Village School News

Grand Opening

The grand opening of our new class rooms was a huge success! Tony Smith returned to see the finished product and although protocol did not allow him to cut the ribbon, he was able to speak and congratulate us, and the architect, Gary Martin who was also in attendance. Ribbon cutting rights naturally went to Kylie Cook, without whose vision these buildings would never have eventuated. The children sang beautifully and Vikki even videoed them, intending to send our rendition of Adam Hill’s “Advance Australia Fair/Working Class Man” into Spicks n’ Specks on the ABC. Thanks to a parent who noticed we’d raised the flag upside down, and which we subsequently righted! Oh well that’s us to a T!

In the Library - 23 June 2008

Even the longer terms seem to fly right by. Here we are at the end of Term 2 and it's already the middle of the year.

Thanks again to my parent volunteers in the library. As projects neared completion the re-shelving became a bigger job and the help was much appreciated. It is so important for children to learn to correctly seek information and equally important that the information is where it should be to make the task successful.

Also thank you to Carol and Narida for coming in on a special mission. We had to locate and put aside almost 100 books for our first Speed Read Genre Game. Thanks very much ladies, you made the job quick and enjoyable. Everything's ready for Tuesday.

Wendy's group has a special event on their calendars for Term 3 (see the Dates to Remember). July 31st is the 30th birthday of the Lilydale Library, our closest public library. So instead of our regular visit to a public library, we have been invited to celebrate! The library will be hosting a children's poet and story-teller, there will be birthday cake and cordial and the local paper will be coming to cover the event. Children and accompanying adults are asked to dress in the theme: Back to the 70's (when the library first opened). Parents are welcome to attend. We need to arrive at the library at 10:30 am. Please see Cathy or Wendy for any further details.

Everyone enjoy a well-earned break. Why not curl up and enjoy a good book?

Happy Reading,
Cathy Hainstock
Teacher-in-the-Library
Village School LRC

26th May 2008

First I need to catch up on my thanks and acknowledgements. Angie (Y’s mum) has kindly taken over the job of organizing the Scholastic Book Club orders. This is a big job and a very important one. Book clubs are a great way to get students excited about reading. Scholastic Books are also generous in their rewards scheme, with fiction and non-fiction books regularly added to the school collection for the benefit of all students. Next appreciation is a big thank you to Kylie (C’s mum) who donated $105 dollars to the library fund. Kylie has a small bookstand at her organic fruit and veg shop and donates the money back to the school. Again, this is a much-appreciated boost for the library and helps spread a love of reading into the community. If any other parents have good quality books they might like to pass on, please see Kylie or leave a note at the office for her. We unfortunately don’t have room at the school for any boxes of books to be left. Third thanks goes once again to the tireless volunteers Carol, Narida, and Selvi for the order that’s kept on the shelves in the library and for the book covering. Callan has been the first student at Village School to finish the Premier’s Reading Challenge. Several of Wendy’s students are over the halfway mark and one of Edith’s students is also nearing completion. Reading lists can be sent in at anytime and left in my big mailbox under the desk. I check it and enter the updates on Monday afternoons. Or reading lists can be emailed to the library at: library@villageschool.vic.edu.au if that’s more convenient. The children really enjoy seeing their progress bar filling up on the Reading Challenge website. And don’t worry, its not a race or a competition, it’s a personal challenge. The challenge doesn’t finish until the end of August so there are still three months to go. Encouraging your child to keep reading can be as simple as asking what they are reading or offering a trip to the local library. In information skills classes: Tanya’s class is exploring and learning how to use the various resources on the Village School Hotspots page. The Hotspots page contains search engines (besides Google), directories and pathfinder web pages. I’ve set this page up so that it can be accessed from home as well as school for research and study. Please take a look and see what it offers or drop into the library on a Monday afternoon and I’ll give you a short tour of it. It would be my pleasure. The URL is: http://villageschoollibrary.blogspot.com/ We also discussed the difference in reliability between print published facts and web published facts. Two weeks ago Edith’s group played the fishing game then carried out the review step of Super3– review-a-saurus. The children discussed in their groups what went well, what didn’t work well, and what, if anything, might they change next time to improve the game. I was impressed with the many insightful suggestions. The following week we had a library-borrowing day. I want to make sure the students at this age are still finding time in their busy weeks to take out and enjoy literature so we will be alternating between library borrowing and information skills for the rest of this term. In Mary’s class we continued on with the use key words and phrases as a way to search for information. We also discussed how important it is to be constantly asking questions when doing research. Even if the questions do not appear on the poster at the end, you don’t learn much if you don’t think about questions! We will be doing some more work in the area of questions next week as I think this is so important. Questions move students away from a cut-paste project mentality to individual authentic learning. Schools are all about learning and at the heart of learning is information. School library resource centres provide print and electronic information for classroom learning and through literature, for personal growth learning. The heart of any school is its library resource centre. Happy Reading Cathy Hainstock Village School LRC library@villageschool.vic.edu.au

GARDEN WORLD VISIT

A fantastic time was had by all when we explored the various ‘worlds within worlds’ at Garden World. Mary’s group bought plants to stock one of the existing garden beds and Tanya’s group researched some possible natives for the central large garden on the asphalt area. Some of the children were inspired to write: Little Bonsai Trees
Oh little Bonsai trees how small and cute you are
Your roots are cut small and tiny
You should be big and tall and mighty
And strong, yet you’re small and cute
By F W
ACROSTIC POEM
Garden World is very exciting
As colourful as a rainbow
Really really beautiful
Damp on the ground and wet, wet plants
Exotic as a jungle itself
Nearly all the plants were like a maze
Wow, they had all those plants
Our hands touching all the nature
Really good stuff in the café Liked the water in the
Lotus Gardens
Didn’t like that the water was very, very cold

27th April 2008
Village School Learning Resource Centre News

First, a big thank-you to the parent volunteers who have been keeping the shelves in good order and covering all the books as I catalogue them. Thank you Carol, Narida, and Selvi, your efforts are much appreciated.

How are the Reading challenge participants going? I know that one reader is close to finishing already, but don't panic, you don't need to be done until the end of August. Readers can bring their book lists in to school on Mondays to be updated on the computer. I'll be asking the classes for the lists on a weekly basis starting this week. All titles need to be recorded online and if I do them as we go, it'll save a last minute rush and ensure that titles don't get forgotten. Most readers have been given a little booklet in which to record their titles. Please check bags or ask if you haven't seen one.

Two week ago I started most of the groups on Information Literacy skills in their library sessions. Tanya's group had not started on their projects so we continued with Cyberquoll discussing issues surrounding the posting of photos online. Last week, we began Big6, looking at how their project tasks were defined and how topics can be broken into subtopics that include keywords. Keywords are important in helping to search for information. The better the keywords, the better the search.

Mary's group looked at the KWL strategy (Know, Want to Know, Learned). This organizational strategy helps children create questions based on the knowledge they already have about a topic. These questions give the project direction and lead them to new learning rather than just writing down what they already know about their topic.

Edith's group looked at one portion of their project - describing their pet. They listed what they might need to do in order to produce a good description. Suggestions included: having a photo of the pet, sitting down and having a good look at their pet, looking and drawing their pet, talking to parents about the pet, visiting the vet (or maybe you could find the vet's pet card - Cathy's suggestion - cheaper solution!). All of these were great ideas, please encourage your child to carry one/some of them out. Edith's group is also applying the Super 3 (Plan, Do, Review) to another activity during library time, the making of a game. The more the children apply these organizational skills, the easier it becomes.

Happy reading
Cathy Hainstock
Village School Learning Resource Centre
7th April 2008
From the Village School Learning Resource Centre

Welcome back to Term 2. This term is a little longer than first term so will give us all a chance to settle well into our themes and plans.

This term in conjunction with the teachers' project themes I will be introducing Edith, Mary and Tanya's groups to information skills. Information skills are the skills and processes we use to not only to do projects but also to solve many problems that crop up in everyday living. Very briefly, for the younger children I will be using the Super 3 method and for the older children the Big 6 method. I chose these after reviewing several information skills teaching methods for my university course. It is the most widely used and most easily understood system. Super 3 is a simpler version of Big 6 for younger learners. Big 6 elaborates on the process when they are older to suit a child's maturing learning.

Last year Mary's group and I first went through the Super 3 process with the example of planning a birthday dinner for a family member.

Step One - Plan

We discussed what we needed to do, what we would need to know in order to plan a party and which things we should do in what order.



Step 2 - Do

This is, of course, the action part and is why these skills need to be taught in conjunction with real projects - it just makes more sense to work through it than talk about it.

Step 3 - Review

This last step is a very important step in the learning process. We can't do a better job next time if we don't stop to assess how things went this time. We talked about how this would happen for a birthday dinner.

The Big 6 Steps are:

All very practical stuff! If you'd like to read more about the Big 6 information skills method you can visit the website at: http://www.big6.com/ 
Or drop me an email at library@villageschool.vic.edu.au and I can send you some information.

We will cover each of these steps in library sessions as they come up in the project process. This means that the children will have some time to work on projects with me in the library and in between times we will continue working on our cyber safety program during library sessions. 

Each Thursday Wendy's group will continue to have a 30-minute library session. In this time I am reading to them from a wide variety of picture books and last week of last term we looked at non-fiction books. This is all being done in very low-key fashion, as I want them firstly to develop a love of books and an understanding of the potential of a library as a source of fun and information. The regular sessions are helpful in developing in them the habit of responsible borrowing and returning. Each borrowing session is also an opportunity for them to practice using the library online circulation system if they bring back their books.

I'm looking forward to hearing how all the Premier’s Reading challenge participants are going and catching up with any good book discoveries made over the holidays.

Happy reading,
Cathy Hainstock
Village School LRC
library@villageschool.vic.edu.au

 

17th March 2008
BRAND NEW CLIMBING FRAME

The children have been enjoying the new climbing frame. Thanks to the tireless efforts of several parents and school staff the children can now enjoy the benefits of this giant climbing frame, possibly the largest of any school in Victoria.


Photography: Tom Stevens

In the Library
10th March 2008

This semester the focus of my studies at university is "Literature in Education". That covers a lot! One of the recent topics was how to best promote literacy and reading to children in a digital age. There appears to be limitless amounts of studies and tests coming out of the United States and Britain and one of the findings that shows up again and again is the importance of 'free reading'. It made me smile - basically the more a person reads (or is read to), the better they get at reading. Makes sense to me! The term 'free' refers to the fact that the choice of what is read is determined by the reader, not a teacher or a parent, including comics, series books, teen romances, sports magazines and other reading materials that have traditionally been looked down on as inferior. 'Free' also means that the reader is not questioned on comprehension, vocabulary or any other aspects of what they read and that they could quit reading something without finishing it. Basically this is how you and I read and how we read in our free time as children. Seems this doesn't happen as much as it used to. One of the biggest advocates for 'free reading' is an academic named Steven Krashen. According to Krashen in his book The Power of Reading: Insights from the research(2004), reading is the most powerful tool available for increasing a child's vocabulary and ability to read, write, spell and comprehend. He writes of the importance of a daily Sustained Silent Reading program in schools to improve students' literacy. Village School has been offering SQRT (the kids say 'squirt') for many years. SQRT stands for Sustained Quiet Reading Time. Normally SQRT is held in the classrooms right after lunch and if you've ever popped into a class while this is going on, you'd be amazed at how quiet it is - the kids still love to this time to read. If you are interested in reading about free reading time and Krashen's writings you can find his website at http://www.sdkrashen.com He has an archive of presentations and articles there. Why all this talk about free reading? Well it is one of the purposes behind the Premier's Reading Challenge. We now have 23 students signed up and most are well into their reading. If your child has not signed up I encourage you to encourage them. Perhaps let them challenge you to read a certain number of books too. Role modeling regular reading habits is also motivating for kids. Last year I ran several second hand book sales partly as a way to recycle books that were taken out of library circulation. More importantly I thought it was a great way to get parents and kids communing and chatting about books (everybody loves a sale!). They were successful on both accounts but unfortunately with my reduced hours at school I won't be able to continue with them this year. So thank you to those who have brought books in to be sold, they were much appreciated, but I won't be able to take any this year. If there is anyone out there who would like to carry on this community activity, I would love to hear from you - it would be fantastic if sales could be held even a couple of times in the year.

Happy reading all, Cathy Hainstock