The last of my rap groups finished off their elderly resident outlines yesterday – last week was frantic here, with Book Fair and Grandparents’ Day – and I’ve just taken digital photos of their work, which I’ll add to the Gallery tonight.

The whole school community is celebrating their love of reading this afternoon with a reading picnic – a great sight to behold: 400 students, their teachers, students’ parents and toddler siblings, spread out in groups scattered throughout the school playground, enjoying books and nibblies in a picnic atmosphere. These celebrations have become an end-of-term tradition here at Penrith PS over recent years, and they are so effective at bringing a community together with a literacy focus.

Thanks to all our participating schools for making this book rap such a memorable experience. Lots of you were first time rappers and you launched into this with so much enthusiasm.

I presented the rap blog and wiki to a group of our parents on Tuesday night and they were surprised/enthused/fascinated at how we had harnessed the capabilities of Web 2.0 to share such meaningful learning and teaching, especially that their children had been communicating with students all over Australia and even Vietnam. While preparing my talk, I re-read those early introductory messages again this week, and it was a great reminder at how far we’d all come in such a short time! Great work, everyone!

Thanks also to Jenny Scheffers at Caddies Creek PS, Cath Keane and the team at Ryde State Office (NSW DET) for making sure it all came together.

See you at the next rap!

Regards, Ian McLean
Rap Coordinator,
Penrith PS

Ian has given you his address for sending artwork or you can send it to me, Cath Keane.

I saw Mrs Curl when I was visiting Jenny Scheffer’s library – she’s large and glittery. I must pay another visit to see the life sized Mr Barden ‘in the flesh’.

We hope to run another primary school rap in term 3, based on the CBCA Book Week titles. Check Scan and the School Libraries and Information Literacy website for updates.

Thanks for joining the Wilfrid rap, and many thanks to Jenny and Ian, our wonderful coordinators.

Cath Keane

Meet Mr Gilchrist under the Home tab. Scroll down until you see him.

If any other schools would like to post pics send Mr McLean an email attachment of your work at: ian.mclean7@det.nsw.edu.au

The Coordinators

If you haven’t yet posted your class’ / group’s Rap Wrap Up message or any of the Rap Point responses don’t worry – you have until the end of this term (11th April). We would love to read your students’ creative ideas and reflections about the book rap.

Jenny Scheffers
Rap Co-ordinator
TL @ Caddies Creek PS

Students at Caddies Creek PS have sent artwork of their Rap Point 3 new resident. Meet her under the Home tab. Scroll down until you see her.

If any other schools would like to post pics send Mr McLean an email at: ian.mclean7@det.nsw.edu.au

The Coordinators

Well done on uploading such a great pic!

I’ve used my limited knowledge of HTML to shrink the size of your graphic so that it appears the same size as all the other images. (Actually, I noticed it was of similar dimensions to that elusive knitting graphic, just switched around the other way, so it was an easy calculation to make.) I’ve added your contribution to the basket of memories wiki page.

The other way to have done it – without needing to know HTML coding – would have been to shrink the large rectangular image to about 85 x 45 pixels, ie. a “thumbnail” version of the original, in an image manipulation program (such as Photoshop), and upload that result.

Mind you, when I created this wiki exercise I had no idea that schools would be game enough to add images – otherwise I might have set out the steps needed to make images happen, but so many people were braver than even myself!

Yes, don’t worry about rushing Rap Point 3 and the Rap Wrap Up. I have one group which is unavailable to complete Rap Point 3 until tomorrow, and none of my groups are ready to Wrap Up yet.

Regards,
Ian McLean
Penrith PS

I’ve been fiddling around with the wiki page and I’ve added a pic to the others in the list…. but it’s really huge and I don’t know how to make it smaller or even how to remove it from the list! Sorry. It’s named Koori Xmas Tree and it’s a pic of a tree we made last year out of cutouts of our hands. We had traced the hands onto painted sheets of past copies of the Koori Mail newspaper. We thought it would help Miss Nancy to remember Christmases when she was a little girl.

Miss Gray and her class have gone on an excursion today, but I’m hoping we’ll get time later in the week to finish Rap Point 3.

Miss Annette,
Shalom Christian College.

What a great job you’ve done with your students creating fascinating new characters for Rap Point 3.

With the interruption to school because of the Easter holidays, many groups may not yet have posted their Rap Point 3 responses. Don’t worry – there is no strict deadline so just post your message to the Wilfrid blog when you find the time. We’d love to hear all about your new characters.

We are also looking forward to reading your groups’ Rap Wrap Up comments, on the Rap Wrap Up page, over the next few weeks. It’s very important that the students have an opportunity to to reflect on their learning. We’ve all come so far in just a short time. Just think back to what you and your students knew about blogging, wikis, book raps, picture books and memories just a few weeks ago.

Teachers and teacher librarians can also post their personal reflections, and suggestions for improving future raps, below. Your feedback would be most appreciated please.

Happy Rap Wrapping everyone! Thanks for your support.

Ian McLean and Jenny Scheffers
Rap Coordinators

Most definitely! Steal away! That’s why I posted the idea.

It occurred to me that while I drew the resident’s outline around our volunteer, the students would be already sparking ideas off each other. And it worked! (We did our second outline today.)

I’m hoping to photocopy some large elderly faces later today (oops, look at the time! Eeek) so the students can select an appropriate face for their new resident. We’ll probably add some grey wool hair, as well.

I make a point of jotting down their banter for use in writing up our rap responses. When I write fiction texts myself, they are always much too wordy and complex. I just love the natural language of young students and I find that their scribed sentences have an economy of words and a unique spontaneity that sounds just like a picture book.

Re the avatars: there are two types of avatar. The site allows you to have an avatar for a blog page (if you have one) and a second avatar (or a repeat of the same one) for making comments. Try clicking the hyperlink “Change your comments avatar”.

(PS. Ah! I see that it’s working!)

Have fun!

Regards, Ian McLean

I love that idea of drawing around a body to make a new resident. Do you mind if I steal the idea? We are a week behind with the rap points because I was away last Tuesday when Miss Gray and her class come to the library (they didn’t want to go ahead without me).

I still haven’t been able to get an avatar up. I’ve uploaded it to the place in My Dashboard, but can’t find where the comments avatar uploading thingy is.

Happy Easter to all Wilfrid Rappers

Annette
Shalom Christian College.