The Educators Network (TEN) Reading Workshop

The Educators Network (TEN) Reading Workshop took place last Saturday, March 31st, at Lincoln Community School, Accra, Ghana. Seven reading workshops were given by ten presenters, see below, for 140 teachers from local Ghanaian schools.

The theme of the workshop was, 'Reading: The Key Element in Academic Achievement'. I chose to present a workshop on Literature Circles, as was told this is not something that is usually done in Ghanaian schools and might be of interest to teachers of Upper Elementary and Middle School teachers.

In preparation for the workshop I made two videos of my class which I showed during the day.

I asked my class why we did Literature Circles? This is what they said:

Here is a glimpse of some of my students taking part in Literature Circles/Book Clubs:

Here is the presentation I gave during the workshop and some of the resources I handed out:

Literature Circles

View more presentations from Miss Pickles.

Educators network literature Circles 2012

View more documents from Miss Pickles.

Here are some scenes from the day!

Many thanks to Naami Oddoye and Sylvia Ampofo who organised this excellent event. The feedback from the participants was very encouraging and hopefully the Educators Network will be able to put on more workshops over the coming months for local teachers.

iBooks Author

I have just started scraping the surface of the new app for MacBooks: iBooks Author. Last week my students finished their narrative writing project and published their work in Word. I then used iBooks Author to convert these stories into iBooks for iPad. It was easy to do as there is a handy 'Chapters from Pages or Word document' option in Insert that allows you to change your Word or Pages doc into an iPad book with one click. It even copies over the pictures too.

You then have to make small alterations, you can add a title page, as I did below, and copy and paste, drop or insert a picture. What you're left with then is a beautiful looking story book that you can open on your iPad using iBooks. You can also email it directly from iBooks Author and send your iBook to your readers all over the world! You could also set up an account and publish it to the iTunes store if you were so inclined.

My next step as a teacher is to try and make a resource book, not a textbook, for my students to use during their units of inquiry so that will be my next project!

A Grade 4 student reading her iBook on the iPad to her Grade 1 reading buddy.

For more information on the potential of creating your own iBooks using iBook Author have a look at:

http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author

Watch this very helpful video on how to use iBooks Author and unleash its potential!

Speed Book Talking

Based on the idea of 'speed dating', Grade 4s did 'Speed Book Talking' in the library today. Each student had to choose one of their favourite books and had one minute only to recommend that book, or sell it, to their class mates. We formed two circles and students in the inner circle had to face their classmates in the outer circle. The students in the inner circle were the ones who started reviewing their books. After one minute everyone in the outer circle moved one place clockwise to hear a new book be reviewed. After everyone in the outer circle and heard all the reviews, they then swapped roles and became the reviewers.

The event was highly successful as most rushed to borrow the books that had been recommended. Some of the most popular books were, 'Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume' by Jeff Smith, 'Crocodile Tears' by Anthony Horowitz and 'From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler' by E. L. Konigsberg. Here are the 22 books that were reviewed today:

This was a great activity for getting students to recommend books to one another in a lively and highly motivating way!

Thanks @tgaletti for hosting us!

World Read Aloud Day

Today at LCS, we celebrated World Read Aloud Day. Our fabulous librarian,

Tanja Galetti (@tgaletti) arranged for all the Elementary School to be read stories from around the world. She also set up Skype sessions with schools in Romania, Spain to have teachers in those schools read aloud to the pre school classes. Our former Principal, now at JIS, Indonesia, also read to her former students via Skype.

Along with these activities my students enjoyed hearing more of The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke, one of my favourite read alouds. They also read aloud to their Grade 1 reading buddies. All in all a fabulous day of reading!