The Year of Billy Miller

Mrs Boyd’s Bunch, Bowen Australia

kboyd42 About Us, Australia, Mrs Boyd's Bunch, The Year of Billy Miller , , ,

We are a class consisting of 23 students from a small coastal town in North Queensland called Bowen. This is our first time participating in the Global Read Aloud Challenge and we are very excited about this learning experience. Our school is a Primary centre of nearly 500 students from Years Prep to 6. We are part of the beautiful Whitsunday region and are at the gateway of the Great Barrier Reef, making us a very desirable tourist attraction. We have a very family friendly small school environment which fosters learning and growing together. We look forward to sharing and reading all of the contributions to the Global Read Aloud Challenge.

Swing into 2K, Bowen Australia

ckirk36 About Us, Australia, Swing into 2K, The Year of Billy Miller , ,

We are a class of 23 Year 2 students in Bowen, Australia. 2K enjoy swinging into a great book and sharing their writing. We have just completed the Premier’s Reading Challenge. It is the first time we have participated in the Global Read Aloud and we are extremely excited to learn from you all.

Bowen is a beautiful town on the eastern coast of Queensland, Australia.

Qld_bowen

The picture of the BIG mango represents the delicious fruit we are well known for.

bowen big mango

Our school is a couple of streets away from the beach. As you can see we are extremely spoilt.

bowen beaches

Our Collaboration Begins

techbrekkies Fish in a Tree, Global Read Aloud 2015, The Year of Billy Miller ,

Global Read Aloud

 

We have been counting down for weeks from all corners of the globe. The time has finally come around for Global Read Aloud 2015 to officially start. Our group’s collaboration consists of 30 amazing classes, two books, 1 University and tech-savvy guest contributors. Over the next six weeks we will participate in a range of activities that will integrate reading comprehension skills, creativity, technology resources and digital citizenship. Join us in celebrating quality books, authors and promoting a love of reading.

 

The Year of Billy Miller – Sketchnoting

techbrekkies The Year of Billy Miller, Week 1, Zeina Chalich , , ,

Sketchnoting

Sketchnoting builds a connection between verbal and visual components. It is a personal form of note-taking that activates the brain in the process much the same as doodling. Doodling is a way of thinking, of drawing information around a thought process.

TASK

Make visual notes (sketchnotes) about the main events from a chapter in the book. Take photos and upload your notes to the blog or use any available apps to make your visual notes. Label which chapter you are sketching about.

Consider.. Who? What? When? Where? How? Why?

What visual representations will best describe…

* The sequence of events?

* The emotions of the characters?

* The impact of what happened?

* The text you will use?

TOOLS
Paper & pencil or black felt tip pen
OR
Ipad apps – Bamboo Paper, Paper53, Bookcreator
(It’s easier to do your first sketchnote on paper)

 

EDUCATOR RESOURCES

Sketchnoting – Intelligent Notetaking – explains my passion for sketchnoting, what and why we sketchnote with basic shapes and examples to support beginners.


Sketcho Frenzy – Basics of Visual Notetaking – explains fundamentals of text hierarchy, words as images, and the structure of sketchnoting.

 

Zeina_Chalich_ProfilePic_June_2015

Zeina is the Leader of Learning & Innovation at a Primary school in Sydney. She loves sketchnoting, lego and coding on her ipad. Zeina runs the makerspace (you can check us making at #stfmaker) at her school where students come to code Sphero Robots, create things with Littlebits and Makeymakeys, create amazing structures in Minecraft and sometimes even cardboard! Zeina loves connecting and collaborating with teachers from around the world on twitter. She would love to share your sketchnotes with her followers @ZeinaChalich

DND 2nd Graders

kdruckmiller About Us, America, DND 2nd Graders, The Year of Billy Miller ,

We are excited to be reading The Year of Billy Miller for the 2015 Global Read Aloud.  We are the DND 2nd Graders and are part of K-1-2 multi-age classroom. The K-1 members of our classroom will be participating in the Amy Krouse Rosenthal Global Read Aloud Author Study.

Billy Miller

Our school is located in Oak Park, IL, which borders the western edge of Chicago. Illinois is situated on Lake Michigan, one of the five Great Lakes.  Approximately 430 students attend Whittier, which is a K-5 building, and our classroom has 20 students. We have art, gym, music, library and Spanish in addition to our core subjects of reading, writing, math, science, and social studies.

US Map OP Map

 

Our town has visitors from around the world because a famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, lived and worked here.  Ernest Hemingway was also born here.  Students enjoy our beautiful parks, fun extracurricular activities that include ice skating, playing sports such as soccer or t-ball, break dancing, ballet, hip-hop, and swimming.  We also enjoy the proximity to Chicago and can take a Metra train or elevated  “El” ride into Chicago to enjoy the Lake Michigan beaches and many museums.

Year 3C Bowen State School

kmack43 About Us, Australia, Bowen 3C, The Year of Billy Miller ,

We are a class 25 Year 3’s from beautiful Bowen. Like 20Somethingkids in Second Grade, most of us were in the same Year 2 class and looped to Year 3.

Our school is very special this year as it is 150 years old. We celebrated this with a fete, reunions and many festivities.

Bowen is on the north-east coast of Queensland, Australia. The fantastic Whitsunday islands and the Great Barrier Reef are just off our shores. 

Although we live in the tropics, it is pretty dry and humid here. January is the hottest month with a maximum average day temperature of 31*C. July is the coldest month with an average day maximum temperature of 25*C. 

We have seven beautiful beaches to visit in Bowen. Our Front Beach has a soundshell stage, a water park and a skate park and we are famous for our big mango.

We love reading and writing and have read some amazing books this year. We are looking forward to reading and discussing ‘The Year of Billy Miller’ by Kevin Henkes.

We have a class blog at:

http://bowenstate.edublogs.org/

The Year Of Billy Miller Padlet Predictions

Mrs Pratt The Year of Billy Miller, Week 1

wordle 11

Hi everyone!

For this predicting activity, I have created a word cloud using Wordle. The word cloud was generated by entering the book’s blurb into Wordle. If you are familiar with Wordle, you will know that the more often a word occurs, the larger the word in the word cloud.

To participate in this activity, view the word cloud with your class, and discuss your predictions. I think that given the large number of participants, it will be a lot easier to create one post per class to share your students’ thoughts about what the book is going to be about.

Clicking on the word cloud will take you directly to the Padlet that was set up for us to share our predictions. Please note that the Padlet is going to be moderated by myself and Tam so we keep it safe (this means your post may not be published instantly, but we will check and publish at regular intervals every day).

I very much look forward to reading everyone’s predictions!

Enjoy!

🙂

Emmanuelle