Brave Company by David Hill - a book to add to your Anzac Day collection.

Anzac Day is one of the most important days in the history of New Zealand.  It was the ignition of a series of events that began the formation of the New Zealand identity and loosened the apron ties of Mother England.  It was also the beginning of unimagined sacrifice by a country with a small population.

As a teacher, I believe that this important part of our history should never be forgotten and is a valuable part of the learning journey for our children.  Consequently I teach an Anzac Day unit each year and supply and read a selection of war stories to the children.

Last year I reviewed the David Hill novel My Brother's War set in WWI about two brothers, one who volunteered to serve and one who was a conscientious objector but was forced onto the battlefield against his beliefs.  I had read this book to my class and it encouraged other children to read it for themselves and even one child to ask her mother to purchase a copy for her.  Since that review I purchased another David Hill book focused on a different war.

Brave Company is set during the Korean Conflict and the main character is 16 year old Russell who is a member of the New Zealand Navy serving on a ship called HMNZS Taupo which has been sent to participate in the Korean Conflict.  Korea is war rarely discussed in terms of every day conversations on war, but New Zealand sent 4700 soldiers to serve during the 1950-1953 war and then as a peace keeping force during the armistice until 1957, and 1300 sailors served on frigates during the war and armistice, and all up 45 military personnel were lost.  (www.nzhistory.net.nz - Korean War)

I had a great uncle serve in Korea.  The first time I did an Anzac Day unit my Gran lent me a postcard Uncle T sent home about Christmas time with the Christmas Day menu on it.  I also treasure the photo I acquired of him in uniform with my great grandfather (who served in WWI) and great grandmother.  Uncle T saw enough of war in Korea to oppose his own son joining the army to serve in Vietnam.

This is the front cover and the blurb on the back cover:

Russell's family has a secret about an uncle who served and died in WWII who Russell once looked up to.  During his time in Korea Russell finds out about his uncle and discovers not all in what it appears to be.

 

Russell is a boy seaman on a frigate and the battle scene the frigate is involved in is tense and described in detail.  The tension is built throughout the book with innuendo about his uncle weaved through.  Hill doesn't reveal the questions asked about Russell's uncle early in the book.  They emerge as Russell's character is revealed and he meets a man who served with his uncle as he makes several trips into the battlefields of Korea. 

 

The book also reveals the plight of the Korean people as they fled their homes in the battle zone and the impact upon the children in particular.  Russell makes connections with a brother and sister in this predicament and demonstrates another side to his character as his understanding of their situation develops.

 

Again this is a great book to engage children in the realities and impacts of war.  It is a particularly good book to target boys aged 10 up to read, but I believe girls will also read this book.  I would definitely read it to a class and supply it as independent reading material.

Changing what is on the walls

Last term I read a blog by Bruce Hammonds called New School Year - what has been achieved? and it started me wondering about how Bruce would view my classroom.  As a result I posted this blog The Classroom Environment - what makes a class attractive?  I posted it on a Friday night, shared it on Twitter, and four hours of teachers sharing photos of what is on the walls of their classrooms currently and in the past began.  It was awesome!!  And Bruce put a link in his next blog post to my blog post!  Bonus!!

There is no disputing that a classroom environment physically needs to be warm and comfortable for students to learn.  I have found over a number of years that the classroom should reflect the learning journey of the children within it.  It should stimulate the children to learn.  It should set the standard for the expected outcome of learning.

In the last few weeks I have read three different versions of an article about a study looking at classroom displays and how they affect student achievement.  This article, Heavily Decorated Classrooms Disrupt Attention and Learning in Young Children, According to New Carnegie Mellon Research, was one version of the articles.  I have had the opportunity to engage in discussion and debate on this in three separate forums, one on Twitter through a UK education twerp, and two different teacher groups on Facebook.  This is a topic with a lot of diverse opinions and experiences.

Displaying Student Work  on the Responsive Classroom  website says:   "A classroom filled with the work of children is a delight to be in and sends a message to students that their work and their learning are important."  This post even advocates students create the displays themselves!  And then there is this little pearl of wisdom from a post called Tips for New Teachers: Classroom Displays from the ASCD website: "These days, when I'm visiting many classrooms as an elementary school consultant and coach, I'm more convinced than ever that classroom displays should consist mostly of work students have done themselves."

In New Zealand we place a lot of importance on the classroom reflecting what our students are learning, the classroom space supporting learning and that that space reflects the student's own works.  It is also expected that the work displayed will change regularly to reflect the continual learning opportunities that come along.  I personally believe that you take something down when you have something to put up.  Occasionally I rearrange so that I can still keep up work that I consider needs to stay.

Consequently, this term, a lot has changed in my class on the walls compared to the visual tour I took my readers on in the post mentioned in the first paragraph.

Firstly, my topic wall changed.  Instead of the Tiriti o Waitangi, we started the term with Anzac Day.  This was a mini unit, so this is not the full range of things I could have displayed.  The newspaper articles were brought in by a student.  I go into more about how this display engaged students in my blog post Creating excitement about learning for Anzac Day.

Last term my students and I, for Poem of the Week, read a poem about what was in Grandma's cupboard.  And we created a piece of art about it, which was put up on the wall late in the first term. 

I may have mentioned in the post I wrote last term (link in the first paragraph) that my school had a centennial celebration last term.  Schools tend to create books to celebrate those sorts of things, and we wrote poems about the school to go in the book.  I put these up last term by rearranging the writing we had done about Brendon McCullum and the fish display.  I'm not ready to take this writing down yet, so I squished it up a bit.

To fit my new displays I also moved the fish display this term, because underneath the centennial poems I put our new display about Keeping Ourselves Safe, because we're also working through that this term.  The display is pretty much the children's thinking on the various aspects of the topic as we have gone through it.  (Please excuse the missing e's - I ran out and haven't got to the resource centre as of yet to purchase more).

This was another activity that came from Poem of the Week with a poem called How does the sun rise?  As you can see we painted our own sunrises using water colour paints and we wrote poems and descriptions of the sun rising.

The following week our Poem of the Week was called Autumn Leaves.  So we went out and played in the leaves and wrote some poems and descriptions of autumn leaves.  I also asked the children to collect leaves and do some drawings of them with detail and colour them in and cut them out to add to the display.

To add the writing about sunrises and autumn leaves I had to move our display on the fish, and remove our other writing inspired by calendar pictures.

On Friday it was a lovely sunny day, so I decided art should be done outside.  Bruce talks about close observational sketching of nature in his blog I've linked in the first paragraph, so I thought we really needed this on our walls too.  So out we went for 30 minutes with an A5 piece of cartridge each and after a wee chat the class concentrated their hearts out for that whole 30 minutes (except for the ones distracted by the kitten from the school house that wanted to play), and they came up with their own drawings of a part of a tree they choose to focus on.  Some of the students also really had a go at shading and smudging their pencil to create greater effect.  So proud of them.

To put up the kids drawings I had to squeeze up our similes display a bit.  I also squeezed our similes display down a bit so I could staple up the collection of metaphors some children had researched.  As you can see there is still some wall space above my metaphors.... that's where I need a person with a head for heights to put up something that will stay for a long time...

 

 

I still kept my fish from earlier in the year... I just keep moving them to fit with what I am putting up on my wall.

 And this is what my back wall of my class looks like.

There are more changes currently happening.  My topic wall has changed to being about New Zealand native birds, and new stories about rain and accompanying pictures have replaced the flags on the wires.  My class are also currently working on posters about the birds.  Watch the next post on my classroom environment to see my new exciting news....

My first Skype session with my class.

Ok, sometimes I am a little behind the times.

I confess - I'd never done a Skype session with my class - until last week.

This is how it all came about:

In the term break I purchased this book:

I blogged about it in this post, Anzac Books I am going to use this coming term, and the author of the above book, Peter Millett, commented on my blog.  A short conversation ensued, he said he'd love to talk to my class about the book, I followed Peter on Twitter.

I read The Anzac Puppy to my class and they really enjoyed it.  Of course they wanted to know if it was based on a true story or not.  I said to them that the author wanted to talk with them, so we should ask him questions about the book and being the author.  I split them up into groups of three, and these are the questions they came up with:

The other week I tweeted photos of the questions to Peter.  And eventually we settled on a Skype conversation.

As I said, I was a "Skype in the classroom newbie".  My previous solo Skype conversation was with a mate to help him prepare for an interview, and prior to that it was gate crashing my Mum's conversations with my aunty and some family friends in Aussie.  I'd just never really had a good reason to Skype with a class before.  But Skyping with an author is a very authentic reason.

Mistake #1:  Not prepping the kids on how to do a Skype session.
Actually, this was the one and only big mistake - I pretty much sprung this on them, by telling them we were doing it after the Year 7 & 8s left for Tech - who wants to miss out after all?  Then, by the time I set up the computer at the end of lunch and got on Skype, Peter was there, so no time to tell the kids what I was expecting.

Now it wasn't a complete disaster.  The children were very excited to see Peter and know that they were going to get the answers to their questions.  They all gathered around and at the beginning were attentive.  But as time went on, they drifted off to be silly while the teacher's back was literally turned.  Some went off to draw pictures.  Any child who wasn't participating wasn't hearing the answers, and certainly wasn't engaged as I expected.

Peter's wife is also a teacher, so while I was embarrassed at the rudeness of some children, he rolled with it and was very understanding indeed, which I was grateful for.  After the conversation ended I did the growling thing with the kids, the one that starts with, "I'm extremely disappointed... why do you think that is?"

Peter was great.  He told the kids something very important: he has loved writing ever since he was a little boy.  He told us about how long it can take to write a book.  He started researching The Anzac Puppy in 2001 and it wasn't published until 2014... that's the longest time it has taken him to write a book.  Peter loves writing for children, and he loves writing stories that will make people laugh.  He also told us about some of the things that inspire him and the book he has just completed that is next to be published - but we were sworn to secrecy.

My class and I have the opportunity to have another Skype conversation with a class in Australia.  So I am thinking we will definitely have to nut out some expectations prior to doing the next chat.  The children are also keen to Skype an ex-teaching colleague of mine who is now working as an advisor on writing in schools, including my school.  I said we would ask her next time she came to the school.

Later that day on Twitter I started a random #edchatNZ chat about personalising learning for teachers (that is for another blog however).  I mentioned my first Skype chat during it, saying how I had done some "just in time learning that day".  As a result, now another teacher is pursuing Peter Millett's books for use in his class and may also do a Skype chat with his class and Peter Millett.  So there is a win out of the day.

Creating excitement about learning for Anzac Day

The other week I put up a new display about Anzac Day. It's a pretty tame one considering all the possible things I could put up. But the main idea is to get the kids thinking and it gives them some independent activities to do.

 

 

The following Monday a couple of really cool buzz things happened for me.  One girl had been looking through the local newspapers at the weekend, and when she arrived at school she came over and said, "Look what I found out about Anzac Day in the newspapers!"

 

I loved the fact that she had cut these  articles out of the local papers off her own bat and brought them into school. So I immediately gave her the pins and asked her to add them to the display.

 

 

 

Later the same day, another girl came to me after silent reading. She had one of the books from my Anzac collection she had been reading during SSR.  "Look Miss D.  That's from the poem we had last week."

 

She found it in Jackie French's book A Day to Remember - The Story of Anzac Day.

 

 

 

Each week we have a poem of the week and in the first week of this term we did For the Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon.

 

This is a pretty full on poem to give to students aged 7, but my current class caters for Years 3-8 in a small two class rural school.  Not only do I have to cater for the younger children in my class, but I need to challenge the more able and older children as well.  So each week there is a different sort of poem, often with a theme I want to explore.

With this poem we looked at the imagery in the poem, new vocabulary, the variety of punctuation, and blends - a new aspect each day.  We also found out a little bit about who Robert Lawrence Binyon was.

 

Since then, other children have also read this book and recognised the extract from Binyon's poem as well.  It is all about planting that seed and seeing what takes root.

 

So what else have I got going on in this display?

 

This is a great poster I got from the Scholastic Book Club a few years ago (why don't they come like they used to anymore?).  This is a great poster to get the kids thinking about the symbols and rituals of Anzac Day.

                    

 

I got these words that are in the Vocabulary Expander out of the book Gallipoli Reckless Valour a few years ago.  The point of the Vocabulary Expander is to introduce and extend the vocabulary of the topic to the students and help them create meaning of these words.  The students each choose a word and bags it by writing their name on the back with a dry erase pen.  It the top box they write the word as a title.  On the next lines they record the definition that best fits the context.  They must start with a dictionary first, then if they can not find it, they can Google the definition.  The next set of lines is when they write a sentence of their own using the word.  In the bottom box they draw a picture to illustrate the sentence they wrote, demonstrating the context of the word as well.  This is an independent reading time activity and can also be worked on during topic time.

This set of statistics is a good way to get the students thinking about and discussing the impact of the First World War on a small, young country like New Zealand.

It gets them thinking about women and how they contributed to the war effort.  It makes them think about the contribution of Maori and the people of the Pacific to the New Zealand Armed Forces.  It brings to their attention the fact that there was something called a conscientious objector.

These statistics also brings death and the stark reality of war into focus when you look at how many soldiers did not come back out of the103,000 who served overseas, as well as the ones who came back wounded in some way or another.

And is it not amazing to know that there are approximately 500 civic memorials in New Zealand commemorating these men?

These are for the older students in my class.  I created these a couple of years ago for independent inquiry on a range of aspects of New Zealand's participation in war.  The students choose which one they will do.  Each one has web links and different activities to complete based on De Bono's Thinking Hats or Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. 

The topics I have put out for the small group of students to do this year include:

• Conscientious Objectors
• Le Quesnoy and New Zealand
• Helping the Wounded
• WWI Memorials
• Medals
• Mascots for WW1 & WWII

The tasks may require them to create something on the computer, do a poster, or record the facts in their books. 

One of the first books I read my class this term was The Anzac Puppy  by Peter Millett and illustrated by Trish Bowles.  I blogged about this book during the term break after I bought a fresh collection of stories to share with the class.  Peter Millett somehow really quickly saw my blog and responded to it, saying he'd love to discuss the book with the class.  My class brainstormed questions for Peter (see below) and we're set up to do a Skype session with Peter this week.

 

 



In my opinion I can not set up an Anzac Day display without the immortal words of Ataturk, the Turkish commander at Gallipoli and later leader of Turkey:

And it is also good to get some other background on some important Gallipoli knowledge and Anzac traditions:

Finally, I was away the other day and the reliever read the class Ceasar the Anzac Dog by Patricia Stroud and illustrated by Bruce Potter.

 And he drew this for the kids on the board, so I photographed it, printed it and added it to the display:

 

 

 

I love how everyone who enters my class brings yet another little bit extra to what we are learning and carries on the inspiration.

Other really cool books for Anzac Day!

I got a bit of a surprise the other week when I pulled out all the books I have purchased over the last few years in my obsession for great resources for Anzac Day.  The other week I shared some books I had purchased this year, but I thought today would be a good day to share the books I've bought and used previously.

First up is a great book called Solder in the Yellow Socks by Janice Marriott about New Zealand's double Victoria Cross winner Charles Upham and his deeds during World War II.  I love this book, as it combines chapter and pictures, by illustrator Bruce Potter, to tell the story.  It is full of wonderful new interest words, and I have used it as a reading book with my class with lots of great learning.  Last time we even exchanged emails with the author to find out about how she wrote the book.

Grandad's Medals is written by Tracy Duncan and illustrated by Bruce Potter (who does beautiful illustrations).  A lovely, touching story about a young boy and his Grandad.  It talks about his relationship with Grandad and how Grandad marches on Anzac Day with his set of medals.  The young boy is noticing that there are fewer of his Grandad's mates marching this year.

Set on the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea in World War II, Photographs in the Mud by Dianne Wolfer has beautiful pictures.  This is a story of an Australian soldier and a Japanese soldier lying injured together sharing photos and memories of their families back home.  It may bring a tear to your eye.

The book, Wartime Memories, is in an old fashioned magazine style and has lots of tidbits about life during World War II in New Zealand and at the battlefields.

The Donkey Man, by Glyn Harper, is a great book to capture the children's attention about the contribution of animals in the battle field.  I have used this book with a reading group previously.  You can find out more by looking at the post I have published previously.

I've also used Nicolas Brasch's book Gallipoli Reckless Valour with a reading group.  It is well set out with wonderful photos, maps and copies of posters and advertising from World War I.

My Marine is written by Phyllis Johnston about when the US Marines came to her community during WWII when she was a child.  She became jealous of her sister going to the local dances with the Marines and wanted a Marine of her own.  We've just finished reading the book Black Boots and Buttonhooks as a shared novel by Phyllis about her mother, May, as a child, so my class was amazed to find the link that May was the mother in this story.

This book, A Day to Remember, goes back to the first Anzac rememberance ceremony after the Gallipoli campaign and how Anzac Day has been commemorated in the years since.  Jackie French has included parts of the ceremony such as the piece from the poem For the Fallen by Lawrence Binyon, which my students recognised as they read the book because we used it for Poem of the Week.  Mark Wilson's illustrations are poignant.

Animals have been an important part of battlefield events throughout history.  Only a Donkey demonstrates animals paying tribute to their peers on the battlefield.  Celeste Walters writes from the point of view of the animals.  Patricia Mullins creates wonderful illustrations. 

A little girl's father is away at war and she makes Anzac Biscuits for him.  Phil Cummings, the author of Anzac Biscuits, writes the experience of making the biscuits in tandem with the experience of being in the trenches.  The muted pictures by Owen Swan bring a gravity to the father's situation, but highlight the innocence of childhood.

Le Quesnoy - The story of the town New Zealand saved is also written by Glyn Harper.  It is beautifully illustrated and tells the tale of one of the final actions of WWI when New Zealand soldiers liberated the French town of Le Quesnoy from the German army.  Jenny Coopers simple, colourful pictures bring to life the experiences of the soldiers of both sides and the towns people.

This is the story written by Feana Tu'akoi of an Anzac Day through the eyes of young Tyson who doesn't understand why Mum and Poppa would want to celebrate anything as stupid as war at the Dawn Parade.  Lest We Forget brings to life the tandem extremes of why we remember:  the futility of war verses the honouring of sacrifice by brave (and scared) men.  Elspeth Alix Batt's haunting illustrations of the Dawn Service contrast with the warmness of the family home.

This is a great reference book for primary school students on the facts of Gallipoli.  The Anzacs at Gallipoli has lots of good photos in it, clear headings and little side bars of information.  Some of the photos are confronting, but are presented in an understated way.  It also sets out each of the major battles that happened during the campaign.

Anzac Day Parade by Glenda Kane and Lisa Allen is based on a veteran of Crete talking with a young boy about the aerial invasion of German para-troops and the battle that followed.  The language is colloquial and in short, haunting passages.  The illustrations are a mixture of the present time and the old veteran's memories.

Caesar the Anzac Dog by Patricia Stroud is beautifully illustrated by Bruce Potter.  It is a great picture book for older primary school students as there is a lot of text on each page, but can be shared with younger students over several days.  It tells the story of one of our more heroic animals who went to war and did his part to help the soldiers.

Philippa Werry wrote Anzac Day the New Zealand Story so that students could have a one stop book on what happened at Gallipoli, the Western Front, why we have Anzac Day and how we commemorate it in New Zealand.  It covers the people the places, cenotaph, where the idea of poppies come from, the origins of the word 'digger', relevant websites, things to do, paintings, poems, abstracts from diaries and letters, photos....

Written by David Hill (My Brother's War, Brave Company) and illustrated by Fifi Coston (I remember her doing arty crafty stuff on tv after school when I was a kid!), this gorgeous, touching book, The Red Poppy, also includes a CD with a song called Little Red Poppy by Rob Kennedy.  This story is about a young soldier, Jim, possibly his first time in the trenches, getting ready to go over the top in an attack.  He is wounded and ends up in a shell crater with a wounded German soldier, Karl, and they are found by Nipper the messenger dog. 

 

 

Don't forget about other great books such as The Bantam and the Soldier  and Lotte: the Gallipoli Nurse as well.  The My Story collection also has some brilliant novels for the independent readers of the older students.