K -2 National Simultaneous Storytime 2014
On Wednesday May 21st at 11.00am the K-2 Wyvern boys read the book ‘Too Many Elephants in This House’ written by Ursula Duborsarsky and illustrated by Andrew Joyner. In participating in the reading of this book, they joined with over 460 000 children and adults (and one elephant) in 3100 libraries, schools, childcare centres, preschools and homes across Australia to make National Simultaneous Storytime 2014 an overwhelming success.
Once again this year, Kindy boys headed over to the Senior School Library with their teachers, teachers’ aides and some parent volunteers to share this experience with Year 12 boys who read and discussed the story with them. They also shared a favourite book with a Year 12 boy in the tranquil setting of the Senior Library. Upon their return, they discussed their thoughts about the book and observations of their excursion during the Library lesson. In class and Library, the Kindy boys will work on creating an Animoto to record their thoughts and impressions of the event.
Year 1 boys gathered in Wyvern Library to read ‘Too Many Elephants in This House’ as an iBook on the smartboard with their class teachers and Mrs Barnes. After a stimulating discussion of the story and the question ‘What would your mother say you have too many of in your house?’ the boys set to work to collaboratively build a Word Bank of descriptive words related to the story.They then could use these words to write descriptive sentences for illustrations from the story, using the Popplet app to record this learning.
Year 2 boys read the story with their classroom teachers, Mrs Fryda and Mrs Stewart who each provided dramatic and entertaining renditions and a guided reading experience of the text. After a lively discussion of the story, the boys were asked to think about what they had ‘too many of in their house’. Using these ideas and reflections, the boys began work on a their own parallel story entitled, for example,‘Too Many Video Games in Sam’s House’ or ‘Too Many Soccer Balls in Lewis’ House’. The Year 2 boys will use their word processing skills to publish their stories on the Year 2 blog.
Joanne Barnes
Teacher Libranian
