Tech Tips Tuesday

Integrating ICT with Maths

Last week I had a great lesson planned for Maths. I was going to get the laptop trolleys and have my students use a Microsoft Word template to insert 2D shapes into a table. It was fairly straightforward and I had my template ready to go.

Unfortunately, on arrival at school, I found a big red sign on one of the trolleys stating "DANGER. DO NOT USE". I wasted no time tracking down someone who could give me more information. As it turned out, the trolley had been sparking, and was thus deemed unsafe until it could be looked at further by someone in the know. Needless to say, that didn't help me with only 20 minutes until my class walked through the door!

As is often the case when you plan to use technology, I had to rethink what I would do. There were still four laptops and I have a student computer in my room, so I grabbed them. As I went to leave the storeroom, I noticed the iPads, which I hadn't yet utilised. I had no idea what apps were on them, but a plan started forming in my mind - and all it required was the camera and a drawing application.

So what I ended up with was four Maths centres:
1. Using the laptops with the Microsoft Word template to draw and describe common 2D shapes: triangle, square, rectangle, pentagon, hexagon, rhombus, trapezium and octagon. The second page involves students creating their own design with polygons of their choice - but students did not get to this in the time allotted, and finished during our lab session.

2. Using iPads to photograph five shapes in the classroom environment and then using Draw Free to trace the polygons in the photos and label them.

3. Using rubber bands and geoboards to explore quadrilaterals and then draw them in their maths books.

4. Using plastic sticks of various sizes and pins to create polygons with a variety of sides and explore how these shapes change when tilted and manipulated in other ways.

What resulted was a really enjoyable set of Maths centres focused on exploring polygons. I should also mention that I used the Mathletics dictionary and concept search to support my definition of polygons and quadrilaterals prior to the activity centres.

It's great when things work out, even when they don't initially go to plan!

4th Teaching K-6 Blog Carnival

Welcome to the April edition of the Teaching K-6 carnival. This month I had a great response from bloggers who were busy writing great articles. With this month's edition comes a new category for blogs that gripe or brag about things that are happening in the classroom. We have lots of innovative ideas for teaching and thought-provoking articles to inspire you. Thank you to all the contributors for this month. Enjoy, and please, spread the word.

Gripes and Brags

In The Last Zebra the Professor encourages people to keep children's safety in mind by keeping them close. He offers suggestions on how he has succeeded with this with his own children at Professor of Protection.

Gerald Aungst shares ideas for Keeping Kids Focused at Quisitivity.org. He encourages teachers to accept that doodling assists with concentration during teacher-led discussions and points to research that suggests this may be a coping strategy for gifted students.

At My English Pages, Mohammed Rhalmi presents Teach with love and logic- Breaking the ice! He gives suggestions on how teachers can create a positive, caring environment for students. His 'ice breaking tips' are sensible ideas to help teachers to develope mutual respect with their students.

Dana, a homeschooling mum, presents What my daughter has learned through blogging posted at Principled Discovery. She shares about her daughter's learning successes with starting up a blog and creating a science e-zine with multiple contributors.

Innovate - Beyond the Slate

Remember the ant farm of yesteryear? C Merrick presents Gel Ant Farm - A Space Age Habitat For Ants posted at Gel Ant Farms. If you've ever considered becoming a myrmecologist, or want to provide that opportunity to your students, be sure to check out these gel ant farms!

This month at Keeping Kids First, Kelly Hines challenges us to openly explore new learning with our students. Rather than simply go by the book, she encourages us to venture Off the Beaten Path and create learning experiences that are highly memorable to students.

While most of the content of this carnival is focused on K-6 education, Fiona Lohrenz shares some Ideas For Day Care Activities And Games posted at Child Care Only. These ideas are great for developing skills in the early years and engaging children's curiosity.

In these times of great economic crisis, we are all sadly searching for ways to save money and prepare students to act responsibly with finances. Debbie Ducker presents Your Children and Grandchildren Must Learn to Save Money posted at Ducker Promotion Ezine, saying, "Teach your children how to save money at an early age and you will save them a lifetime of heartache."

Meaghan Montrose presents some simple ideas on using flash cards in Effective Learning Strategies and Study Skills- Part 2 | posted at Tutorfi.com.

In the News

How are you a teacher-feminist? Have you noticed the impact of gender, race, and other social schemata in your classroom? Educatorblog presents Ways of the Teacher-Feminist: Text, schema, and stereotypes, oh my! posted at An (aspiring) Educator's Blog. Take the time to read and reflect on this article and consider its impact for your own teaching philosophy and pedagogy.

Chris Mauger has taken a closer look at the development of healthy self-esteem. In Kids and Self-Esteem: Avoiding a Culture of Proud Failures posted at Maugeritaville he encourages us to provide opportunities to try and try again. Chris sees the value in helping students to achieve success for themselves rather than stepping in to do it for them.

This month I present my Thoughts on Globalisation here at Teaching Challenges. I share my personal experiences of globalisation in terms of applying for and obtaining a job in an overseas school.

Brain Strain

This month's brain strain is The Iowa series - Wrap-up posted at Dangerously Irrelevant. It's actually not a hard read this month, and contains lots of great diagrams and videos to present information visually. Scott McLeod provides a brilliantly informative resource discussing the future of education. He introduces five 'levers' to move schools forward and help students thrive and survive in this digital age. This is a resource I would confidently recommend to anyone interested in bringing about change in our schools and making them sustainable in an uncertain future.

Look No Further

Sarah Scrafford presents a helpful resource in 100 Free Online Books Everyone Should Read posted at Best Colleges Online. Here you can link to many of the classics including favourites like "Alice in Wonderland" and "Treasure Island". Her 50 Awesome Open Courseware Classes on Space & Astronomy posted at Rated Colleges may help you to touch-up on your own knowledge as you prepare to teach students about space. (I know I'll be checking it out!)

Erika Collin has gone all out with tips for Twitter this month. Her 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Librarians on Twitter posted at Learn-gasm, and Top 100 Tools for the Twittering Teacher posted at Best Colleges Online will keep you twittering away all those spare moments.

Margaret Garcia presents 100 Best Web Tools and Tips to Organize Your Inbox posted at Radiology Technician Schools. Prior to reading this post, I never realised there was so much one can do with email. If email is getting the best of you, check out this post!

Why not submit your post for the next carnival?

The Teaching K-6 Carnival is posted monthly on the 7th. I am collecting submissions throughout the month, looking in particular for posts that discuss and exemplify innovative teaching and the integration of technology in the K-6 classroom. I also invite a few "brain strains" to keep our minds alert and challenged. Please submit only articles of which you are the author and refrain from using this merely as a sales pitch. For full details, please read my call for submissions.

If you have a relevant post that you would like to submit to the next edition of teaching k-6 carnival use our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Support this Carnival

If you enjoyed this edition of the carnival, you can support its continuation by sharing it with others. Link to us, add us to a tweet, stumble or digg us. Thanks!

Literacy Unit - Rowan of Rin

This week we began a novel study on the book Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda. This is an adventure story that usually appeals to boys aged 9-12 and can be that motivator that hooks them into reading. Emily Rodda is brilliant at crafting stories that appeal to reluctant readers. Another of hers that I love is Finders Keepers.
I'm going to keep a record here of the activities we do with each chapter. I have been using the Four Roles of the Reader to develop these activities. Feel free to use and/or modify these ideas with your students.

For the complete Rowan of Rin unit (in reverse order!) click here.

Chapters 1 and 2 - Summary
In these chapters we meet the characters and find out that the village Rin is in trouble. The stream from the mountain has stopped running and the bukshah have no water. The bukshah provide dairy, wool and transport to the people of Rin. Without the bukshah, Rin will die. The town meets to develop a plan. It is decided that someone needs to go up the mountain to find out what is blocking the stream. Strong Jonn, Marlie and Rowan consult Sheba (the village's Wise Woman) to get advice about the best way to approach the mountain. Sheba tells them a riddle that they don't understand and throws a stick at Rowan.

Activities
Code Breaker

• Work on developing reading fluency with the first three paragraphs.
• Highlight nouns in this passage. Convert singular nouns to plural eg. morning - mornings

Text Participant

• Create a diary entry from the viewpoint of Rowan
• Create a newspaper article about the first chapter. Edit and publish. Insert text into this newspaper generator to create a newspaper clipping.
• Create a cause and effect diagram for the first chapter. (We used Kidspiration.)

Text User

• Discuss features of a first chapter in a Narrative. It needs to create interest and capture the reader. It introduces the problem that the characters need to solve. (To aid discussion we watched snippets from The Simpsons episode 8 of 18, where Homer gets hooked into a "Harry Potter" parody).

Text Analyst

• Take a closer look at ideas about witches and debate whether Sheba is a witch or just a crabby old woman. We used the following PowerPoint slideshow to guide the discussion. Students had 2 minutes to individually brainstorm a list of adjectives to describe witches. We then made a class list on the PowerPoint presentation. After discussion about where these ideas came from, we read the scene with Sheba and considered her witchiness. Students discussed their opinion and then we did "Lay it on the Line". Students who thought Sheba was a witch stood at one end of the line. Students who thought she was just a crabby old woman stood at the opposite end. Students who thought something in the middle lined up accordingly. We then got a couple of spokespeople to share the logic behind their thinking. There were some really well formed arguments based on examples from the text.

2014 Update: Having just taught this section of the book again, I added a Padlet page for students to share their thoughts about whether or not Sheba is a witch. Feel free to have students contribute responsibly.

Witches

View more presentations from pennyryder. (tags: rowan_of_rin critical_literacy)

Teaching "Transport"

I'm not teaching transport anytime soon, but I recently gave some tips to someone who is. So, rather than help just one person, I've decided to share the tips here as well, just in case someone is searching for ideas.

These activities are designed with primary school aged kids in mind (K-6) and generally take a Science/Technology slant.

• If your students are in grade 3 or up, you could consider linking it in with a bike safety unit.
• Have students explore science/technology concepts through tasks -
  build a boat using only paper that will carry a 5c piece from one side of sink to other
  explore flight and discuss the forces that keep a plane in flight
  make those little paper helicopter things
• More science/technology projects can be found here.
• This book looks helpful.
• Create a timeline that shows how people built on one another's ideas to make technological advances with transport. How did these changes better meet people's needs? What impact did they have on society?
• For Teachers in Australia: On the 30th March 2009 at 10am the ABC is running a 15 minute program on Boats in a series called "Take on Technology" for Lower Primary.
  On the 1st April at 10.55am the ABC is running a 5 minute spot on Charles Kingsford Smith in a series called "Australians" designed for Upper Primary. The ABC is running a whole series about transport on For The Juniors at 10am (15 min slots) on following dates. (Second date is the repeat)
  29 Apr 30 Apr Land
  6 May 7 May Water
  13 May 14 May Air
• The website "How Stuff Works" has great explanations of how things work! Here's one on bicycles to get you started: http://www.howstuffworks.com/bicycle3.htm
• The website "How everyday things are made" is absolutely brilliant, but I haven't had much of a chance to use it yet. Amongst other things, they explain how airplanes, motorcycles and cars are made.
• Look at different transport around the world and how this meets particular needs - motorcycles in Vietnam, subways in big cities etc. For thousands of images of transport in a slideshow you can go to http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=transport&s=int Just be warned, not all pictures are vehicles as it's based on a search of the word "transport". If you click on "Show info" in top right hand corner, you will find what the photographer has said about the picture.
• You can also find videos on YouTube or TeacherTube that relate to transport. It might be fun to take a pretend ride in a helicopter by watching a video taken from a helicopter. These videos are very easy to download now using kickyoutube. Instructions are here: http://blip.tv/file/1660808/
• You could look into who would visit your school - fire brigade, waste management, subway conductors etc. Or consider visiting a transit museum.
• See if you can set up a tinkering station where students can tinker with bicycle parts, old toy cars, steering wheels or whatever you can get your hands on.
• Buy or borrow "Cut-away" books that allow you to see cut away diagrams of inside different types of transport. Here is one on The Titanic.
• Think about environmental aspects of different forms of transport.
• Students design their own form of transport to meet particular needs (could design without making) perhaps use the SCAMPER framework to help them think through how they can improve existing models.
• Lego makes great technology kits that help children discover about gears, pulleys etc. These may be costly to get set up, but may be worthwhile if your school is looking to enhance their technology resources.
• Fantastic Contraptions is a popular physics game that might tie in. (I don't really get it - was never good at physics!)
• Billy cart building and racing. Toward the end of the unit, see if you can get some parent helpers on board. Look online and find plans and examples of billy carts. Discuss the merits of different types. Design and build one or more billy carts and test them out.
• UPDATE 30/3/09 Check out the Merriam Webster Visual Dictionary Online to interact with some great labeled diagrams of transport related items.