Towards the end of Term One, I introduced the Year 3 classes to the new Jinny & Cooper series by Tania Ingram and the books were a big hit! 

I wanted to build on the interest for this series, but it’s tricky to do in depth work on a novel when you only see classes for 45 minutes once a week. So I asked Miss Mc who teaches 3MC if she would like to read the Jinny & Cooper books to 3MC and then work with me in the library on a Friday. Miss Mc did a fabulous job reading and discussing the books with 3MC.

At our first session in the library we talked about what we liked about the books and which was our favourite book and character, with both The Revenge of the Stone Witch and Cooper the guinea pig being the clear winners. Then 3MC had fun making Cooper pop-ups from Tania’s website and I tweeted our Cooper pop-ups to Tania.

Our second session in the library had students thinking, sharing and recording their responses to the books. 3MC discussed how the first book, My Teacher’s Secret  was important because it introduced each of the characters. In the second book, The Revenge of the Stone Witch, Tania developed the story using exciting cliffhangers and created a mystery that wasn’t solved until the very end. 

The third session was a busy one with 3MC exploring Tania’s website to learn a bit more about her. Then 3MC were VERY excited to hear they were going to talk to Tania via Skype! In small groups they brainstormed questions to ask Tania under the headings Life, Writing and Books. Those questions were then shared and finalised to create a set of questions to ask Tania.

Last Friday was the BIG day and 3MC arrived in the LRC full of excitement (and some nerves) to find the chairs set up in front of the IWB ready to Skype Tania. Miss Y had tested Skype earlier in the week to make sure it worked BUT there were gremlins around! Miss V came and helped to get the microphone working, but when we tried to skype Tania the call FAILED each time. Tania suggested we try a Google Hangout…and it worked!!!

Thanks to technology we were able to sit in our library in Melbourne and hang out with Tania at her house in Adelaide to talk to her about her books and writing….what a fabulous Friday morning in our library!!

THANK YOU TANIA!

These are some photos from our Google Hangout with Tania…

Click on the 4 arrows to make the slide show full screen

Some of the things we discovered about Tania…

Tania’s daughter is a great source of ideas for her stories
Tania writes at home in her lounge room or at her kitchen table
Tania types her stories
Tania really enjoys creating and writing stories.
Tania thinks chapter books are easier to write than picture books (that made people think!)
Tania likes chocolate
Tania is a bit quirky like Cooper
Cooper is based on Tania’s dog that would eat EVERYTHING 
Tania likes chickens (We think her next book should be a chicken story!)
There will be another talking animal in one of Tania’s next Jinny & Cooper books (We’re not telling!!)

We can’t wait for the next two Jinny & Cooper books…