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Charles Santoso

Prompt 8 - Research a Hashtag

I wasn’t too sure what to expect when looking into #picturebooks. Being a creative person, I was drew to the posts with the most interesting artwork and drawings. Above, I believe that often the artwork in stories for children, especially early years helps brings the story to life and in middle years often the book cover entices a child to want to read that book. Charles Santoso, a Sydney based illustrator does just that, his work is magical and brings to life characters and plots so effortlessly. Below I have attached the link to his tumblr to check out his work. 

http://charlessantoso.tumblr.com/

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Prompt 7 - Blooms Taxonomy

Below are some questions developed using Blooms Taxonomy and drawing from the text of Thai-riffic by Oliver Phommavanh. 

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Prompt 6 - Online Material (ABC Spalsh) 

A front loading activity has been derived from the below video from Splash ABC and a book to accompany this to formulate a lesson 

Video: http://splash.abc.net.au/home#!/media/154684/outback-house-aboriginal-bush-foods

Picture Book: ‘Walking with the Seasons in Kakadu’ Diane Lucas and Ken Searle 

Year Level: 5

Front-loading Lesson: Students would watch the splash ABC video ‘Outback House Aboriginal Bush Food’. Students would delve into discussion around the notion of Aboriginal bush foods and their prior knowledge on this subject. Accompanying this, students will see the book and have a brief discussion with a partner how they think this book may link to the vide we watched. Additionally, students will write (on a sticky note) similarities and differences between their cooking experiences and traditional Aboriginal bush foods. They will draw on their involvements in cooking, hunting, words that related to these and pre conceptual ideas they may have. This will formulate a ‘sticky note storm’ where all students ideas are displayed in an area of the classroom accessed to all students for the duration of the lesson. 

These concepts that are displayed (sticky note storm) can be used to continue the reading/writing lesson in any way, which teachers wish for instance turning these ideas into a short story, exploring the describing words etc. 

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Prompt 5 - The Dusk 

First:

The night was cold and filled with silence. In our media drive transparent, hollow lives this was our only comfort to all our consumptions of food, media, money; which we often died for, even with no strength we seem to consume materials possessions. 

Second: 

As hard as I cry and pray, it’s almost like my pleas are abandoned and the only solace I find is the strength which instils in me. 

Last 

A front loading activity, could be something as simple as predicting the text using the name and book cover of the chosen book. In this case, I used ‘The most magnificent thing’ by Ashley Spires as an example. From this text; you can engage students in groups or partners to ‘brain storm’ using butchers paper or verbally; what the story could be about? what this magnificent thing is? what makes it magnificent. Students can present their ideas verbally, written or even just posing words or phrases which they can associate with the image and title. 

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Prompt 4 Placement Reflection 

This placement round I had a grade 5/6 class which was challenging for myself in many different ways, especially in forming relationships which got easier over the two weeks. In terms of the literacy classroom, I experienced a variety of interesting practices. Something that I like is in this particular classroom for silent reading; the students were not able to read a free choice novel. They had to choose one, which related to their integrated unit to greaten their knowledge in this. This could be directly linked or vaguely linked, for example the students would read books directly relating to the topic of Australian history and immigration or others would just read books from Australian authors who were migrants not necessarily relating to the topic. The teacher sometimes did offer student free choice reading yet this was less common. 

Additionally outside of the classroom, the teachers and I were involved in a personal development session focusing on the ‘7 steps program to writing success’. This was a new teaching skill that the teachers wanted to learn and implement in their own classroom. It was mostly based around making students more interested in writing. This involved scaffolding, modelling, brainstorming, discussion, making writing exciting and collaboration with peers and teachers. Below is the list of the seven steps and above is the link to find out more about how this works. 

1. Plan for success, 2. Sizzling start, 3. Tightening tension, 4. Dynamic dialogue, 5. Show, don’t tell, 6. Ban the boring bits and 7. Exciting endings 

However, something that I felt less effective in the literacy setting of this particular classroom was that most writing sessions were students working independently and silently. In my classroom I would hope to aim to have a balance between collaborative writing and silent independent work as I think it is important for students to discuss and have an element of verbal planning for their work. Overall I had a positive experience with placement in terms of literacy and learnt many skills that will assist my future classroom. 

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Prompt 3: 6 + 1 traits of writing

Above is a writing sample which was from my first placement of this year from a 1//2 student. This lessons were based about conventions and how to use them effectively. In regards to conventions, above is also a prompt card (similar to the one that the students had on their desk during this lesson), to assist them to remember to incorporate: 

using capital letters, full stops, exclamation marks, question marks, leaving spacing between each word and checking their own spelling. 

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Prompt Two - Classroom Displays

As a pre-service teacher I haven’t had the opportunity to create a classroom display. Although, I do remember in primary school we did not have a say in what went on the walls and often did not really know why. Additionally, on placement I assisted in creating a phonics chart for students to refer to when reading/writing and this was displayed on the walls and also on the students tables. The purpose of this display was for the students to refer, when having difficulties reading or spelling a word out, when they couldn’t get assistance from the teacher at that time.

Above is a poster I designed on Adobe Illustrator. I took these concepts whilst on placement in a grade 3-4 classroom. The teacher had these prompts on bookmarks, which the students used when reading, which I adapted for my own poster. Hopefully one day this display assists with literacy acquisition having different tools and prompts to help processing reading content. The visual reminders are to assist the students in what each heading is asking and the bright colours to draw attention. I hope to trail this display, maybe in my next placement round.

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Prompt 1 - Memories of being read to 

My most prevalent memory of being read to in the classroom was in grade three, when my teacher read her favourite childhood book which was ‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ by Enid Blyton. I idolised my teacher, so it was fascinating to me that she would share something so personal to the class. From this captivating, imaginative and exciting reading every day or two, it made me look forward to story time which was always read with such expression and dramatic tones. I was almost busting with excitement when I saw my teacher pick up the book from our classroom book shelf. I became so intrigued with the story that it allowed me to escape to my own magical word each time she would read the text out loud it felt like I was somewhere else. 

Due to the nature of the book and it’s creative, imaginative descriptions I was captivated by each and every word and the different lands that were up this tree - the land of toys, spells, goodies... I felt as though I was on a journey with the Moonface, Silky and Saucepan Man. From this reading, it lead me to independently reading the other books in this series such as ‘The Enchanted Wood’, ‘The Folk of the Faraway Tree’ and ‘Up the Far Away Tree’. Often I preferred to be read to by my parents before bed, so I could concentrate on taking myself to that great imaginative mysterious world far far away... 

*Above is some photos which triggered my memory from this experience.