Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - graded reader + intergalactic app

Yusuke's Water Planet

Personalising irregular verbs

Another day, another graded reader (I know, I do go on a bit)...

A recent reader leant lots of practice to irregular past tense verbs; cool for teacher, bit of a pain in the neck for the learners "Why are they different?" Erm, well, the Vikings & Anglo-Saxons.....

Imagine you were a spaceman and went to another planet; draw it and describe it. 

Already dark outside, I asked my lads to turn around & look carefully out the window. What could they see - 'stars' a fairly glum response. Yes, but no. That bright one is not a star lads. Your book is called "Red Planet". Any ideas what that particular one is? Penny dropping. Don't believe me? OK, let's check with Star Walk app on my phone. Shock & consternation as the screen shows a live image of what the heavens should be looking like - including constllations, satellites, and...(coming to that) as you move it around. Very cool :)

What planet is red? OK, let's search for Mars. Presto, arrow navigates us to rendez vous with our celestial neighbour, with the cursor exactly over there. Now you believe me?!

Can you see Mars?

OK chaps, what can you see in the sky next week? A "suissei"? You mean a comet? What's it called? OK, let's search for that. Navigated to a spot in the carpet under the board. Oh! Can we see it yet? Why not?! Decent speculation and then a prediction for where it might be next class - come back and find out!

I love this app, as it lends itself to all sorts of searches, besides helping you walk into lamp-posts at night :) I even saw Father Christmas last Christmas Eve!

Graded readers to great storytellers!

Well done Haruka & Ayaka for creating your own inter-stellar movie!

Making stories with Lego comics

Last night of classes, and 66% absenteeism a bit annoying - if I have to be here...

Anyway, chance to try out a cool site I came across via twitter a day or two ago (sorry, forgot the source tweeter - going to do something about that for regular readers in the new year). Lego comics is fairly limited in that it represents a 'flat' storyboard. Other animated ones give you more tools for movement & allow you to add audio.

For the job at hand today though, more than enough. I wanted my student to 'transfer' a story from his most recent reader to the simple choices presented -  so instead of characters going to "The Red Planet" his became an "Island Adventure". In particular, I wanted my student to snip chunks of conversation (locating the direct speech in the book) and present it into bubbles for the comic. Oh yes, in Japanese comics the panels are read in a different order - something to remember.

Annoyingly, the entire story disappeared with only 2 letters of his name left to type...so we re-booted and he directed me with background, characters and text (actually good review!). We also had to guess what the tabs did across the top (no text to help us decide which one was 'save', 'export' or 'delete'! The printed result was lovely quality which impressed us both (something for mum to admire, and make his absentee mates jealous when we get together again in January!)

What do you think of our end result?