P. Dunbar. Scholastic Books
Cleopatra by H. Middleton. Oxford (1997) ISBN 0-19-910193-0
Cleopatra by A. Geras. Kingfisher (2007) ISBN 978 0 7534 1359 3

She is also given a spread in "People who made history in Ancient Egypt" by J. Shuter (2000) Hodder Wayland ISBN 07502 2604 8

Space - in school

Normally, I do Space at the Civic & Learning Centre Eston with their fantastic resources. Today I took one of those resources, the Magic Planet, into school. I was a bit apprehensive because of timing and computer issues that might have arisen.
The children (and staff) were fantastic. They joined in, asked and answered questions. They managed to sit on the hard wooden floor for an age while I talked. Well done, children.

Example of Comic Life page on Space

The IT suffered a minor hiccup when the children had to suffer logos printed across their Comic Life work. However, they almost universally said how much they loved using Comic Life. Similarly, they really enjoyed seeing the Magic Planet.
Their evaluations made me smile and one was especially pleasing - 
"I think todays lesson was great and fun. I especially liked the magic planet and the fact that there was no work! Thank you"

The Great Fire of London

A colleague asked me what ideas and resources I had to teach about the Great Fire. Not many I'm afraid. 
She suggested that she'd be using 2Simple software with her Y1-2. I'd probably do the same. I'd get them to write a postcard with their own drawing or a modified imported image. 
If I was adventurous, I'd try them on animation which at this age is not easy. I produced the gif below by copying and modifying an image using 2Animate.

I'd also be tempted to try 2Create-a-Story. The example below is a gif rather than the Flash file 2Create-a-Story can generate.

As far as printed resources go, I've come across very little. The images above (and other references) come from various sources including:-

City of Fire by A. Gibbons Collins 1995 ISBN 0-00-301173-9

Horrible Histories Magazine 20 : Burning Boils : 18-21

TES Teacher November 11, 2005 (poster)

National Education Network image bank

Hope this helps someone.

Animation Club - update

The last meeting of the Animation Club, before the holidays, took place this week. Children were a bit excitable with all their preparations for Christmas but got stuck into their PowerPoint animations. They needed little help from me. The additional things I showed them revolved around making their presentation auto-run by removing mouse-clicks within and between slides.

The most impressive animation involved a dragon shooting out fire at a hut in the woods. The hut then caught fire and the flames grew larger.

They were also keen to add sound. I brought along a number of sound effects and a TASCAM voice recorder. The school's headphones, with built in microphones, had obviously taken a hammering over the years and were not all in working condition. What was interesting was how keen and motivated pupils were to write a script to record on the TASCAM and to put expression into their recordings. 

We ran out of time to transfer all of the recordings to their PCs but the potential was obvious.

The power of ANIMATION is universal.

After the holiday, it will be Pivot Stick Figure for one or two weeks before really getting down to the hard work - proper stop-go animation*. How they'll respond to the self-discipline needed to produce animations of quality will be fun to watch.

* This reminds me - where am I getting webcams from, what software is available, where do we store all the sets and materials. Headache coming on.

Up-and-coming - 2013

Jus thought I'd post about two events in 2013.

STARGAZING LIVE - runs from 8th -10th January and resources for schools should be available sometime this month.

500 WORDS - a literacy competition for under 13's organised by the BBC will also have resources available in January 2013.

PS Don't forget Climate Week 4th - 10th March

Education and Evolution

I've just seen an article called "Education & Evolution" in the latest edition of the Biologist 59 (5) : 13  and it got me thinking. I've just done my Science lecture and thought I'd not want to repeat the experience, however, I'm in the process of changing my mind.
During lunch on the day of my lecture, I had the most remarkable conversation with a young girl (about 10). She initiated a chat about being a Catholic but not believing in God. She was so lucid and seemed to have thought quite deeply about the issues that I wanted to talk further and wanted to give her Richard Dawkin's "Letter to Juliet" to read.
When I did Space on Friday, a young lad asked me if I thought that, after our Sun went supernova and destroyed the Earth, God would recreate the Earth and  populate it with all the people in Heaven. I don't think I handled that conversation as well as the previous one.
The upshot of these three events is that I'd like to give another Science lecture to primary children on Evolution. Most people I talk to want to shy away from the issues but, as one of my hero's is Thomas Henry Huxley who took evolution to the masses in Victorian London, I'm feeling up for the challenge.

Anyone up for it with me?

Is it me? What do you think?

I've ranted in a number of blogs about bad Science writing for children. I've just given a talk about how wonderful our brains are and then I invest in book called Little Genius : Brains.*

Good Brain Juice

Bad Brain Juice

What do you think of these two pages? I'm not going to pass comment this time. But if you'd like to add comments to my blog I'd be very interested to read them.

* Little Genius : Brains by K. Lennard (2006) Hutchinson ISBN 978-0-091-89344-6