A meeting of the Supermen? PRC 2010

Only a few days after hanging up the framed Premier's Reading Challenge poster of our students in our new BER school library (our students were selected this year's Challenge "poster kids", below), and opening the library to its first timetabled week of visitors, I was off to represent us at the annual reception. This year, the PRC celebrated another successful year at the Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour.



My official job this year was to be the minder for football heroes, Mario Fenech and Hazem El Masri (that's Hazem in the background of the first pic, behind those two handsome superheroes). Mario and Hazem had a great rapport with the students attending the event, and slipped in plenty of references to the value of reading, as each group wound its way through short, meet 'n' greet activities - with a host of popular children's authors and illustrators, including Duncan Ball with Selby the Talking Dog (who stayed mute), and Kim Gamble sketching yet another "Tashi" masterpiece as we watched, gobsmacked.


Kim Gamble draws "Tashi".

Snow White was also there, making balloon animals, and there was a very gregarious Superman, who, at the event's close, did additional duties - as Selby's minder and Grug's wrangler!

Yes, Grug is back! Remember that shaggy caveman creature from the 1980s, in Ted Prior's hugely popular little picture books? Well, Grug is back in print, and many of the younger students found their own little stuffed Grug in their goody bags (look out for them in bookstores this Christmas!) Several of the adults noticed, just before the Premier's car was due, that a huge blue vinyl bag had arrived in the foyer. Normally, such an occurrence may have caused a security alert, but we were abuzz with "It's Grug! Grug's in that bag! What else is that shape like that? That'll be Grug!" (Well, we had noticed his name on the guest list, which helped immensely.)


Grug arrives undercover!


Grug unleased!


Selby unleashed!


Premier of NSW, Kristina Keneally, spoke passionately about the joy of reading, and the many rewards that books can bring.


Children's author Andrew Daddo sums up. Boori "Monty" Pryor is in front of me!


Superman is asked to round up the overheated Grug and Selby.




Grug has left the building!

Destination 2011: Guided inquiry

I'm off tomorrow to a teacher-librarians' seminar on "Guided inquiry", presented by Dr Ross J Todd!

Teacher-librarian Lee FitzGerald, a former editor of "Scan", is also presenting and last time I heard of her experiences trialling "Guided inquiry" under Ross's guidance, I went back to my school and made a point of recording more often student pre-test and post-test results and tracking the emotional side of my students' self-evaluations, thus gaining very solid statements of the students' analyses of their learning, in their own words.

Powerful stuff! The Kinder students who were part of a wiki project in 2007 still talk about those experiences to this day, and the Stage 3 students who did a bushrangers WebQuest in 2008, and recorded their learning on a blog, are being represented in a text book very soon!

Both of those successes occurred without the benefit of now seemingly-indispensable elements such as IWBs and the Connected Classroom. Looking forward to tackling the next stage!

Update:
Ross J Todd presents the election speeches of Obama and Cheney... as Wordles!

Entering the literary garden of delights!

Student comment: "I saw the Frog Prince and his golden ball in a bowl,
but I think that is the same bowl Chook used last year when
he was being an astronaut!"

Today, the students at my school had their first experiences in our newly built school library. I've spent three weeks unpacking the book stock (from long-term storage) and decorating with new and nostalgic elements. The students were full of questions, but I used Circle Time to maximise and equalise all the the talking and listening. It was a great day. The looks on their faces, as they explored (hands free) all the new nooks and crannies made all the planning and hard work worth while.


Our historic school milk bottles are now enshrined in a shadow box.

The quote from a framing store, to have the bottles placed into a customised shadow box was $200 but I did it for about $40, thanks to parts bought from Spotlight. The inside text reads: Penrith Public School’s library stands on the site of a portable library building, and before that a previous portable building. In 2010, workmen excavating the foundations found these "school milk" bottles buried deep in the rubble. One is embossed "1/3 PINT PASTEURISED MILK". See the original blog entry of our archeological find HERE.

48 more photos of display elements ready for today's opening are HERE!

A tale at 3.20 - a.m. that is.

"Don't blame me, it was Tiger. (Who only looks like a platypus. Made of sheepskin.)"

Okay, a new spooky story for you:

My Jack Russell terrier is on medication for meningitis at the moment, and needs to visit the backyard more often than normal. In the past he's had quite an affinity with a ghost in the house (who was here before he was, and has done numerous freaky things both before and after the dog arrived). This morning, I started dreaming about dog poo and awoke to realise the smell was still there. I fumbled around for my glasses and the bed lamp to get the dog outside. I noticed that the desk clock was flashing - there had been a power outage during the night. The clock was flashing 3.18am.

I found the dog poo way down the end of the hall, neatly stepping over it to put the dog out to complete his task, then returned to check the time on my watch and clean up the mess. It was now exactly 3.20am.

So.... did my dog doing Number Twos at 3.18 cause the power outage, or did the power outage cause him to need to poo?

Or was it the ghost - but she smells like fish, not dog poo, but the dog often barks at the exact spot in the family room where we used to encounter her fishy smell, months before the dog arrived as a pup?

Surfing disco time!

Season's greeting, everyone!

My previous ElfYourself videos are HERE and HERE!

First one in... is a leaf!

Mmmmmm. How does that happen? Somehow I should have known that the leaves would beat the humans into the newly-renovated pool, before it's even finished filling up. Now it'll probably rain.





Ah! Found a "Before & After" shot!


Pool in November 1999


Pool in November 2010

Caged!

Here's something hilarious! Jack, who hates being locked up in his "recovery cage", has taken to entering his cage voluntarily! He's sitting in there now, with his blankey piled high!

The vet (and hundreds of dollars in tests) says that Jack's chronic neck pain is unlikely to be a slipped disc, bladder infection or arthritis, but possibly mild, non-infectious meningitis - or perhaps a rare brain lesion. Hope this new medication works. We're treating for meningitis and hoping for the best. The hardest part is keeping a Jack Russell terrier calm. Jack Russells don't do calm. Hence the cage.

Superman (It's not easy)

Five for Fighting sing "Superman (It's Not Easy)"

GJoves put this great Five for Fighting song together with images from the 2006 movie, "Superman Returns" to create a very cool Youtube music video. The distinctive Martin Place fountain, in the Sydney CBD, is glimpsed.

A cameo for Therin

An interesting use of Youtube and photo editing tools to present a "Star Trek" fan story as a photostory:


"Angels of Acheron, Part I",
a photostory sequel to "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"
by pauln6
Spot the cameo by Therin of Andor in Part II:


"Angels of Acheron, Part II",
by pauln6

Thanks Paul! Looking forward to Part III! And, in case you mised the cameo, here it is:



The central character in this still is a female Andorian security guard, utilising Suzie Plakson's "Tarah" head (from "Star Trek: Enterprise"). She'll feature more in Part III, Paul informs me.

The joy of unpacking

When we last left Ian, like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives..., he said, optimistically, "looks like the unpacking will be up to me (which I'm quietly pleased about, because I need to do lots of culling)."



Well, here we are at Day #2 of Project BER and things are going swimmingly. On Tuesday I wandered around my new BER library space in a daze for about two hours, tinkering here and there, unpacking a box here, having lessons in lights and door locks there, but I was able to coerce a teacher-librarian colleague to check out the job facing me and we agreed things weren't too bad at all. But what a challenge!

The previous library was hideously overstocked and over-furnished, so looking at the bare minimum new library furnishings allocated to a school of our population, and the hundreds of cartons needing to be unpacked, was very difficult. The Principal's first comment was that there seemed to be "lots of shelves" but I knew immediately there was much less than we'd had before. I resolved to let that panic aid in my cull. A friend commented tonight that it was appalling that a TL had to do his own unpacking, but I explained that it's my job to do the decision-making on what I cull - and I'd much rather cull as each box is emptied, and do so methodically. There certainly won't be enough shelves to take the full capacity of all the boxes. (We had a team of eight pro packers to pack up the old library, but it happened so fast I couldn't cull as we went. I could barely keep up with labelling. Just imagine the mess if they had come back to unpack and only got halfway through before running out!)

I realised today that, had I tried to cull stock in the old library, I couldn't have been this ruthless. In the new library, surrounded by the wonderful smell of newness, culling is easy. "Do I really want this old, wrinkled, stained book (that I recall borrowing at my own primary school in the 60s) on the new, pristine shelves?" Nah. Easy! Imagine if we'd received exactly the replacement furniture that we'd had before: I wouldn't have culled much at all, and we'd end up with the same problems we'd had before.

Yesterday on my own, Junior Fiction A-C then back to teach a class of school camp leftovers. Today all day plus a trained helper, Junior Fiction D-Z and Fiction A-O, culling all the way! Good progress, methinks. The Principal has taken me off most of my teaching responsibilities for the time being, our head clerical sourced a trained library assistant for two days (to start), my regular SASS person is ducking across at every spare opportunity (library is only one-fifth of her weekly duties) and we are aiming to have the library open for Week 7, running to the usual timetable. This being Week 2 of the term, my door-to-door wandering minstrel act is finally over. This strategy will give the students their first taste of the new library before 2010 ends. Normally I'd be stocktaking the last three weeks but I'm going to try to get the disposed items noted in OASIS (and to complete a stocktake) after getting all the boxes unpacked.

I'm blissfully happy, but dusty, after a full day of drudgery that is unpacking. Books, books, books, a bear, a chook (great help, not - see above pic), and more books. Tomorrow I'm on my own again, and in the afternoon I'm back teaching the class of school camp leftovers. On Friday, my trained helper is back. Two parents have also popped in today, offering their services whenever I need it. We are getting there! Wish me luck!


Towards the back is a small selection of the many boxes yet to be opened.

"Always Jack" launch at the Hughenden!

I was thrilled to have been invited to the book launch of "Always Jack" tonight - for the third book in what is now a trilogy of wonderful, hilarious, bittersweet, relevant children's novels written by Susanne Gervay. While the first book, "I am Jack" dealt with the issue of school bullying (and has also become a play), "Super Jack" concentrated on the issue of blended families and this new one has a strong focus on family reactions to a mother being diagnosed with breast cancer.

The launch was at the atmospheric Hughenden Boutique Hotel in Woollahra. While my feet haven't really forgiven me for my brisk/strenuous walk there (and back!) from Central Station, I always enjoy that journey, if only for the window shopping along Oxford Street (Darlinghurst, then Paddington, then Woollahra) to get there.



Susanne and the book's illustrator, Cathy Wilcox, were busily signing copies near the front entrance when I arrived and I made sure to get a personal copy and one for the school. Special thanks to Cathy for adding a bonus "Jack" sketch to her signature.


Left: Lisa Berryman, publisher, looks on while Lisa Forrest launches "Always Jack".
Right: Susanne Gervay is photographed by her husband (the model for "Rob" in the books).

Thanks to Susanne and all her helpers for a fun night! On the way back to the station, I managed to miss my fast train home, by mere seconds, because I paused at a Paddington cake shop to photograph these:


Two designer cakes to keep you laughing?

A feet of graffiti

The temporary fence finally came down on the new school library, just after the new signage, old shade cloth and new TV aerial went up (it's been many years since our school had a functional TV aerial!).



The beautifully-laid new concrete went unmarred by students and adults attempting to sign their name in the wet cement - but one of our playground birds managed to perform a spectacular "feet" of graffiti.

Sick doggy

I'm missing the Jack Russell, who spent the night at the vet. X-rays seem to indicate a lesion in his neck muscle from a bony spur. This situation is giving him arthritic pain every time he turns his head to the left. They think.

Even in his pain, he has thoroughly entertained the vets. They were in hysterics on the phone yesterday. Jack really deserves an Academy Award for playing the part of "sick doggy, sick doggy" (rather like the pic above, ears pinned back, sad eyes), but... only when someone looks at him.

The glommer burps!

The glommer, a prototype genetically-engineered tribble predator created by Klingons ("More Tribbles, More Troubles" episode of Filmation's Star Trek: The Animated Series), stalks a group of tribbles. The glommer is the four-legged, orange creature pictured above. Note that the handsome brown tribble (left) once appeared onscreen in the live-action "The Trouble With Tribbles".


The glommer selects a Filmation-pink "safe" tribble, which has also been
genetically enhanced to prevent it multiplying out of control.


An upside down glommer is sated!

The Klingons' glommer breeding program must have been successful after all: glommers (each with one "safe" TAS pink tribble as sustenance) are finally available through David Gerrold's Tribble Toys website or Roddenberry.com!


As it appeared on "More Tribbles, More Troubles"

A hungry giraffe?

Okay, this giraffe was actually a giant-sized poster I passed (in Sydney's CBD on Saturday), but that plant was on the wrong side of the glass, and it was pretty dead anyway. Cruel!

Star Trek framed!

Limited edition film clips - Star Trek (2009)

I picked this up yesterday from Greenlight Memorabilia Works, who have a stall in The Rocks' weekend street markets. Mine is #16 of 250. Very cool!

I accidentally made a self-portrait in my first attempt to backlight and photograph the film clips:

Happy 75th Luna Park Sydney!

Feeling nostalgic in Milson's Point today (I went off to Luna Park to pick up some anniversary goodies!), I realised that the Youtube footage of the "Number 96" characters' 1976 visit to Luna Park Sydney is actually missing its fleeting glimpse of the familiar face! In this, Luna Park's 75th Anniversary week, I believe it's about time to dig out the ol' pics!


Luna Park in "Number 96" in '76




Dorrie, Herb, Flo and Junior on the Big Dipper


Topsy Turvy Flo


Refreshments? Now?


Junior feasts on hot chips and heads for the Tumble Bug


Dorrie staggers


Fairy floss - and a touch of Marilyn with an air vent, Coney Island


Sydney Harbour Bridge backdrop


Back on the Big Dipper!


One more pie before home!

(Airdate of "And They Said It Wouldn't Last": 24/06/76, Network Ten.)

As for today:


Yes, it's 75th Anniversary Luna Park Sydney Monopoly!
Limited to 2500 copies, available only from their souvenir shop or the website!



I got to thinking, though: this game needed some Aussie icons as tokens, not the traditional car, shoe, thimble, hat, etc. Racing past three George Street souvenir shops, on my way to the railway station, I quickly found a miniature Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House in painted resin, a Kombi van with surfboard on top (pencil topper), a silver and enamelled thong (flip flop) with road signs on the inner sole (mobile phone charm), fuzzy kangaroo and koala (keyrings) and two thimbles, illustrating a boomerang and Sydney Tower. Clever, eh?