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Whitney from Youth Services Corner  is hosting a reading challenge for 2010: YA Through The Decades. Her sample list  brought back many memories and also made me think of the Australian titles which could be added. I had fun remembering and researching and have listed some of these below. A longer list of Australian titles is an open document so please add to it, particularly older titles. As YA wasn’t an expression used before about the 70s, Whitney suggests:  “…the book should feature a teen point of view and be accessible to young people, even if it wasn’t published for teens.” I have also looked at Children’s Book Council lists, thus Shakelton’s Argonauts from the 40s.

I leapt into my reading this week when I found a copy of Nan Chauncey’s Lizzie Lights (1968) at Ku-ring-gai Library at Gordon. I’d never heard of this title from a favourite childhood author and was pleased to find it was a truly young adult book – Lizzie turns 14 in the story and identity and moving into the world outside family are important themes. More about that book in a later post.

1930s and earlier
Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner (1894)
My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin (1901)
The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson (1910)
Desert Saga by William Hatfield (1933)

1940s
Shakelton’s Argonauts by Frank Hurley (1948)

1950s
I Can Jump Puddles by Alan Marshall (1955)
Path-Through-The-Woods by Barbara Ker Wilson (1958)
The Adventures of Turkey; Boy of the Australian Plains y Ray Harris (1952)

1960s
Pastures of the Blue Crane by Hesba Brinsmead (1964)
By the Sandhills of Yamboorah by Reginald Ottley (1965) [Boy Alone in US]
The Rackety Street Gang by L. H. Evers (1961)

1970s
Josh by Ivan Southall (1971)
The Ice is Coming by Patricia Wrightson (1977)
The October Child by Eleanor Spence (1976)

1980s
Displaced Person by Lee harding (1981) [Misplaced persons in US]
Playing Beattie Bow by Ruth Park (1980)
So Much To Tell You by John Marsden (1987)
Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody (1987)
Space Demons by Gillian Rubinstein (1987)

1990s
Peter by Kate Walker (1991)
Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden (1993)
Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta (1992)
Deadly Unna? by Phillip Gwynne (1997)
The Gathering by Isobelle Carmody (1993)

2000s
Touch Me by James Moloney (2000)
Of a Boy by Sonya Hartnett (2002) [What the Birds See in US & UK]
Black Juice by Margo Lanagan (2004) [Short stories]

As my long summer break has just started I may get back to updating this sadly neglected blog, however, I am more likely to post on one of the two school blogs which I coordinate. So if you have been directed here to see what I’m up to then please have a look at one of these, or take a peek at the widget boxes for them in the sidebar.

storyLines – Book reviews and other related bits and pieces, including occasional creative writing from students. Links to other blogs, our LibraryThing, and other places.

Belonging – Previews resources which may be of use to NSW Higher School Certificate students for their topic area study. Links to any other places we find doing similar things.

Reading 104:365 by The Real Estraya on Flickr

Sydney Writers’ Festival, Walsh Bay, Sunday 24th May 2009

This proved to be a pleasantly relaxed session on a beautiful sunny morning. There were lots of little kids around who could have been excused for behaving badly at some stage over this 90 minute presentation, except that they didn’t. There was lots of movement and some pleasant noise but no-one was bothered. Least of all Aaron and Tohby. As they each worked on an illustration – Aaron painting and Tohby using pen/paint/paper cutting and glue – they talked through process, had a conversation about style and preference, and answered audience questions. 

Quite late in the piece they each read one of their books – Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley from Aaron and Nobody Owns The Moon from Tohby. Finally! the kids must have been thinking.

My favourite question of the session came from one of the littlies. I didn’t hear her exact question as she was on the floor down the front and I wasn’t, but from contextual clues it was something like: Why doesn’t Clive Prendergast (a fox) have teeth because they eat pigs? I loved the literary nature of this question. Tohby was just a little nonplussed and duly added a few small experimental teeth to his whiteboard sketch of Clive. But we all had to agree that the effect was a little creepy, when taking into account Clive’s mild mannered personality.

A very, very pleasant and informative morning.

What great fun! A story cube that can be used on the Smartboard. See in full screen.

I am envisioning using the actual paper and glue construction of cubes, telling the story, coming together in groups, picking a side and telling a joint story. The electronic version will be good to model and a great individual or group activity for a longer session. Could even be a presentation mode.

More about story cubes…

There are some nice ideas at Speech Teach UK Picture Cubes and also various templates to download. This is such a very flexible idea as it could be a totally manual (draw/cut/paste) activity or a totally digital one (as above) or somewhere along the continuum.

What about using this for a genre activity like playing with fairy tales?

Each side of the cube could depict an feature such as: hero / villain / victim / magic item / place / a special word.

Pictures are drawn or found for each feature and the cube constructed.

The story is told by individuals, making use of fairy tale conventions.

In groups of six each person chooses one of their sides to make a new six features and a group story is told.

Twittering @ London Calling Festival posted to Flickr by comicbase

After a month on Twitter I am trying to think of a good metaphor to describe the experience. I think the cocktail party is as good as any. Maybe just a party, which varies its character depending on the crowd, time of day, boredom quotient, lack of time. My daughter has a lot of celebrities at her party; I have an author or two, which is my equivalent thrill.

The best things are finding out about things you’d never have come across otherwise, and people you’d rarely run into most days. I’ve enjoyed meeting some English teachers – my first occupation – and some friends I don’t see very often. My very favourite tweeter, though, is @EmilyDickinson_ It is so nice to discover random lines from Em turning up. I’ve been studying her a little (along with our year 12s this year) so have become a fan.

From The Crow’s Nest has a nice post on this topic: Twitter Metaphors

Technology and Literacy

Yesterday, after listening to podcasts of Will Richardson speaking in Victoria last month, I finally had to take the Twitter plunge (marita_t). Still on my water wings, but have already found some interesting people from the teaching world.

Most of my professional contacts are teacher librarians – and a terrific group to network with they are. I also have a bunch of YA lit friends. What I’m seeing on Twitter, along with the previously mentioned contacts, are firstly teachers, English and other, who are into Web 2.0, and secondly others interested in literature, some of whom are teachers.

I see great potential for sharing ideas and learning from others with this crossover of interests which represent my passions. Just hope I can manage the load. And keep this blog up a bit better as a place to keep track of some of this.

The Will Richardson podcasts are posted on SLAV’s Bright Ideas blog. You can also view the presentation.

We were fortunate to start this last term off with a conference at our school which featured national and international practitioners, expert in the education of boys. 

There was a great deal to absorb over these three days, but for me the over-riding message of the conference was the development of self-efficacy in our boys.

Simply put, self-efficacy is a person’s belief in their ability to achieve some end. It influences the choices we make, the effort we put in, how long we persist when confronting obstacles, and how we feel. Information on Self-Efficacy from Emory University, Georgia, has loads of useful information to explore. 

Adam Cox, a child and family psychologist, spoke about “overlearning” where a concept is repeated in several ways thus increasing the chances of transition from working memory to long term memory. This is especially helpful for boys as they are often less strong on learning through the auditory channel than girls. We often believe we’ve taught or covered a topic and castigate the boy who seems clueless still. Consciously developing different ways of reinforcing what we teach will help him feel confident to approach a related task. Cox uses this approach to develop social skills in boys, rehearsing appropriate behaviours and using codes – like the call of the gladiator Maximus to “strength and honour” when preparing for a skill session. He’s good at this, and if you were at the keynote you’ll forever remember the Cro-Bama-Bono effect.

Andrew Martin talked about the power of doing something well. His motivation wheel includes on the positive side: self-belief, learning focus, valuing, persistence, planning and task management.

Michael Furdyk is all about engagement and action. His life path demonstrates the value of having a strong belief in what you can achieve, but he noted that his family and school provided an environment where he could spread his wings. Now he has built an online space, TakingITGlobal which does the same for young people around the world.

CBC’s Make Some Noise Documentary Series: TakingITGlobal

Tim Hawkes emphasised the need to teach life skills, like the ability to live in community, to communicate well, to know yourself and what you believe, and the ability to handle intimacy.

Emma Donaldson and Nigel Vernon of Girton Grammar in Victoria work with a range of kids with special needs – gifted, autism spectrum, hyperactive, dyslexic – and have developed a program where they see many of their students completing complicated projects in their own time. These students are following a passion initially but must learn new skills and find collaborators to complete their task, and in many cases these link back directly to their formal studies. The improvement in self-efficacy which ensues is powerful in its ability to transfer to other areas, and often involves learning new technologies, or new ways with the old.

Brad Merrick from Barker College shared his doctoral work investigating the influence of self efficacy upon self regulation when composing music with computers in his paper, How and why boys do the things they do. The learning he shared had relevance across all areas. It caused me to muse on my son’s HSC year where he had a sign saying “UAI 100” on his computer. I was never convinced by that sign, but can now see why “Improve essay planning” may have been a more useful goal.

Leonard Sax gave a much more convincing presentation about the benefits of single sex education than I would have thought possible. Even more impressive were his pointers to specific strategies for teaching boys, gleaned from practicing teachers. For instance, rather than throwing out the classics for boys he urged us to start in the middle. Show them the action early to provide that hook which will pull them in to great books. Show them that they can handle these works.

Finally, in the Adam Cox keynote we were left with an image of a fork in the road of boys’ lives. Their choice is to lead and connect, or to impress and conquer. For some it can be a tough choice, but knowing it is a choice is important.

Choose Your Path. Photo by Jano De Cesare

(I must just add that there were some other great presentations along the way, and I especially admired Ross Todd, our Australian TL in New Jersey, who took on the task of giving a culminating keynote in the final session which pulled lots of the ideas together.)

This post and the previous one feature a Web2.0 application called Flowgram. Both are the work of thebyrditlady, an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher for Roanoke County Public Schools, who must be working overtime.

More than just a presentation, the Flowgram can be paused while you navigate the page displayed, or go direct to a featured website. Both these examples showcase web sites with a voice narration, but you can also include photos, video and lots more. Can’t wait to experiment. (Thanks to Joan & Ben at The Smartboard Lesson Podcast who mentioned this application.)

Below: English Featured Websites September 28 – October 12 by thebyrditlady