Reading Comprehension through Harry Styles

I love using music in the classroom for a number of reasons. I have previously blogged about using songs for comprehension and you can read about them here - CLICK HERE.

After listening to the latest song released by Harry Styles, 'Two Ghosts' is definitely a song you could use and discuss with your pupils.

Here is a lyric video:

I would first play the song all the way through and ask the children what the song is about - It is about a relationship ending and both leaving as very different people. 

Then consider the lyrics in more detail:

Same lips red, same eyes blue,
Same white shirt, couple more tattoos,
But it's not you and it's not me,
Tastes so sweet, looks so real,
Sounds like something that I used to feel,
But I can't touch what I see.

We're not who we used to be,
We're not who we used to be,
We're just two ghosts standing in the place of you and me,
Trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat.

• Consider the first line, who is he singing about? His partner
• Who is the second line referencing? Himself
• What does Harry mean by the third line? Even though they look the same on the outside, they are very different on the inside because of the relationship. 
•  Why does he make a reference to taste? He isn't going to eat anyone, it is a reference to how sweet she is and how we like sweet things. 
• How do we know he no longer has the same feelings? He uses the past tense to explain his feelings. 
• Why does he repeat the line 'We're not who we used to be'? For emphasis, he is making it clear that they have both changed. 
• Why does he reference himself and his partner as ghosts? Ghosts are apparitions that only resemble the external of the person they were. They do not possess feelings and no longer have a heartbeat. There is no emotional connection between them anymore. 
• Why does he talk about his heartbeat in the last line? We always link the heart to love so he is trying to remember when he was happy in love. 
• How long has he felt like this about his relationship? A long time as he can't remember a time when he had a heartbeat - felt in love. 

The fridge light washes this room white,
Moon dances over your good side,
This was all we used to need,
Tongue-tied like we've never known,
Telling those stories we already told,
'Cause we don't say what we really mean.

We're not who we used to be,
We're not who we used to be,
We're just two ghosts standing in the place of you and me,
We're not who we used to be,
We're not who we used to be,
We're just two ghosts swimming in a glass half empty,
Trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat.

Trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat,
I'm just trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat

• Were the couple together for a long time? We can infer yes that they lived together as he talks about the fridge light and repeating stories. 
• How do we know the excitement of the relationship is gone? He mentions that they needed nothing but light from the fridge or the moon and that was all they needed to be happy together, but that isn't the case anymore. 
• Why is he tongue-tied? He doesn't know what to say to her and what to talk about anymore. 
• Who is to blame for the break up? No one in particular, the message from the song is that both people are the same and even Harry admits he can't talk about his real feelings. 
• Why does he mention swimming in a glass half empty? This references the idiom of glass half full/empty. The reference to emptiness links to pessimism, that you focus on the negatives. 

• Overall, do you feel this is a sad or happy song? It is sad that a relationship has come to an end however when you aren't happy it is best to end something and move forward but to learn from the experience. 
• What might Harry have learned from the relationship? To talk more about how he really feels rather than go round in circles and make things worse. 

Reflecting on #ReadingRocks - The Power of talking about Books

There was a lot I took away from #ReadingRocks_17 last week. The keynotes from @TeresaCremin reminded me of how important Reading for Pleasure really is. As she stated, the research shows Reading for Pleasure has the biggest impact on children's success when they grow up. The website she mention ResearchRichPedagogies, has some great information for how to promote Reading for Pleasure in your school. These awesome sketch notes from @Cazzash picked up the main points from her keynote:

Realised the original photo is a bit blurred. pic.twitter.com/0LtXRgFW2h

— Caroline Ash (@cazzash) October 14, 2017

It was the same with @MaryMyatt's keynote, a lot to think about echoing a similar message. Again here is another sketchnote from @Cazzash:

That was fantastic @MaryMyatt #ReadingRocks_17 @_Reading_Rocks_ pic.twitter.com/ZFq9cpcHrx

— Caroline Ash (@cazzash) October 14, 2017

A big message from the day was emphasising how important it is for teachers to be readers. I completely agree and this is the similar message I share on my training as well as the work I do with John Murray. I have to admit, before my journey into the world of consultancy, I didn't read a lot for pleasure, usually only on holiday. For me, things changed when a) I became a Dad and b) I found a purpose for writing.

Back when we first started using iPads in class, I had never written anything for pleasure in my life. I wasn't a good writer and never felt the need to write beyond what my job expected. As soon as I saw the immediate impact the iPads were having in my school, I felt the need to share and so started this blog. Straight from the get-go, teachers from all over the world engaged with the blog: reading the posts, using them and sharing the results. For the first time in my life, I had a purpose for writing, I had an audience. This encouraged me to not only write more but also read more too. I noticed the quality of my writing improving dramatically, this came from having a purpose but also reading a lot more for pleasure. This has undeniably had an impact on the quality of my teaching of reading and writing in school.

I also felt the need to constantly set a good example with my own children. From being babies, I have always read with them before bed, buying books as a treat and enjoying and discussing good stories. For someone who promotes the use of technology, my own children don't have their own devices and tend to only use an iPad if they are creating content over just consuming. I'm not saying they don't consume, just compared to some of my family and friends we are very conscious of the amount of screen time they have. Books on the other hand, I try to flood them with as many books as possible.

My sons struggle with decoding, this has been an issue in school for a couple of years. They show great knowledge and understanding when talking about books but independently reading, they struggle with phonics and decoding. We noticed this started to affect them reading and we saw them becoming disengaged and not enjoying reading as much. Attending #ReadingRocks_17 reminded me of how Reading for Pleasure can come in many different forms.

It was great to sit in @Smithsmm's session about delving deeper into picture books. Years ago, John Murray led training in my school and demonstrated how powerful picutre books can be and since then every year group use a picture book to do a unit of English. The Arrival, Flotsam, The Mysteries of Harrus Burdick and Tuesday are a few we have used.

Following Simon Smith on twitter is an absolute must! What an inspiring headteacher! To hear from a leader who values reading and reading for pleasure so much really struck a chord with me. The messages coming through his session really linked well to my session around ReadWritePerform but also a lot of the ideas I share on my INSET and CPD around using technology to provide rich talk around different books.

I immediately ordered the book he shared in the session and my boys have loved reading it over the past week. It is brilliant and well worth a purchase:

From sharing this with my boys, they loved talking and discussing the pictures and how these added to the story, they haven't put the book down since. They couldn't wait to write about it in their reading journals. In fact, I am planning how I can use this in my school over the next half term. I've then gone on a bit of a spending spree with other amazing books which I want to share with you. Firstly, the other books by Joe Todd Stanton including the follow up to Arthur and The Secret of Black Rock:

Amazon has proved to be dangerous as the suggested books has led me to purchase and enjoy the following:

As an incentive to encourage my own children to try their hardest with their weekly spelling test, I promised that if they do well, we would go to our local Waterstones and they can pick a book. So we spent the afternoon their yesterday and came away with some amazing books that we have enjoyed reading and will definitely sharing in school with my pupils. Again, thanks to Simon who recommended the Grotlyn which is a beautiful book and story. Journey by Aaron Becker is a fantastic wordless picture book. The Journey by Francesca Sanna which left me in tears. And Grandad's Secret Giant which is a great book with a fantastic message.

I felt the need to share these brilliant books as sharing is caring and I am sure if you were to read and share these books with your pupils it will lead to some great discussion and great learning. Even if you don't use them in your English lessons, just read them after break, after lunch and before the end of the day. I cannot tell you how important sharing and reading a book aloud daily is to your pupils. There should never be an excuse not to, trust me, it has such a massive impact. 

Watch this space for what I do with some of these books over the next half term, I cannot tell you how excited I am to share them with my pupils.

A Class Read for ReadWritePerform's Storm Pack

The latest ReadWritePerform teaching pack is now available:

The Storm: A Personification Pack challenges your students to read and deconstruct texts describing a storm, then write their own description and perform it as an interactive multimedia eBook.

The writing focuses on developing personification and multi-sensory description to bring the storm to life in the reader's mind.

Along with John's exemplar text, we also use the brilliant book - The Mousehole Cat written by Antonia Barber and illustrated by Nicola Bayley.

This is the stunningly illustrated story of the seaside village of Mousehole Cornwall, where Mowzer the cat lives happily with old fisherman Tom - Tom who rocks the rocking chair just right, and catches fresh fish for dinner every night. Their life is a happy one - until one terrible winter, the Great Storm-Cat comes clawing and snarling and leaping at the harbour walls, so that no boat can go out to sea to fish. Soon, with Christmas coming, there is no food left in Mousehole. It is then that Mowzer and Tom set out to brave the fury of the waves together, and discover that it might just need a cat's perspective to understand - and tame - the ferocious ways of the Great Storm-Cat sea. Gently yet powerfully told, this incredibly moving story of bravery, sacrifice and companionship inspired by Cornish legend is sure to connect with readers of all ages, new and old alike.

If you use this pack with your pupils, both myself and John highly recommend using this fantastic story to complement the pack. Here is a link to buy the book.

 

My Workshop at Reading Rocks

I had a wonderful time on Saturday at The District CofE Primary School at the second Reading Rocks conference. I want to thank Heather and the staff for all their hard work organising a fantastic event. I was very lucky to be able to host a workshop all about ReadWritePerform. You can see my workshop and how the RWP approach works:

I was also very lucky to be interviewed as part of @RussellPrue's live radio broadcast. You can listen to the interview here:

It was nice to have the opportunity to sit and listen to other inspiring keynotes and drop into @SmithSmm's brilliant workshop. What was great how the messages from the keynotes and workshop I attended complimented the key messages from my workshop.

Combining PE and Maths with AR Runner and Graphmented

One of the most exciting new features of Apple's iOS11 is the new ARKit and the possibilities with this new feature. The downside, as I discovered last week, the new AR apps will only work on devices with A9 or A10 chips. After installing these apps on most of our school devices, I quickly discovered they didn't work and had to change my plans quickly. 

My Year 6 digital leaders did, however, get to try these apps out on my iPad. First, they started with the app AR Runner.

The app used AR to create checkpoints which you run to as a way to complete different challenges. It is a great way to combine technology with PE as the children are timed when completing the challenges. Word of warning though, make sure you have decent cases on your iPads as no doubt there will be a few accidents when your pupils are into the game. 

The Year 6 pupils all had a few attempts of completing a challenge and collated their scores on a Google Sheet. 

Using another Augmented Reality app - Graphmented, the children then displayed the results of their challenge by presenting the data in Augmented Reality. The children then recorded an explanation of the results and worked out the average time it took the group to complete the challenge. 

Both apps have great potential to enhance learning in PE, maths and science, whether the majority of schools will be able to access these apps with the devices they have in school will be difficulty.

Learning About The Human Body In Year 1

Year 1 are learning all about the human body. Today, we used technology to enhance this topic further. First, we used the brillaint Virtuali-tee app from Curiscope. Click here to read more about this app. To order a t-shirt, click here.

Year 1 loved learning about the human body today through Augmented Reality! Thank you @curiscope_official!

A post shared by Lee Parkinson (@ict_mrp) on Oct 12, 2017 at 9:24am PDT

Once we had explored and discussed the different parts of our body, the children all took turns wearing a green t-shirt and used the camera to photograph each other. They pupils then used Doink Greenscreen to create a picture that looked like we could see inside their body.

Once the pupils had uploaded their pictures to Seesaw, we used the explain and reflect tool in Seesaw to label the major organs. 

Finally, with the help of our Digital Leaders, some children were able to record a video explaining how some of our organs work, see the video here:

The children loved using the technology to provide the WOW through the use of Augmented Reality but then using different creative tools to share their knowledge and understanding. 

How Teachers Walk Down The School Corridor

Are you guilty of any of these?

A Class Read for ReadWritePerform's Picture Postcard Pack

The latest ReadWritePerform pack - Wish You Were Here: The Picture Postcard Pack - is now available to download.

This Unit of Work is aimed specifically at Key Stage 1 but can be adapted for lower Key Stage 2. Through reading, deconstructing and then writing a postcard of a recent holiday, children will then perform their postcard as a greenscreen video and link it through Augmented Reality to create an interactive video postcard. Each app has a step-by-step guide for teachers who may feel less confident using the technology.

The aim is to cover all elements of the English curriculum in an engaging and purposeful way using a variety of media.

Here is a snippet of the final piece of work your pupils will create through using the pack:

Within the pack, we recommend some books that complement the pack really well. We recommend you using these as your class read as there are many links between the pack and the books.

Meerkat Mail - Meerkat Mail is a brilliant picture book from Emily Gravett, the winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal. It has wonderfully detailed, witty artwork and a giant, glossy postcard flap to lift on every spread. Perfect for meerkat fans! 

This one we would really recommend as the story is told through postcards. 

Dear Dinosaur - After a trip to the museum, Max writes a letter to his favourite dinosaur, the mighty T. Rex - and the T. Rex writes back! As Max and T. Rex learn about each other's lives, a very unusual friendship develops in this funny and touching story from an award-winning duo. Dinosaur fans will love this interactive picture book with letters and cards to open, and dinosaur facts to discover along the way.

The Jolly Postman -  The Jolly Postman delivers cards and letters to various fairy-tale characters. He has a letter of apology for the three bears from Goldilocks, a postcard from Jack for the giant, a solicitor's letter on behalf of Little Red Riding-Hood for the wolf who ate grandma, and so on. There are six envelopes in the book, each containing letters, cards, postcards, etc.

Descriptosaurus - The Perfect Christmas Present For A Teacher

About 3 years ago, my fantastic Deputy gave every teacher this book - Descriptosaurus. Written by Alison Wilcox, Descriptosaurus is fantastic for creative writing that is a thematic expansion of a dictionary and a thesaurus. It provides children with a comprehensive resource with which to expand their descriptive vocabulary, experiment with language and sentence structure and build up narratives based around the following areas: Settings - landscapes, settlements and atmosphere, Characters - appearance, emotions and personality, and Creatures - appearance, abilities and habitats.

When it comes to writing, teachers can find it tricky to generate effective descriptive language during shared or guided writing sessions. I have been lucky enough to attend training by Alan Peat and Pie Corbett. Both sessions were fantastic and made it look so easy to generate effective vocabulary to tell a good story. They are geniuses and experts in the field. When faced with a class of 30, being put on the spot, you can have a complete mental block. However, with the descriptosaurus to hand, you will always be able to find a word, phrase or whole sentence to use.

In 2013, the National Literacy Trust ran a descriptive writing competition linked with Descriptosaurus. Some resources are still available - click here. On the back of the competition, Alison has now created new versions of the Descriptosaurus based on different text types. The four are - Action and Adventure, Ghost Stories, Fantasy and Myths and Legends. At present, only Action and Adventure and Ghost Stories are available, with the others being released soon.

From the competition, this book helps areas of children's writing that needed development, such as action scenes. There is a bigger focus on the character's reactions and interactions. This is something I feel is often missing from children's writing.

The books are also available electronically through the Kindle store.

Here is a sample from the Amazon preview of the Descriptosaurus:

So if you are stuck for a present to buy a teacher or even treat your child to help with their writing, I would highly recommend these books!

A Class Read for ReadWritePerform's Crazy Creatures Pack

Recently. we discovered this amazing book that would complement our recent teaching pack - Crazy Creatures.

This Unit of Work is aimed specifically at Key Stage 1 but can be adapted for lower Key Stage 2. Through reading, researching and then writing an information text about a chosen animal, children will create their own Crazy Creature Fact File. The aim is to cover all elements of the English curriculum in an engaging and purposeful way using a variety of media. It also aims to foster within children their love of the natural world and help them to understand their role and responsibility to it.

Sloth Slept On is a picture book all about a group of children who find a sloth snoring away in a tree in their garden. Not knowing what it is, they set out to find out. While the two older children dream up increasingly outrageous possibilities, from an astronaut to a pirate, to a space creature, the youngest little girl investigates books and a globe and discovers what it really is and where it lives. But how can the children help the sloth to get home if it won't wake up?

This would be appropriate for KS1.