Anzac Day read alouds, graffiti wall and not-quite foldables

I posted the other day about our ANZAC Day book display. This morning we had our school ceremony. When returned to the classroom we read Mark Wilson's absolutely brilliant book My Mother's Eyes. I had not read it before today and it's quickly jumped up to the top tier of my favourite picture books for older readers list. (Another fabulous book is Norman Jorgenson's In Flander's Fields  - scroll down to find the reviews - which I read every Rememberance Day). The ending brought tears to my eyes even as I was reading it to the children! There was so much for us to discuss with regard to visual literacy, and also inference as we are never told explicitly how the story ends but the students use the clues to work it out. On Thursday during library I will read another picture book, The Red Poppy. There is a great interview with the author on this website. I am really looking forward to reading this one together!

During literacy rotations we have a reading group. Up until this now this has been mostly guided reading focusing on analysing the structure and textual features of persuasive writing (as this appears on The Test which hits up half way through Term 2). This week the students are able to choose from a wide range of picture books and non-fiction texts on Anzac Day. I included a copy of a speech given by a soldier at our Anzac Day ceremony and the ceremony booklet. The students were able to partner read or read individually. During the last ten minutes they filled out poppy-shaped graphic organisers responding to these questions.

Here are some responses. The students love reading what others wrote.

It's very interesting to see which type of text they select to read.

Here is a picture of the whiteboard 'graffiti wall'. The kids really love being able to use the whiteboard markers to do this! From my perspective, I love using literacy activities that truly engage the students and help them delve deeper into the meaning of Anzac Day!

Sadly, I don't think we'll have time to write any poems as we are out of the classrom for 1.5 days this week due to Anzac Day itself and interschool sport. Not to mention specialists and the ceremony this morning. Valuable though all this is, there's never enough time to accomplish everything I would like to try!