1st September Post Book Week

Now that Book Week is over and I have the chance to reflect on past weeks and teaching I want to share some successes. Initially I looked at the shortlisted books and wasn't truly inspired. Many of the Picture Books were too sophisticated for my 5 to 8 year olds and some of the Early Childhood list lacked enough 'meat' to warrant more than a  reading. I planned library lessons tentatively and thought I would try some titles out and go from there. I read Jane Jolly's One Step at a Time to Year 2 and was amazed at how much empathy they displayed and how much more meaning it had to them once they could see that it could be a true story. (See video of Mosha, the elephant with a prosthetic leg).  Mr Huff  was a success with all three grades, Kindergarten to Year 2 and it was made even more successful by having Anna Walker read the story herself as she does on Story Box Library.

The 'sleeper' was Phasmid by Rohan Cleave, the story of the endangered Lord Howe Island stick insect which was shortlisted for the Eve Pownall Award. I read it to Year 2 and they were full of questions and wanted to learn more. First we read the book and didn't even get to the end in one lesson. So in the next lesson we watched this video of a nymph hatching and finished the book. In pairs students chatted about what should happen next for the stick insects and made a list of questions they still had. I couldn't get Lord Howe Island phasmids, but I got two Goliath stick insects for the library and all the students, not just Year 2 are now into keeping a watchful eye on Sticky and Twiggy as they have named them. Yesterday I found two preschoolers with books open looking for pictures of Sticky. They found three pictures of a goliath stick insect and were telling their mothers in great detail about them. I haven't read any stick insect books to my preschool classes. They have just observed them in their jar and become fascinated. On the table with the stick insects we put out any information and story books that we had about stick insects for perusal and borrowing. We were surprised how many we had. If you are looking for some this is what we had.

* Stick Insects  by Valerie Bodden
* Stick Insects by Chris Macro
* Sneaky Stick Insects by Rebecca Johnson
* Weird Insects by Michael Worek
* Stanley Sticks Out by Peter Rigby and Craig Smith
* Good Trick Walking Stick by Sheri M.Bestor
* Invisible Me by Melinda Shoen
* Walkingsticks  by Fran Howard
* Big Book of Bugs by Yuval Zommer

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