A Book Review of Oaky and the Virus

Oaky and the Virus: written by Athol Williams and illustrated by Tarryn Locke. Published by Theart Press 

I am a primary school teacher – a technology integration specialist, and I used a Grade 1, a Grade 2, and a Grade 3 class to help me write this review. We downloaded the book from the Oaky website to our Chromebooks, and used it as a class read-aloud in the three classes. We all read aloud at the same time, in unison. Each class loved the experience because the book was very relevant to the COVID pandemic. The three classes helped me write parts of this book review. 

Oaky and the Virus is an educational and fun story about two acorns, Oaky and Oaket. The two acorns learn how to avoid a virus when it comes to their town. The book is the first in the OAKY series of 7 books that follow the adventures of OAKY, an acorn who grows into a big oak tree.

In Oaky and the Virus, Oaky and his sister Oaket hear about a dangerous and tiny virus that has come to town. It could make people very sick. That means the virus could also make them, Oaky and Oaket, very sick if they caught it. The two acorns think of ways that they can protect themselves from the virus and also keep themselves feeling positive and hopeful. Oaky wants to help his anxious sister, Oaket, feel safe. He teaches her a song about how she could protect herself from the virus so that she will feel comforted when she sings it.

The song is available to listen to on YouTube.

What did we like about the book?

All three classes liked the book because it is about the Covid19 pandemic, and children everywhere are worried about the pandemic. The book gives good ideas for keeping oneself safe and positive. The pages are brightly illustrated and written in a large, clear font, which makes reading a pleasure for Foundation Phase learners.

The common favourite part of the story was when Oaky thinks of ways of protecting himself and his sister from the virus. The classes liked Oaky, as a character, because he thought of ways to help keep him and his sister safe, and he didn’t give into fear. He was kind to Oaket. Some children said they feel a bit like Oaket at times, so they liked that way she felt happier when she knew how to protect herself.

Do we think the book could be improved?

All three classes felt the writer should have created the song to a well-known tune so that they could sing-a-long. They tried fitting the words to 'The wheels on the bus' which added another fun aspect to the lesson. The Grade 3s also felt that the book didn’t have enough excitement for them. They suggested that the writer should have added some more relevant scenarios to make the story more interesting, such as:
- hearing about a friend whose parent was very ill from the virus
- maybe one of their own relatives could have caught the virus but fortunately didn’t have to go to hospital. As a result Oaky and Oaket had to be careful to keep away from the relative.

Would we recommend the book to a friend?

Everyone said yes to this. They let that the book gives children hope in the midst of a frightening pandemic. The Grade 1s and 2s gave the book five stars! The Grade 3s gave the book four stars!

An important point to mention is that at the end of the book there is quiz. My three classes had clearly absorbed the story content as they were able to answer all the questions in the quiz.

This is a lovely book. It is available to purchase or as a free download from www.oaky.com. The publishers recommend the book for Grade 1 - 4 learners.

The Grade Ones love Coding

At our school the Grade Ones start coding straight away when they come to school...and they can't even read yet. It is amazing!

What is the Pre-Reader Express Course in www.code.org?

This is a sequence of 11 lessons appropriate for students who either aren't reading yet or still need help reading. It is part of www.code.org. I am the computer teacher at our school and I love using the free www.code.org offerings. 

What is Code.org? 

The Code.org website says, "Code.org® is a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools and increasing participation by women and underrepresented minorities. Our vision is that every student in every school has the opportunity to learn computer science, just like biology, chemistry or algebra.' Code.org.

What I like about www.code.org is that you can choose a course for your classes and add your whole class, and at any time you can see exactly where each one is up to in the course. The students work at their own pace so they don't feel rushed or inadequate, and I circulate so that I can help them if they have any questions.  Each lesson in code.org has a lesson plan for the teacher to go through. 

The Pre-Reader Coding course captures the class's names and shows their progress

After my Grade 1 students have completed the Pre-Reader course we will go on to using Scratch Junior. 

Our Grade Ones love using 'Teach your monster to read'

The online version of Teach Your Monster to Read is free and my Grade 1s love it.  I allow them to use it in the last 10 minutes of our computer lessons https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/. Whenever I announce that it is time to play our reading game, I get a chorus of 'Yays'!

What is Teach your Monster to Read? 

This literacy game has been funded by the Usborne Foundation, a charity set up to support initiatives to develop early literacy. The program is free if you use it online, but you pay to use it as an app.  

The game is for children in the first stages of learning to read, or for older children who need a bit more practice. There is a video trailer on the Home page of the online version of 'Teach your monster to read' that shows how the game works. 

How does it work?

The information provided on the website version says, "The game takes children on a magical journey, meeting colourful characters along the way and collecting fantastic rewards. When children are engaged, they’re motivated to learn. As they progress, they rehearse a range of essential reading skills; matching letters to sounds, blending, segmenting, tricky words and reading full sentences."

Commonse Sense Media provides great reviews of programs on their website. This is one of their reviewers, Caryn Lix, says about "Teach Your Monster to Read" https://bit.ly/3cSm4Zt. 

"Teachers can have students play the game at home or at school. Each student creates an account, which allows teachers to monitor their progress through a dashboard, including how often they play, what games they're playing, and how well they're doing. This makes it a great way to assess basic reading and prereading skills as well as a fun way for kids to learn, on their own time and on their own terms. Students can also use the story as a starting point to come up with their own creative ideas: Write stories about how their monster damaged its ship, for example, or design their monster's home world in art class. Flash cards also provide an opportunity for students to review frequently confused sounds." 

How do you enrol students as a teacher?

You go to the website and sign up for a free teacher account. After that you create multiple players and give each student their login credentials.  The players log in to thir account and play. The app keeps a record of where they are at. As a teacher you can track their progress. The players can use these login credentials to log in to the app on any device, even when they're at home.

All I do in my Grade 1 Google Classroom is provide the link to the login page.  The students click on that and then each one signs in with their credentials - and they start playing and learning.

This is a great online game to add to your Grade 1 collection!

The Grade Ones had fun making Gingerbread houses using Google Sheets

The template is on the right, and the student's work on the left

I absolutely love using Google Classroom on our Chromebooks with the Grade Ones.  They find their way around so easily. They log into their Chromebooks, and find Google Classroom just like that.  

Today I wanted them to get acquainted with Google Sheets. All the instructions and templates can be found in their Google Classroom - each student gets their own copy of everything.  Our lesson was divided into three parts. 

1. First we learned about Google Sheets and practised drawing a staircase up and down to get familiar with colouring in cells. We also created other simple drawings.

2. After that we listened to the story of the Gingerbread Man on YouTube.  What I love about Google Classroom is that the students watch the video within Google Classroom and aren't distracted by noticing any other YouTube videos. 

 

3. Then I gave the instructions for the main lesson where they were provided with a template and had to replicate it exactly.  I also recorded my instructions on the online program https://online-voice-recorder.com/, downloaded it and attached it to Google Classroom so that the students could listen to it at any time if they needed to, 

4. The students then created their houses in Google Sheets and when they had finished they turned them in. I was easily able to look at each one and assess it later on, and I returned their work to them with an encouraging comment made with my Bitmoji Google Chrome Extension.  

A couple more examples

I have to say - I LOVE using Google classroom! 

Poetry month #1: Colour poems (Gr 1)

April is always celebrated as National Poetry Month - a celebration inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996. Over the years, National Poetry Month has become the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets celebrating poetry’s vital place in our culture. During this month I like to encourage my Grade 1 - 7 ICT classes to write and present poetry.  I decided to start on April 1 with my Grade 1 class using PowerPoint.  The topic was Colour poems.

Getting started
We sat together 'on the mat' and discussed our favourite colours. There was a wide spectrum of choices - red, blue, purple, silver, gold, pink, green and more. As we spoke I wrote a few recurring vocabulary words on the board. When everybody felt quite confident about their choice of colour, I read the class a few simple colour poems that  I had found on the Internet. Then we went over the template I had created with them, orally.  They created poems in pairs and related them to one another. 

Using PowerPoint for presenting the poem

This class had not used PowerPoint before but I found that they were fast learners. PowerPoint is an amazing program to use for presenting creative work, especially in a South African school where the Internet is very temperamental. 

The lesson
Step 1: Open the template and save it with your name

The class easily followed this instruction as they had learned how to save documents in previous lessons. 

Step 2:  Start completing the prompts
In computer lessons I always tell the classes to spell the way they think and we'll edit spelling at the end of the lesson.  The students chose their colours and completed the prompts while I walked around encouraging them.

Step 4: Move your words into the middle

We learned how to move our words to the middle to make the poem look more like a poem. This was an optional step.

Step 3: Insert clipart  
Microsoft has a built in clipart selector and the class loved using this to select matching clipart. I love the way Grade 1s talk about everything they do in computer class - they get so excited about everything!

Step 4: Walk around and read each other's creations

They also enjoyed doing this. I am surprised how easily they pick up reading when they come to school. We start school at the end of January - and two months later they have made huge strides!

Examples
I loved the different colour choices. The amazing thing is that we completed the colour poem lesson in 1 hour. 

Well done Grade 1s

The Colour Poem Global Twitter Project #4 (Week 4) GREEN poems with Grade 1

We have joined the Colour poem Global project started by Linda Yollis  http://goo.gl/YtbFkg. The Grade 1s did Green Poems today. The learners are loving this project. They always want to see what other classes have done. I had a student teacher helping me today so I managed to get a fairly complicated lesson done with her help.

Skills learned
We used PowerPoint and I managed to teach them the following skills:

• Adding a colour to the background 
• Finding images in Google Chrome 
• Adding an image by right-clicking and choosing ‘Çopy Image’ 
• Formatting the background to a shade of green

Creating the poem
In order to create the poem we had a discussion about the colour green first on the mat. Each one chose something green to write about. Then when we started on the PowerPoint template our format was as follows:

• Start with a question 
• Write three short sentences about the item they chose 
• Write one final statement about the item

Examples
The lesson went well. Here are a few examples:

My evaluation of the lesson
I loved the different shades of green that emerged. I always tell them that in computer lessons we don’t worry about spelling – we just write and when I walk around I’ll show them how to correct any spelling errors.  I was amazed how well the Grade 1s did in this lesson thanks to my co-helper!

[Grade 1] Introducing Grade 1 students to the African Storybook Project website

I was looking forward to introducing my Grade 1 ICT technology class students to the newly launched African Storybook website and it turned out to be a very exciting lesson. I thought I would write about it.

Step 1: A discussion about the African Storybook website
First we had a discussion about the amazing African Storybook website and all its stories especially created for Grade 1 – 3 students. I showed them a little bit of the website on the big screen, and read them a couple of the stories. They got very excited at the thought that they were going to explore the website on their own.

Step 2. How to locate the African Storybook website
We haven’t done all that much Internet work in Grade 1 as yet, but what I have taught them is how to retrieve a file out of the Grade 1 section of Student Share on our network, and how to open a URL link that is written in a Microsoft Word document.  I had written http://africanstorybook.org/ on the document and so they opened this link quite easily.

Step 3. A rhyme with a catchy rhythm to help them remember the process
We  explored the website together for a while and then I taught them a little rhyme with a great rhythm as we clicked on the relevant parts of the website relevant to young readers

“Find African stories
English
First words.
Read
Clap clap clap”

Step 4. Choosing a story to read
The class was instructed to look through the stories on the page that came up.  I was interested to see how they looked down the first page of stories and generally made for the one that was in colour.

Step 5: Reading the stories
I was amazed as I walked around listening to the Grade 1s reading their stories with great enjoyment. For example, I found two of the students reading the same story together out loud. After the lesson I commended the Grade 1 teacher for enabling them to make such excellent reading progress in just four and a half months

Step 6: Reporting back on a favourite story
We finished off with a report back session on the favorite story read during the lesson. The class loved the website and said they were going to continue reading the stories at home. I wondered if they would manage to locate the website again!

The favourite story was 'Supercow!" This is a great website!