Bringing Picture Books to Life!

Ever since John Murray (@ReadingExplorer) visited our school around 5 years ago, our school's approach to reading has changed massively. One aspect of the training which has really engaged our teachers and students was the use of picture books as a stimulus in English. It is something we have embraced right from EYFS to Year 6 and every class do at least one unit of English based on a picture book.

Since then, there's been a wealth of resources and support for using picture books to inspire English. One of my favourite people to follow on twitter is Simon Smith (@SmithSmm) who, for me, is like the guru of children's fiction. I was truly inspired by his session at Reading Rocks around the brilliant Arthur and The Golden Rope picture book. Click the picture to read Simon's blog post on this:



Year 4 have started looking at the beautiful book 'Flotsam.' Having explored the first few pages, we decided to create short videos telling the story in our own words.

To do this, we used the app Clips. I have blogged about this app previously and the potential to this app is huge. This app is quickly becoming one of my favourites in the classroom. The only downside is that it needs iOS 10 to run. A lot of schools I work in still use slightly older iPads where it isn't compatible. As an Apple app, it is almost like a condensed version of iMovie. It is a fantastic way to create visual content and allows you to add subtitles, different effects and filters, stickers, labels and it very easy and straightforward to use. 

To let you into a little secret, it is the app I use when creating a lot of content for my social media channels. 

With the app, the pupils recorded themselves narrating over the images from the book and even use their fingers to zoom in or pan across the image. The text labels were a great way to add speech bubbles and thoughts to characters and scenes. It meant the children could animate the pages from the book to create their own comic video of the story. Rather than describing this anymore, it is probably easier to just show you one of the children's finished efforts:



For me, this is a brilliant way to allow children to explore, predict and infer about texts in particular picture books.


Comments

  1. Neil Harrison26 April 2018 at 11:59

    Thanks for sharing this ideas. I've often used picture books in the past, but never thought of the children deconstructing them in this way. I'll definitely have to give this ago in the future. Although as I don't have Ipads, I'll need to find a manageable alternative app, that doesn't require lots of editing.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Lovely Poem for Your Leavers Assembly

Image
I am always asked to put a little video together for our Year 6 show and end of year assembly. Each year, I always include a special poem that I finish the end of year video with. It is called Leaving School by Jade Hughes and it is beautiful: We've now left school, It's how the story ends, Tears of happiness is what we recommend,   It's what we say, But there's always a little pain, Because once you've left, It's not the same,   You could walk through school and you would see, Your friends who have grown up incredibly, But now you've gone, It's not the same, As you may never see them again,   Your friends who have grown up right beside you, Who have helped you through your daily strife, Will go ahead and leave behind them, You who wants the same old life,   But you can not live your life in the past, Hoping that the same memories will last, You have to move on and just be glad, That leaving has made you so sad, As this just shows that
Keep reading

QR Codes - So much potential!

Image
I was desperate to incorporate our iPad project into a display I was making in the ICT suite. There didn't seem to be any examples from searching on the internet and I was stumped. I had already put together some info on E-Safety and our new blog but I also wanted to display something about the iPad. Not necessarily a "how to" display but more of a showcase of how it is helping our learning. After no luck from searching the internet, I sent a tweet to some teachers and received a tweet back from Mr Andrews , a teacher who writes a blog that has been invaluable in the process of starting to work with iPads. He suggested using QR codes to showcase examples of work. I had seen QR codes before but never really investigated the use within schools. Thankfully, Mr Andrews then emailed me more information and I was excited about the impact these could have. A QR code (or Quick Response code) is like a bar code, in that it can be scanned with a reader and it will present some i
Keep reading

Exploring Excitable Edgar

Image
Having previously blogged about Christmas Adverts, in particular, the John Lewis Ad, it was only inevitable I would do the same with their latest effort: With my new website - MrPICT.com , I have put together a whole topic page looking at creative ways to explore the advert: The first two ideas are COMPLETELY FREE. Just click the picture above and add your email address to download all the comprehension questions linked to the advert. What I have tried to do with this topic page is show how you can challenge children and show progression with certain tasks in computing. In my class, we have been looking at ideas 12-15. I wanted to share the outcome to this: My class were made up when John Lewis themselves commented on their work: For step-by-step tutorials for how to do this with your class, sign up to MrPICT.com for just £3.50 a month. You can subscribe annually and save £5. Alternatively, you can sign up for a whole school licence meaning ever
Keep reading