National Poetry Day

Today is National Poetry Day. Reading any poems? 
Thought I'd just throw a few of my favourites into the ether, then realised how many you grow to love over the years. It's lovely to revisit.

Brian Patten - 

Looking Back On It

At nineteen I was a brave Old Hunchback

Climbing to 'tremendous heights'

Preparing to swing down on my golden rope

And rescue the Accused Innocence.

But on my swooping, downward path one day

Innocence ducked

And I amazed at such an act crashed into

A wall she had been building.

How silly of me to think myself able to rescue anything!

From "Little Johnny's Confession"  (Allen & Unwin, 1967)

Adrian Mitchell -

Lullaby for William Blake

Blakehead, babyhead,

Your head is full of light.

You sucked the sun like a gobstopper.

Blakehead, babyhead,

High as a satellite on sunflower seeds,

First man-powered man to fly the Atlantic,

Inventor of the poem which kills itself,

The human form, jazz, Jerusalem

And other luminous, luminous galaxies.

You out-spat your enemies.

You irradiated your friends.

Always naked, you shaven, shaking tyger-lamb,

Moon-man, moon-clown, moon-singer, moon-drinker,

You never killed anyone.

Blakehead, babyhead,

Accept this mug of crude red wine -

I love you.

From "out loud" (Cape Golliard, 1969)

Roger McGough -

30

sitting alone

with my bottle of sauce

KNOCK KNOCK

"who's there?"

noone of course

from "Summer with Monica" (Michael Joseph , 1967)

and just to prove I progressed beyond the 1960's..

Dorothy Porter

I survived

I've always known 

my enemies.

When I was a child

Amun had the better of me.

I was little Horseface

with the wheezing lungs

and the wet bed.

Amun threw me down

in drooling, pissing fits.

I was only a second son

they all thought I'd die.

Amun would climb on my face

and spread his black bum

over my eyes and mouth

I thought he'd choke me

while my brother 

Tutmose

swanned around Karnak

in white linen

Amun loved him.

But one day

my parents gave me 

Aten

like you'd throw a child

drinking from a street sewer 

a slice of honey bread

I gorged on my God

I swelled up huge

that year

Tutmose shrivelled up

and died

I survived.

From "Akhenaten" (Serpent's Tail, 1992)

Finally, a recommendation, if you're a biologist and admirer of Charles Darwin, to invest in "Darwin : A life in poems" by Ruth Padel. To go with this, you could also look out a very good CD of specially composed songs featuring Chris Wood, Katrine Polwart & Stu Hanna - "Darwin Song Project Shrewbury 2009" (SFFCD01).

Who wants to have a go at Scratch?

Scratch is a free visual programming language suitable for primary children developed by MIT. It has hundreds of thousands of registered users. I've played about with it and have been following comments and developments through the Computing at School website.

http://community.computingatschool.org.uk/

I'd like to explore using this software in school but not being in a school, I'm looking for teachers who are similarly interested. If you've never heard of Scratch (other programmes also exist) then here are a few web-links by way of introduction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hFNBZUEyXs&feature=relmfu

There are a significant number of resources available to support introducing Scratch either within the curriculum or as an extracurricular club (Creative Computing Club). 
Scratch can be used by pupils to enter Animation 13 run by Manchester University. This might be a good starting project.

http://animation13.cs.manchester.ac.uk/

Scratch can also be used with Lego WeDo which I'm afraid I know little about but which is an added point of interest.

In case someone is interested, part of the discussions on the CaS website centres round getting girls interested in computing (and science). One correspondent pointed readers to GoldieBlox as an interesting development to watch.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16029337/goldieblox-the-engineering-toy-for-girls

Environment in the Curriculum

The latest issue of The Journal of Biological Education (46 (3) 2012) has an article entitled "The living world in the curriculum : ecology, an essential part of biology learning" by Korfiatis & Tunniclffe. It stirred old feelings in me of my inadequacy at being a more forceful proponent of environmental education (and my inability to clearly articulate what I'm trying to say).
The natural environment is obviously so important to the future of humankind yet we continue to mistreat it and refuse to accept that we need to be in steady state with it and not continually growing. The article discusses the importance of "real ecology" rather than "book" ecology and has its roots in the primary curriculum and the "proposed transformation in science curricula". Here is the key quote:-

 "Ecology education is, in our opinion, the missing link in educational reform, integrating outdoor education, ICT and systems thinking, connecting science with everyday experience, and developing scientific skills for very young children, encouraging modelling activities, and promoting greening of the curriculum"

I'm getting involved with local habitats in the coming weeks - woodland and seashore (see previous post). I am excited and depressed - excited to work with children and keen staff, depressed by the enormity of what I see as a problem with communicating the awe and wonder and the understanding of how the natural world works to a self-interested world. Reminded me of a Waterboys' song with a short narration by Billy Connolly about the purpose of life..

               "..to have children and look after the place"*

                       "Spiritual City" from Dream Harder (Geffen, 1993)

With all the pressure of "routine" teaching and  "initiatives", as well as the need for "innovation", teachers need more and better support. Where's it coming from?

* How does this fit with the "Christian" feel of the album where everything was put on the Earth for exploitation by/the benefit of Man? Mmm. Let's not go there, except in person.

Digital Sorytelling & Animation Resources

I came to digital storytelling as a result of seeing Jason Ohler at the CLC Manager's Conference in Newcastle a number of years ago. Watching a First Nation child narrate and act out her version of a traditional story to camera with her own drawings in the background was compelling. (Ohler is based in Canada.)

http://www.jasonohler.com/storytelling/index.cfm




I tried to engage others in the potential of digital storytelling not only for the IT element but for the personal and literacy skills developed by children involved in such an enterprise. I've tried to revisit the idea but found it difficult to get it off the ground, probably because of the staffing such an enterprise needs. However, in a recent email was a link to resources for digital storytelling which has rekindled my interest.

http://web.tech4learning.com/digital-storytelling-resource-kit/


The same site also has available a free download of their book Making Claymation in the Classroom.

http://web.tech4learning.com/claymation-in-the-classroom/

If you're not up to Claymation, how about Brickmation? I've started to collect Lego from charity shops to create a bank of materials to used in animation. 

Kar2ouche, Traditional Tales, Support

Kar2ouche is expensive software and not many schools can afford it. My experiences with it over the past ten years have invariably been positive. Children love the visual aspect of it, the range of characters and props and the ability to rotate them through 360o. The added facilities of text boxes and speech and thought bubbles make it ideal for literacy purposes. The ability to save it in different ways, including as a video, is an added bonus.

Screenshot of pupil's work from last Friday

I used it last week, for the first time in a while, with Y3 from a local school at Inspire2Learn. When I made their videos, I was struck by the visual component of their work and how much I'd liked to have been able to follow this up through the literacy-side. 

Yesterday, I was talking to a literacy expert, Kar2ouche came up and Traditional Tales which I've spoken about before. This reminded me of some very good work that was done with a Kar2ouche module on Hansel & Gretel. I got involved at the time and did a version of the tale emphasising all the Science aspects (reflection, shadows, food etc). 

So, the purpose of today's blog is to highlight the possibility of using Kar2ouche (there are 50 modules*) and to offer to give some free support to schools that might have purchased it but feel they are not exploiting it to its full potential.

* Egyptians, Romans, Habitats, World War 1, French, Victorians, Tudors etc

Washout

The ASE Cheese & Wine Event was postponed because of the atrocious weather. Unfortunately, Davina and I both missed the email and turned up. Nevermind. I did use my iPad to take some photos of Durham and the Wear. Here they are:-

Maths Through Story

At the beginning of November, Redcar & Cleveland's Inspire2Learn team are organising a Maths through Story Week. I've been to the planning meetings and so am sworn to secrecy about what people are going to deliver, me included. Looks like being another of their really good events.

Anyway, there I was, looking for more books for my collection, when I saw Maths Curse by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith. Lane Smith's book It's a Book is one I love.

This isn't a book anyone mentioned so I feel fairly safe in telling you about it.
It starts

 "On Monday in maths class Mrs Fibonacci* says "YOU KNOW, you can think of almost everything as a maths problem". On Tuesday I start having problems."

There then follow a whole series of fun maths related problems to conquer before laying the maths curse. True to form though the final page reads.. 

"..life is just great until science class, when Mr Newton says, "You know, you can think of almost everything as a science experiment..""

I wonder if they ever wrote THAT book!



* For information on Fibonacci & Science see the latest issue of the ASE's Primary Science Review

Another book by Scieszka & Smith