School Community awards
Start your schools' Leader School Community Award entry now!
Bully-free on the web
Melbourne primary school students will have a bully-free place in cyberspace from next month.
SuperClubsPLUS Australia is an online learning community and social networking site created via a collaboration between UK company Intuitive Media and LaTrobe University.
It is supported by the Telstra Foundation and the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.
Find out more at the following sites:
Book Reviews
Whose eggs? Jeanette Rowe, ABC Books, $12.95, PB.
The latest book in the toddler-friendly Whose? series is just in time for Easter. Since Easter carries a message about new beginnings and new life, this book would be a good starting point for discussion of these ideas - beyond chicks and bunnies.
However, the book works equally well far removed from anything Easter. Lifting flaps to reveal platypus, lizards, dinosaurs and frogs emerging from eggs will delight toddler, preschoolers and beginning readers.
Your favourite books
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird pipped any single J.K. Rowling or J. R. R. Tolkien title for number one position in Leader’s Win Your Favourite Books competition.
While the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series scored highly, no individual title from either series made the Leader Readers’ Top 10, which were:
The winner – chosen at random – of our $250 Dymocks book voucher was Tanya Soutar, of Greensborough. Her Top 10 books included The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold’s first novel; Bryce Countenay’s April Fool’s Day, Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree and the classic picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.
The Kite Runner was a surprise vote-puller, coming in at number three. It is a first novel, published in 2003. It is the first novel published in English by an author from Afghanistan.
Leader reader Adela Aliaga-Yori, of Knoxfield, offered this review:
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a fictional novel based on historic fact of Afghanistan. It a beautiful story about atonement and brotherhood told in a emotive way leading reader into the Afghan society of the 1970's and the Afghan society of today. It gives great insight to this culture and makes you laugh and cry.
Software Reviews
Boost Maths, Published by Pearson, $14.95, available at bookshops.
Boost Maths is a series of workbooks with accompanying CD-ROMs.
The activities match the various curricula across Australia were developed by teachers.
Unlike some other home-practice workbooks available, the teacher expertise is evident in this series; the instructions are clear and simple, and the activities sequenced.
The maths skill being practised is printed at the bottom of each page, so if a child is weak i na particular area of maths, parents can choose activities in the book which match that particular area.
As students answer questions in the workbook across six or so pages, they reveal numbers which, when put together, create a code.
Students then go to the computer, login to the Boost Maths program, and enter the code to unlock a short computer game - reward for their work.
Activities can also be completed at the computer. The concept is great - and very much appealed to my 7-year-old computer nut.
The reward games are amusing and created to build confidence; they start slowly allowing the child to gain success early.
-Reviewed by Kristin Owen
Webmath, webmath.com.
There is a great depth of information on this site, which is free. There are explanations, practice activities and printable worksheets for many maths concepts.
Some of the explanations could be a little simpler. But this site is excellent for use as one of a number of reference tools in your amoury!
-Reviewed by Kristin Owen
Mathcats, webmath.com.
This site is child-friendly, suitable mainly for primary-aged children (and their parents and teachers).
The site was created by maths teacher and mother of three Wendy Petti. She explains her approach to her career: "I looked for ways to make learning relevant, open-ended, creative, hands-on, and fun." And all this shows on mathscats.com.
There are maths crafts, a maths art gallery, maths games along with an exploration of maths and the human body, microworlds and much more.
If there is a reluctant mathematician in your family, the could be the site to work magic.
-Reviewed by Kristin Owen
Classy claymation
Teachers Kyla Baud and Emily Turnbull, of Niddrie Primary School, guided their grade 3/4 classes in producing a song and two claymations. They kindly agreed to share their step-by-step instructions for creating a claymation.
The production of the song and films were supported by City West Water through the Water – Learn it! Live it! program, which has been jointly developed by City West Water, South East Water, Yarra Valley Water and Melbourne Water.
It provides primary and secondary school teachers with resources to develop fun ways to integrate water conservation into their curriculum and helps schools raise awareness and reduce water use at home and school.
Watch:
By Kyla Baud and Emily Turnbull
Step One - Brainstorm
Brainstorm ideas for your Claymation. In groups, listen to everyone’s ideas, then as a class choose the best idea, or best bits of each idea and form your storyline. Make sure it makes sense.
Step Two - Storyboard
Break up into groups to expand ideas using a storyboard.
Storyboard details include; a sketch of the scene, who is filming, the camera angles and shots, who is moving the characters and a brief description of what is happening.
Step Three – Characters
Step Four - The Set
Build the set. We used computer boxes cut diagonally in half as the basis for our sets then added a plain background and details such as windows, cupboards and drawers.
Step Five - Filming
You need an Apple Macintosh computer, iSight camera & the program iStopMotion (downloaded from http://www.istopmotion.com for around $50 dollars).
Step Six - Edit
Step Seven - iMovie
Step Eight - iDVD
Fundraising for your school
The Complete Schools Fundraising Handbook: How to make the most money ever for your school, pre-school or kindergarten, $36, is published by Our Community and is available here.
Book Reviews
Reading Makes You Feel Good, Todd Parr, ABC Books, $14.95, PB.
This colourful, picture book is a feel-good ode to reading for young children. A great feature of the book is illustrations with words on them, for example, “teacher” is printed on the teacher’s desk. The idea is for the adult to read the main text and the beginner reader to have a go at the labels.
-Reviewed by Heather Gallagher
Parsley Rabbit’s Book about Books, Frances Watts & David Legge, ABC Books, $19.95, HB.
A cute, educational read about the make-up of books. The narrator, Parsley Rabbit, shows child readers how to identify the title page, the imprint page and the publisher.
It’s all done in a cheeky, humorous spirit with interactive lift-the-flaps. Kids will also enjoy the sibling rivalry with Parsley’s little brother Basil.
-Reviewed by Heather Gallagher
The Girl’s Like Spaghetti: Why, you can’t manage without apostrophes!, Lynn Truss & Bonnie Timmons, Profile Books, $24.95, HB.
“Hilarious” and “punctuation” are two words not usually associated with one another but on reading this picture book you’ll find to the contrary.
Why didn’t anyone ever explain to me at school, as Truss does in the introduction to this book, that: The apostrophe is “a tireless Good Punctuation Fairy, flitting above a page of words, looking for anything that’s a bit of a muddle, and then waving a wand to make it clear”? I’m sure I would have paid more attention in class.
-Reviewed by Kristin Owen
Win your top books
Enter our Leader Education online competition that gives you the chance to win some of the best books in print – as chosen by the you.To enter, go here
Dux
In this issue of Dux, you can also find some great information to help you guide you family's education, such as:
Bullies banned
Watch a video online made by one of the major prize winners in the Leader School Community Awards 2007. The Lonely Kid was written, performed, and produced by primary school students as part of a successful project to stop bullying in the schoolyard – and beyond.
Read how an entire school produced a DVD to combat bullies.
Watch the film.
Knot happy
Watch a video online of “Professor Shoelace”, a Melbourne man who claims to have invented the world’s fastest shoelace knot.
Read about his story here
Book Reviews
Rebel Girl, Susan Geason, ABC Books, PB $14.95
This book is worth the read for its fascinating insight into a little-known period of Chinese history. At 13, Su-Yin is sold into slavery and becomes a kitchen-hand for the family of a high-ranking official. When Taiping soldiers invade the city, only their youngest daughter survives and it is left to Su-Yin to conceal her identity and help her escape the village.
A gripping tale.
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, Gabrielle Zevin, Bloomsbury, PB $15.95
Seventeen-year-old Naomi has bumped her head and lost all recall of the last three-and-a-half years of her life. Starting from this great premise, we travel with her as she unlocks the jigsaw of her past – rediscovering her parents’ divorce, her mother’s new husband and child, and re-evaluating significant relationships. She wonders why she was part of the shallow “in” crowd and falls in and out of love – and in again.
This is high-end chick-lit for teens.
Fairies, Alison Maloney, ABC Books, HB $35
Little girls love to believe in fairies and this beautiful book is filled with secret tips on how to find one. There are lots of pockets and fold-out flaps with fairy recipes for kids to explore, in addition to the obligatory set of sparkly, cardboard fairy wings. Fairies is packed full of fairy ``facts’’ for middle-year readers and pretty enough to engage youngsters.
An excellent Christmas gift for girls.
E-Learning Tools Reviews
Software Made by: The Learning Company
For PC and Mac: Before purchase, check precise system specifications.
The 15 educational activities and 20 creative activities on this CD-Rom span a wide range of skill levels. There are literacy and numeracy activities, along with card-making and games. It’s likely to have a long shelf life.
The activities are recommended for ages six to eight but computer-literate four-year-olds would swallow some of them.
However, I found one of the addition problems a little confusing. The answer to a question was 41 but it had to be typed in from right to left. The numeral one had to be typed before the numeral four.
I understand though that maths is taught in new ways at school today – so perhaps what might perplex me does not confuse smaller people.
The display could do with some improvement as the images were a little pixilated.
Sure to be a winner with Arthur fans.
Software Made by: Advanced Software
For PC and Mac: Before purchase, check precise system specifications.
Spelling is hard but grammar is easy. That was a key message from my first journalism lecturer.
However, anyone who has watched Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? would probably perceive that this is not the majority view. Those contestants like to avoid the grammar questions.
But this fabulous, Australian-made program could save the world… from a future of bad grammar - and from the fear and pain that grammar seems to wrought.
Climb aboard Spacestation Grammatica to learn about punctuation, contractions, parts of speech and sentence construction. The graphics are colourful and engaging and the user is often rewarded by animations with out-of-this-world sound effects. A super investment.
Website Address: http://www.rainforestmaths.com
This site is a joy to use. The navigation is so clear, along with the activities, which are divided by year of schooling.
Created by North-Queensland teacher Jenny Eather, this site brims with appeal and imagination. Even the most reluctant mathematician would be persuaded to take a dip here.
What’s more Jenny has also created a very child- (and adult- ) friendly n online maths dictionary, which features animation along with explanation. Explore and enjoy.
Children's week - Education Poster
PARENTS’ greatest sources of love, joy,
pride and frustration – children – are the
focus of celebration this week.
Children’s Week, which runs until Sunday, will see lots of activities and events across Melbourne with great opportunities for families to spend time together.
Download our web-friendly Children's week poster.
Teachers: Download a unit chart of activities anchored to Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Process, Garder's Model of Multiple Intelligences and De Bono's Six-Hat thinking here.
Melbourne's Water - Education Poster
Most of the water Melburnians drink starts its journey in the
mountain ash forests of the Yarra Ranges where there are 157,000
hectares – the size of 77,000 MCGs – set aside for habitation by
animals only. No people allowed.
Read about the journey it makes in your Leader newspaper on October 15th, 16th and 17th.
Or download our web-friendly water cycle poster.
Teachers:The main Victorian school curriculum focus for this poster is the science/humanities/geography strand.
Other strands for these activities are: English, Maths, ICT, Thinking, Communication, Interpersonal Development, Personal Learning.
Download our water cycle classroom activities table.
Green Living Poster
Take a look at our companion website, with interactive graphics on greener living, links and suggestions for school activities.
Do you know someone who is helping to make Melbourne a cleaner, greener city? Nominate them as part of the Greener Communities promotion.
About Leader Education
Leader Education was established last year with the primary aim of increasing school engagement with Leader Community Newspapers.
Schools are anchors of much community life, so it makes sense for your local community newspaper, the Leader, to focus on serving them well.
Much of Leader Education's activity could be categorised as a program known around the world as “NIE” – Newspapers in Education (or Newspaper in Education).
Newspapers in Education programs are co-operative partnerships between a newspaper or newspapers and school systems; schools, students, teachers, parents; also with governments, government departments, community groups and businesses.
These programs aim to promote the use of newspapers as an educational resource. They promote literacy, specifically the reading of newspapers, and aim to engender a lifetime newspaper-reading habit.
NIE programs can include many types of components;
To contact Leader Education, email us:
education@leadernewspapers.com.au
For Students: Reader Reports And News Pics
Are you curious about the the world around you? Have you taken a photo of a newsworthy event and would like to have it published?
Submit your photos to Reader News Pics here
Or submit a news report at selected local Leader websites.
So how do you write a news report? Read here about writing news and writing for the web.
For Parents: Choosing a school
When choosing a school, where do you start?
Visiting schools is one way.
And preparation is the key to a successful school visit – that is, one where you receive all the information you require.
The State Government, via its Schools Online website, advises parents to consider the following questions:
The Association of Independent Schools of Victoria (AISV) also advises parents think about exactly what they want as they embark on the school-selection journey.
The ASIV asks, via its website, parents to consider: "Do you want your child to learn to network, to think innovatively, to be independent? Schools also provide an opportunity to develop social and interactive skills. Each family has a set of values they live by – religious or philosophical. Choose a school that complements your values."
"Involving your child in the decision is also recommended, as your child is the one who will need to feel comfortable and positive about being there."
For more information:
Association of Independent Schools of Victoria
Victorian Government Schools Online
Catholic Education Office
For Educators: Workshops
Leader Community Newspapers run very low-cost professional learning workshops for educators. Find out more.
Our publications
Leader Community Newspapers and websites have published several magazines and specials pages for both parents and students:
Pond poster liftout
The first in an ongoing series of double page posters tailored to the Victorian curriculum. See it here
Nominate someone you know for a 2008 Leader Sport Star award.
Find out more about our Sport Star program here.
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