Paddy and Rachel: Hello, I'm Paddy and I'm Rachel and this is Cup of Tea with a teacher.
Paddy: A podcast that lasts around about the right amount of time to have a cup of tea or coffee and catch up on the latest in the world of teaching, particularly literacy, numeracy and all things library.
Rachel, what is happening in your library at the moment?
Rachel: Well, most of my classes, at the moment, are focusing on public speaking. So, my job comes under the English syllabus and as part of that, we have the oral language and communication component. So, under that, I work on public speaking in Term One and then we do debating in Term Four. But it's all things public speaking, at the moment, learning about manner and matter and method and how to engage an audience.
Paddy: It probably wouldn't surprise anyone to learn that I absolutely thrived on public speaking when I was in school. Anything where there wasn't too much writing. I think I really needed to be in the computer world with typing because my handwriting was so bad I couldn't even read my handwriting myself if more than half a day had passed. Public speaking, that is such an important skill these days.
Rachel: Absolutely it is. Yes. And it's why we teach it in Year 2, 3,4, 5 and 6. Term One every year is dedicated to public speaking. And I'm really enjoying now that I've been doing it for quite a long time, seeing that year on year improvement in their speeches, in their ability to get up and talk in front of an audience and just that confidence that these kids have in their public speaking is phenomenal.
This week I've been listing all the books that they're going to do, because, they actually have to do a book review or an author study for their presentation, and I'm so excited for some of the books that these kids have been coming up with and knowing that across a class of 30 students, there are literally 30 different books that they're going to be doing. And I'm not hearing the same book twice.
Paddy: That’s amazing. So, with the public speaking, they do get an opportunity to compete later on in school?
Rachel: Yes. So public speaking, we have an in-school competition at the end of this term. So they’ll do a speech with me and we work on the projection of their voice and having eye contact and the way to use palm cards. Then they go back and they present a speech to their class teacher - they write one in class. The best three in each class are selected to then compete in the last two days of term and I adjudicate that with our Director of Learning and one of the high school English department will come and adjudicate with us so that the whole thing is mediated and then we choose the best across Years 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6 and then we compete next term in the New South Wales Regional Public Speaking Competition.
Paddy: That’s fantastic. The kids must absolutely love that. Public speaking - what are you doing in your library at the moment? Are your children doing public speaking? Do you love the public speaking or do you really like something else? We'd love to know. Put a note or a comment down below and join the conversation.
So it is time for the section of the podcast where we look at books in focus. What’s trending in children's literature this week, Rachel?
Rachel: As I'm sure a lot of you are aware, because it's actually been 80 years since the end of the Holocaust and the end of World War Two, we are seeing just a plethora of books come through on this subject, and we're seeing picture books - “Stars of the Night” by Caren Stelson that won the ALA Award at the end of last year; we've got “The Librarian of Auschwitz” by Salva Rubio, which is a graphic novel that's came out; we've got a whole stack of novels, so we've got “When We Fly Away - A Novel of Anne Frank Before The Diary” by Alice Hoffman; we've got “The Girl Who Lived to Tell Her Story - The Daughter of Auschwitz” by Tova Friedman and I have just finished reading Katrina Nannestad’s latest “All The Beautiful Things”.
I love Katrina Nannestad’s books. I think her historical fiction is just so spot on. The kids can engage with it. They've got beautiful messages in all of them and they are historically accurate. I just absolutely love her books. This particular one looks at the Holocaust and the half a million Sinti, who were the German Romani people who were killed. It looks at the deaths of 300,000 people with disabilities, and it looks at the tens of thousands of political opponents that were also killed as part of Hitler's regime.
Paddy: These are tough, tough sort of topics, aren't they? What year group are these particular books aimed at?
Rachel: Because I've got my library divided into grades that can borrow. I have this sitting in my middle school section. So it's Year 5, 6, 7 and 8 that I have this for although sometimes my Year 4 students, who are at that higher engagement level, I will let them read it but generally, I like to hold them off until Year 5 just because there are some very advanced concepts in there.
For those who haven't come across this book, it's actually the story of a young girl, Anna, and her youngest sister, Eva and Eva takes longer than others to learn new things and has what Hitler defines as a “mental deficiency” for which he wants her removed from society. So Anna and her mother find a way to hide Eva away, and then a number of other people end up hidden by the seamstress Lintz.
It's also the story of Eva Braun, who was Hitler's girlfriend and for a very, very short time wife, and the fact that it is set in Berchtesgaden, which held the Obersalzberg, which was actually Hitler's home. So it's set within his home town area and it's a story of loyalty and love and family and friendship and understanding and tolerance and basically the fundamental belief that every life is valuable. And Katrina Nannestad just hammers that home so beautifully in this book.
I would strongly recommend anybody who doesn't have it in your library, make sure you get it and if you haven't read it, make sure you read it before you give it to your students because it is a spot-on book from a brilliant Australian author.
Paddy: You've got me wanting to read it now. I mean, it sounds very compelling. I think we need to keep revisiting these stories. We need to keep exploring the themes and concepts around what has happened in the past and hopefully together we can move forward to have a better now and a better future.
Paddy: In terms of resources this week - what have you been working on, Rachel?
So we've just released on Wednesday gone, “Stars of the Night,” which is about Czechoslovakian children who were rescued on the Czech Kindertransport. He's now known as Sir Nicholas Winton, and he actually rescued 669 Czechoslovakian children by moving them from the Czech Republic and had them transported out to England, where they were adopted by other families and it's a picture book that looks at that journey and looks at his rescuing of those children. But it only came to light after he had passed away that there were letters from these children about what he had done. So we've made resources for that, that just explore the ideas of the Holocaust, mainly through comprehension activities and just expanding that, but also with the creative writing idea of the fact that every life matters and that saving one life, you save them all.
Paddy: Over 600 children. That's absolutely incredible - that’s a true story right?
Absolutely – A true story. Wow. well, that is amazing and, you know, of course if you want to jump on to LearnFromPlay.au and take a look at the books that we have activities for, that collection is always growing and Rachel authors all of the activities. We have a team doing design as well, but ultimately all of the ideas that you see on the website are teacher authored - Rachel's doing all of that.
I don't know quite how she's doing all of that and working full time as a teacher librarian, but that is what is happening. So definitely jump on the website and grab those resources and please do let us know if you're enjoying them, because I don't think we're doing this for the money, but we definitely like to get the feedback.
Rachel: I have to say this week we released our blog on Monday and it was all about the fact that this is Kindness Week. And we always think of Valentine's Day that falls at the end of this week, but the whole week is dedicated to Kindness Week and I released a link to a whole lot of our book activities that were about kindness and thinking of others and random acts of kindness and I had a teacher, Gail, reached out to me and sent me an email saying how much she enjoyed the blogs and enjoys our site. I got a real delight out of that. And it really sparked for me that kindness, just made me smile and that's why I do this, so that teachers have this, that they can use and it makes their life easier.
Paddy: Yeah. Don't get me wrong, we would like to do it for the money, but it's just that's a long road - so for right now, we're doing it for the love and we definitely appreciate feedback and, you know, send an email through – Rachel@LearnFromPlay.com.au. Okay so in this section of the podcast, I hope we've still got a few sips left of our cups of tea, we're going to talk about tech for a minute.
One of the things I thought it would be fun to just chat about was I received a random text from our 17 year old son just yesterday about an audiobook on Audible. So he loves to read but he, I don't know if we spoiled him when he was little reading stories to the kids all the time, but he loves to have stories read to him and audio books - he just gets right into that. We have subscribed to Audible since 2007. So that's been a long time. We've got a huge collection of audio books in there and of course you don't even need to buy audio books these days because there's Libby and Borrow Box and all of these things.
But short of that, in your collection, you may have audio books just on MP3 or even the old CD formats, you know. So yeah, I thought we'd spend a minute and talk about the power of audio and spoken word stories and what resources do you have in your library and do you ever refer kids to these external resources?
Rachel: We definitely have a lot of DVDs and we've got some devices that will play those for students and we have some as digital format so we've got those that we can give to them as well. A lot of the Bolinda Audio Productions are amazing so we've got those and, because my library caters for K to 12, we find especially in the high school a lot of very reluctant readers when they're getting into these harder books, like “Of Mice and Men” and “Animal Farm” and these really solid texts that they're trying to read. And by having somebody read it to them while they read along in their book, it can make it far more accessible for them and it also means that if they're following in a book while they're listening to it, they’re still getting that exposure to the spelling. They’re still getting that exposure to the language. They're seeing that written format. They're seeing the paragraphs. They're seeing the sentence structure while they're listening to it. So we're giving them that grammar and that knowledge at the same time as the story, which is really valuable.
The other thing I was talking earlier about the fact that we are doing public speaking at the moment, and every child has had to choose a book that they have read, and that they're going to speak about. And I have had one child in particular who tells me he hasn't read a book. So I had a copy of the new Max Verstappen book “Unstoppable” by Mark Hughes, which I gave him, and he loved because I know that he'd read “Endurance” towards the end of last year, and I gave him that book, and then he came to me the next day and he said, “Oh, Mrs. McCann”, he said, “would it be okay if I listen to that on Audible because we're about to do a big trip down to Sydney and back. Can I listen to the audio version?”. I'm like, “Absolutely, you can!”
Paddy: I think that's dangerous. No, you got to think about this, Max Verstappen, if you don't know, he is a multiple time Formula One racing car driver. You have that on in the car listening to his story, you know what's going to happen - they’re going to get a speeding ticket.
Rachel: Yes, but he's actually got headphones because then he came to me today and he said, “Oh, Mrs. McCann, is it all right? I have my phone with the book on it here. I'll show you. Can I sit in the library and listen to my story?” And this child that obviously has had trouble engaging with any books, I was blown away. So, yes, for some children, it's the best thing for them to be able to engage with this. I had another child today who was going to do their book review on Nanny Piggins, so I've actually directed them towards R.A. Spratt’s podcast so that she can listen to those Nanny Piggin stories because she had no idea that R.A. Spratt releases one of those every week. There's so many different ways that we can engage with these stories.
Paddy: So there you go. If you've got some reluctant readers, maybe have a think about the audio book resources that you have in your library that you could perhaps recommend. Or if you don't have those resources in your library, do let kids know about Borrow Box and Libby. They're two of my absolute favourite apps because it's such a great resource from your local libraries.
So I'm almost down to the very last tea leaves in this cup here. But that's okay. This has been a great conversation. This is Episode Two of Cup of Tea with a Teacher and you're very welcome to have coffee as well.
One thing we will just quickly touch on before we close up today is we are very interested in getting your questions and having teachers perhaps participate in the conversation just by submitting an email to Rachel with a question or putting it on any of our social media. And we did get a question from Katie, who asked for a list of all of the books on the site that we have done activities for. And when I say we – I mean Rachel. Rachel, do we have such a list?
Rachel: We actually do. So we didn't until Katie asked that question, because it's something I'd never thought of. We currently have 389 books on the site for which we have created resources, and you can search those by subject, you can search those by title you can search those by a number of different ways. But as a librarian, she said, Well, actually, I'd love a list where I could see which of the books are there, and then I can pull those from my collection and work backwards rather than trying to find something that matches the curriculum.
So I sent her a copy of that list just as an Excel spreadsheet of all the books, but we have created a really nice copy and you will find that on the home page under newest resources a button will take you to that list and you'll be able to see all of our books - the title, a picture of the cover, the author and the illustrator for each of those books. So you can just scroll through and see which ones you have in your library.
Paddy: Beautiful! If you do want a CSV or an Excel spreadsheet or something, just reach out on email. It's Rachel and me and, you know, pretty much you're going to get one of us. So, you know, just by all means reach out and we'll send it along to you.
Rachel: And it made me realise that for me as a librarian, I kind of work in a little bubble, and I would love to hear from people about what they are doing, what tech they are using, if they're seeing something that's coming through for this books in focus, just any ideas that you have for what you're doing and how we can share that with other teachers and other librarians out there.
Paddy: And my challenge for you this week is if you have not already done so to download Libby, that's the Libby app. It's free! It's Libby by Overdrive for both iOS and Android devices. You can even put it on an iPad, which I highly recommend because, you know, back in the day, all of the magazines you'd go to the newsagent, there were all these beautiful magazines, and you would stand there perusing them for hours because there were 8, 9, $12 and so and now, of course, they are even $20 or what have you. But all those magazines are on Libby. It's absolutely amazing. So any conceivable subject you could think of, they'll either have a series of magazines or one offs. They have them from around the world as well. So jump onto your iPad, download Libby and just punch in your library number or check in with your library how they connect to that and enjoy all these lovely resources.
Paddy and Rachel: And then they'll have lots of cups of tea. Lots of cups of tea. I'm Paddy, I’m Rachel and we have been enjoying a cup of tea. And we will see you next time. In the meantime, send us your questions for the next podcast and let us know what you're up to. See you later.
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