Ph-ph-ph-phonics

On the Merlin John blog (MJO) yesterday Ray Barker wrote an interesting article about phonics and ICT – Routes to literacy lead through ph-ph-ph-phonics – in which he describes the support that ICT can give to the learning of reading through phonics.

Bill Boyd’s Summer reads

Bill Boyd has produced and exciting and challenging list of ‘reads’ for summer holiday reading for 10 – 14 year olds ( or anyone else). It can be accessed here.

New Book by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess

Tricia Neal points out to me a trailer on YouTube to a new Book by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. It is called ‘Instructions’ . The trailer is exciting enough … makes me want to get the book …

National Storytelling Week – Plan Ahead !!

National Storytelling Week  is from January 30th to February 6th 2010 … time to plan it in ?

Return to the Hundred Acre Wood

In today’s Sunday Telegraph Magazine there is the first chapter of the first official Pooh sequel – ‘Return to Hundred Acre Wood’ – absolutely wonderful. Nostalgic, emotive and captivating  … just the thing to read to a generation of children who need to be captivated by exceptional text.

The book will be  available from Amazon from 5th October for about £7.14

Enjoy!!

Teaching of Reading – SGP79

Sharing Good Practice  – SGP79, out this week, contains an article from Eddie Carron about the teaching of reading. We would welcome a debate about this – please add your comments to this blog post.

This is what Eddie has to say:

For over sixty years, politicians have thrown vast sums of money at the problem of illiteracy and Educational whiz-kids have squandered this money on a series of ill-conceived ‘literacy initiatives’.  Considering their enormous cost, it would be nice to be able to claim that these were academically and intellectually sound, research-proven initiatives but they were not and consequently teachers were subjected, quite unnecessarily, to decades of pointless disruption and upheaval. Now that schools have greater autonomy, let us hope that head teachers will insist that any future ‘good ideas’ will be treated with greater intellectual honesty and academic rigour before  they are foisted on already overworked teaching staff.”

 

National Poetry Day 8th October

Are you going to be a bard this year … have you got one in your class?

This year’s National Poetry Day falls on Thursday 8th October 2009 and our theme is Heroes and Heroines. Who is your hero – a poet, an inspirational leader, a sportswoman or the local lollipop lady? As the day draws nearer we will be celebrating them in verse and with a constellation of events across the UK.

Come back soon to download our schools pack, including lesson plans and exercises. Also, start looking for poetry in public places! We need your images of poetry in buildings, on pavements or sculptures, in floor tiles and anywhere unexpected. Send images to info@nationalpoetryday.co.uk and we will show the best of them here.

CBeebies – Jackanory Junior

It is not often I venture into the world of CBeebies … perhaps I should more often … because today I discovered CBeebies Radio on Jackanory Junior and was able to listen to Mark Benton’s super reading of Dick Bruna’s ‘Boris and the Umbrella’ … wonderful stuff

BBC Picture Book

BBC iPlayer is just wonderful ! I missed the first episode of ‘Picture Book’ on BBC Four but I won’t miss another.  This three part series explores the enchantment of the illustrations in children’s books. The first being ’When We Were Very Young ’ (there are still 14 days left to watch this episode) the second ‘Now We Are Six’ (to be first broadcast on 12th November at 21.00) and the third being ‘Now We Are Growing Up’ ( to be broadcast at 21.00 on 19th November).

If you have children who are young, or are a teacher, you will immediately empathise with the series and will recognise the authors speaking and the pictures that they show and talk about. My childhood and those of my children and all my years of teaching came sweeping back as I watched and listened.

This series promises to be a total joy !

Children’s Book Week

Children’s Book Week is a celebration of reading for pleasure for children of primary school age.

Its in its 77 year and this year’s theme is Rhythm and Rhyme. The week starts on 6th October. There is a great deal of supportive material on the site and every primary school in England was sent a pack of information in June … so get the pack out of the cupboard and get rhyming !!