Anzac Day Break

Took a day out yesterday to reflect on what is really important in life. Anzac Day signals a real sense of community for Australians and New Zealanders here and around the world. War is not celebrated but commemorated, and while nationalism is politicised, so too are the virtues that remain universal such as resilience, fortitude and honour. More and more visitors go to Gallipoli and Kokoda each year, demonstrating a need for connection to the past in a time of growing secularism and social uncertainty. While many point out that Anzac Day has been actively promoted by recent governments as a way of enhancing patriotism, it cannot be ignored that such a day has a positive unifying impact. It is also a fine way to acknowledge the work and contributions made by older citizens and to remind children and adolescents that the best things in life should need literally and metaphorically, to be fought for by others. School celebrations help emphasise what makes it an important day to remember.

War texts often feature in both junior and senior curriculum but they typically are those that hold moral messages about the personal and social costs involved. Poetry by Owen, Sassoon and Dawe are familiar but there are contemporary poets that address recurring themes of sacrifice, courage and suffering within a modern war context.

http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/2011warpoetry.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/8455677/Modern-war-poetry-British-soldiers-explore-Afghanistan-and-Iraq-wars-in-verse.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/25/war-poetry-carol-ann-duffy

Mark Twain had scathing words for war and his famous 'War Prayer' is a powerfully condemnatory attack of what can result. It is a brilliant text to do with senior students in relation to examining how he uses language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJsZCpp8hR4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsoJ-WJZGXM

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel . . . And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his mouth.
Mark Twain

V for Vendetta Resources

Love this film and students respond to it well as a dystopic text. It also works extremely well as a companion text to '1984'. I have added some resources on my other site which has more options for loading material.
www.stannersenglishresources.weebly.com

Great sites and web tools

Stumbled across this image while working on 'Northanger Abbey' and thought it would be useful for todays blog about some excellent Austen sites as well as some more useful classroom web tools. Austen is so addictive - reading, image surfing and film adaptations. There are so many blogs dedicated to the fashions of the era as well and and after yet another viewing of 'Sense and Sensibility' I think I agree with the sentiments expressed in the image. Men certainly do look better in cravats.

http://old-fashionedcharm.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/shakespeare-week.html   

http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/links/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/index.html 

(for watching shows online)      

Some other ICT tools  useful for the classroom include the following:

One Word. So Little Time.: http://oneword.com/index.html

Interesting site! Useful for writing exercises. "simple. you'll see one word at the top of the following page. you have sixty seconds to write about it. as soon as you click 'go' the page will load with the cursor in place. don't think. just write."
Telescopic Text: http://telescopictext.com/

Very clever website that is useful when teaching about good creative writing and expression.

http://english.byu.edu/novelinks/Index%20of%20strategies.htm

Great site with a mass of novel reading strategies and literary units.

Another tool that I found on an American homeschooling site is how to have any written text transformed into audio. For a MP3 clip I think you have to pay but it is great for rhetoric exercises as it offers English and American accents as well as male and female so that you could compare how something is read and what the impact is on meaning. Hope you find these gems useful.

http://www.naturalreaders.com/bbcshow.html

Goodnight Mr Tom movie trailer

If you go to my other blogsite on my weebly page, I have posted a movie trailer for this novel that a teacher or student has uploaded to YouTube. It is a good exercise to set for any close study of text and it is quite amazing what digital skills actually have for this sort of thing. Moviemaker or Photostory3 are easy to use or you can get more upmarket and use something like Sliderocket.
www.stannersenglishresources.weebly.com (blog page)

More English webtools:

video annotation
http://blipsnips.com/

wall poster creator from any size image
http://www.blockposters.com/

Cool timer – downloadable stop watch
http://fur.ly/197z

Had better get back to school and workshop preparation for Term II and while I like doing the resources but it still takes a long time.

Barbara

'Goodnight Mr. Tom' Link to my other blogsite

Blogger is too cumbersome to upload richer texts and so I prefer to use my weebly website for things such as powerpoints and document files.
I have uploaded a PDF version of a powerpoint that gives an historical overview of the novel's context.

www.stannersenglishresources.weebly.com

Hope teachers using 'Goodnight Mr. Tom' find it useful.
Barbara

Goodnight Mr Tom and Blogsite Nomination

Many have requested a reposting of some of the resources that I made available back in 2010 on my wikispace. I will load these up for a short time, over the next few blogs.

I have also been nominated for a blogsite competition outlined below.

"The Fascination Awards are an annual collection of the web’s most inspirational and thought-provoking blogs and are nominated by our editorial team and voted on by our readers.We know that all blogs are not created equal, so we want to recognize websites that go above and beyond, providing truly engaging content for their visitors. Bloggers can nominate their favourites". \

Goodnight Mr Tom

This novel remains a universal favourite, used in both Primary and Secondary Schools. Many resources are available but they tend to be suitable for Primary school age students. There is much less available for teenage students and yet it works very well for that age group as well.

I have used it for a conceptual unit entitled 'Changing Worlds' where the focus is on how individuals adapt and cope when the world they were familiar with undergoes massive transformation. The text enables the study of real events that can inform understanding of the complexity of human relationships. The characterisation and themes are accessible and validated by the wealth of historical resources that are available to bring that period to life.

Brilliant documentaries and archival footage and images exist along with eye-witness accounts. Study can involve webquests, podcasts, visual literacy and the evaluation of other non-fiction, primary evidence texts.

Contextual Significance Webquest:

www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/

www.1940.co.uk

www.stannersenglishresources.weebly.com

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Barbara

More on Typography

Typography courses look complicated and so I have cheated and just googled what typography clips are already available online for subjects such as poetry in general or set poets. Students have also posted famous speeches from films such as 'V for Vendetta' or '2001 Space Odyssy' or 'Blade Runner' or rhetoricians like Winston Churchill or King. It really helps students to focus on the words, phraseology and intonation involved and for this reason is particularly useful with poetry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ0RjBthqhY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW0x7n6-eCw&feature=related

It is an easy way to spend hours looking for video clips but sometimes you can come up with some gems such as this one which works well for the HSC 'distinctive voice' module elective as a trigger for establishing the focus for examining the power of voice within text.

http://vimeo.com/3829682

Hope you enjoy these and start hunting for your own. You could also make it a class project, put students in groups to look for suitable clips for poetry, drama, famous speeches or whatever. You can then have discussion as to which ones are the best and why. A fun way to explore language and how it shapes meaning and audience response.