CMIS Evaluation

A couple of charming books which have crossed my desk this week would be very suitable for Children’s book Week “Book Safari” activities.

The bus to the zoo from Omnibus Books, by Mary Murphy and delightfully illustrated by Josh Lee, has a bit of a Who sank the boat? feel as the bus in the story picks up more and more passengers on the way to the zoo. Younger readers will enjoy exploring the detailed illustrations to discover the myriad of quirky creatures hiding in the crowd. There are lots of mathematical concepts included and as an added bonus the end papers provide locations of origin of the animals.

The other book – also a picture book,  comes from the winners of the 1988 Kate Greenaway Medal, Mwenye Hadathi and Adrienne Kennaway, titled Laughing Giraffe.  This is one of the African Animal Tales Collection which includes other titles such as the Crafty Chameleon, Greedy Zebra and Lazy Lion. This story proves to the reader that you don’t have to have the loudest voice to be heard.

It seems laughing giraffes are a popular topic. Another title, published in 2008 by Fremantle Press  is Have you ever heard a giraffe laugh? from local author Jamie Edis. This is proving  a favourite with a couple of little people I know.

To complement junior school activities for Book Week , Issue 5 of  Classroom Focus is dedicated to Book Safari.

If you are still looking for ideas and book titles,  have  alook at the Book Week page on the CMIS website.

Don’t forget to check the page out on August 21 to discover the winners!

Let’s face it, students’ first port of call for information is often Wikipedia.  The information there is increasingly reliable but always needs to be checked with more authoritative sources.  Available now is the 2008/9 Wikipedia DVD Selection for Schools, which is a “free, hand-checked, non-commercial selection from Wikipedia, targeted around the UK National Curriculum and useful for much of the English speaking world. It has about 5500 articles (as much as can be fitted on a DVD with good size images) and is about the size of a twenty volume encyclopaedia (34,000 images and 20 million words).”  SOS Children volunteers have chosen and checked each article for vandalism and suitability.  The selection is available for free download or as a free 3.5GB DVD or can be browsed online by subject or title here.

For further information on Wikipedia check the CMIS webpage here.

Google Moon for Apollo11 Anniversary

As part of the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Google developers have extended the Google Earth  application to include an extensive coverage of the Moon. Users can explore the surface of the moon and many well known features and also tour the sites where the astronauts from all Apollo missions worked.

Another very interesting website is the Newseum which has a special 40th Anniversary exhibition which includes information about the specialised requirements of the Television camera used to take the historic ‘First Step” pictures.

For a very “spacey” week the CMIS Theme page on Astronomy is a good starting point. There are links to many different space related websites, including the Australia Telescope at Parkes which played a role in the 1969 Moon landing.

With winter in the southern hemisphere making star gazing a little difficult, the “Tonight’s Sky” movie on the Hubble Telescope site gives a great viewing opportunity for anyone interested in the stars.

As a lead up to National Science Week, check out AstronomyWA - they have some interesting articles and Moon related items.

Indigenous Perspectives

Following the completion of the Stage Three units, Primary Connections has launched the Indigenous Perspectives section within the Primary Connections website.

Included on the website are the indigenous perspectives framework and the site also incorporates information and links to many of the Primary Connections units, and to each chapter of the Connecting Minds DVD.

The framework contains six key concept areas which are non-hierarchical and interconnected, and includes: a teaching and learning guide; curriculum unit links to relevant Indigenous perspectives; and a professional learning module to support teachers’ development and implementation of relevant, contextualised and embedded Indigenous perspectives.

The units are accessed by clicking on the relevant headings.