22nd May Let's teach Australian kids more about dugongs than dinosaurs ...

While researching dugongs for this blog I read this article, 'Let's teach Australian kids more about dugongs  than dinosaurs with these books'. This is a quote from it

''Australia is home to more than one million species, many of which are found nowhere else. Tragically, it also has the fourth-highest level of animal species extinction in the world. 

Some 100 Australian species have become extinct and more than 1,700 are listed as threatened. This is due to threats such as climate change, invasive species, environmental degradation, land clearing, unsustainable agriculture, and an increase in natural disturbances such as drought and fire.

To fix the mistakes of the past, and prevent those of the future, it's important that young people become more knowledgeable about Australia's environment than previous generations. Storytelling can do this. It imparts information, nurtures emotional connections with natural places and allows us to reimagine our world."

Many of my students use 'hedgehog' when talking about 'echidnas'. If asked what is a dugong, quoll, bettong, cuscus, numbat, or potoroo is many would not have heard of the words let alone the animals.

The article cites a 2018 study which found children today spend half the amount of time playing outside that their parents did as youngsters. And 10% of the children studied had not been in a natural environment such as a park or beach for at least a year. It then uses this as a  reason to state that exposure to ecology through storytelling is particularly important. But often, Australian stories can get drowned out.

This got me thinking about whether the part about Australian stories not being foremost is in fact true. They used the Dymocks list of the top 51 kids' books as the indicator and yes it is true that most of these do not feature the natural environment, but publishers such as the CSIRO and Wild Dog are addressing this with a variety of amazing books that introduce students to some of the amazing wildlife in their country. Perhaps Australian adults need to make sure they are made more visible and accessible.

The CSIRO was first noticed as a publisher for children when Phasmid by Rohan Cleave made the CBCA shortlist. Reading it to classes was eyeopening for me. The students were immensely interested despite its length. It lead to researching other stick insects and having stick insects in the library for several months. It lead to finding out more through watching Melbourne Uni videos about the phasmid, about Lord Howe Island, their reintroduction and near extinction.

Since then I have been keen to buy any CSIRO picture book and share them with students. Year 2 and I tracked the Great Lizard Trek by Felicity Bradshaw as part of a unit of study on Australian animals and mapping.

In the past while looking at true animal stories Year 2 and I read Gordon Winch's Penelope the Mountain Pygmy Possum and now I would use it as a companion text to The Possum and the Migrating Moths by Julie Murphy.

One Potoroo by Penny Jaye seems to have some aura because it keeps going missing. I have now purchased three copies, two that were replacements.

The Voyage of the Whale by Vanessa Pirotta was a huge success, partly because she visited school for Science Week last year, but given where my students live, whales are always popular.

And this year with Year 2 while learning about Australian animals we used A Hollow is a Home by Abbie Mitchell and since then a new book Life in a Hollow  by Dean Gullan has been published.

I love the art in On the Trail of the Plains-wanderer and it was great to learn about a creature I did not even know existed.

Likewise Wild Dog Publishing has a large number of beautiful information books about Australian wildlife. Three that I have used very successfully with classes are:

• Peregrines in the City by Andrew Kelly. This book tells the amazing story of two peregrines who live on a high rise in the Melbourne CBD. They are filmed and on Youtube here.

• The Accidental Penguin Hotel by Andrew Kelly tells the story of the little penguin colony who has made its home in a man-made breakwater in St Kilda.

• Nestling Cockatoos: The story of Squeak and Squawk by Angela Robertson-Buchanan. This is the story of two sulphur-crested cockatoos who were rescued from the hollow of a tree when the tree was chopped down.

Another source of wonderful books to share on Australian wildlife is Walker Books Nature Storybooks. There are titles Dingo; Great White Shark; Wombat; Kookaburra; Searching for Cicadas; Platypus; Emu; Tasmanian Devil; Koala; Big Red Kangaroo; Python; Beware of the Crocodile; The Echidna Near My Place and Bilby Secrets all with teaching notes.

If you are looking for a book that has a comprehensive list of Australian animals so that the children you share books with get an overview, try:

• A is for Australian Animals by Frane Lessac

• A to Z of Australian Animals  by Jennifer Cossins

• Australian Animals by Matt Chun

• Australian Animals  by Melanie Mahoney (All About Australia series from Australian Geographic)

Of course there are other books, fiction and non-fiction that introduce children to Australian wildlife, many that are old favourites and still popular, such as

• Jeremy by Chris Faille (kookaburra)

• Sebastian Lives in a Hat  by Thelma Catterwell (wombat)

• The Snow Wombat  by Susannah Chambers

• Possum in the House by Kirsten Jensen

• Little Platypus by Nette Hilton

• The Best Beak in Boonaroo Bay  by Narelle Oliver

• Olga the Brolga  by Rod Clement

• Rufus the Numbat by David Miller

• Clancy the Quokka  by Lili Wilkinson

And these are new:

• Bowerbird Blues by Aura Parker

• Iceberg by Claire Saxby

• Where the Lyrebird Lives  by Vikki Conley

Need more Australian animals? See Australian Animals and Australian Birds on Pinterest

Back to the article...there is mention of geology and the environment too and certainly there are Australian picture books that address these topics, but they are another blog entry.

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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22nd - 26th August Book Week

Well another Book Week in Australia is over. This year's theme Australia: Story Country proved to be a good one and each class at my school celebrated with an Australian book that they read and  used as inspiration for discussions and response activities that highlighted places in Australia, either in the form of travel to places mentioned or to the home of authors, illustrators or famous Australians.
Each class did a one page 'postcard' to display for the whole school population and visitors to read read in the corridor. It was a huge success. On Grandparents Day on Friday the corridor was full of children showing adults their work and discussing the books displayed along side. See images below that when joined together made a long Rainbow Serpent winding its way to the library. Not all classes work is here as some had photos or identified specific children. The teachers chose the books to either fit with a unit of enquiry, because it was a favourite book or author or because the students showed interest in it. I was so impressed with the range and what each class did.

There are four classes per grade. The books chosen were:

Kindergarten
* My Place  by Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins
* Silly Birds  by Gregg Dreise
* Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (new paperback single story editions) by May Gibbs and Mark McLeod
* Koala Lou  by Mem Fox and Pamela Lofts
Year 1
* Are We There Yet? by Alison Lester
* Bright Star  by Gary Crew and Anne Spudvilas
* Where the Forest Meets the Sea  by Jeannie Baker
* Tiny: A Little Dog on a Big Adventure  by Jennifer Castles and Steve Otton
Year 2
* Enora and the Black Crane  by Arone Raymond Meeks
* Feathers and Fools by Mem Fox and Nicholas Wilson (US) and Lorraine Ellis (Aus)
* Home  by Narelle Oliver
* You and Me Murrawee by Kerri Hashmi and Felicity Marshall

20th August Book Week Connect to Reading Part 3

I didn't purchase all of the Eve Pownall shortlisted books because many weren't easily accessible to children under eight years. So it was hard to go past Jeremy which my students loved. I had read this to them long before it made any shortlist and when I was making up my Clayton's shortlist for the CBC Sydney event in April I told the audience that Jeremy was the most borrowed 2013 Australian picture book in my library so something in this book certainly connects to its audience and my clientele.

Once it made the shortlist we read it again. The children all had kookaburra stories to share. They live in homes with trees and verandahs. This lead to possum stories too. And then we looked at who was telling the story and whether or not it was true. We used Greg Reid's Kookaburras  book from Macmillan's Australian animals series to see if the time framework for Jeremy's growth was compatible with the lifecycle of a baby kookaburra. We read the kookaburra facts on the endpapers as well. The students decided it most definitely could be true. They especially liked that they found out that female kookaburras can have two or three chicks at a time so the chicks that he flies off with could well be siblings.

Next we read Possums in the Roof , a very old book by Julie Morris which is also a story based on real events and looked at the connections between it and Jeremy. Here mother possum has twin babies who get caught under the tiles in a roof cavity. The boy who lives in the house discovers their existence and tries to save them with his father. The students listed many similarities or connections starting with the first person narration and the fact that this book says that it is true. These books were perfect for teaching connections and focussing students in on text-to-self and text-to-text connections.

 These two stories started requests for other true stories about animals so I went looking and was pleasantly surprised to find we actually have quite a few. See the titles on this pinterest page.