Friday Fun - 4/9/09

This week we've done so many great things, but I don't want to get too wordy, so I'm setting myself a challenge: No more than three sentences per item. Hopefully this will help me to use my words wisely!

Fun this week

Change the Viewpoint
In Literacy we read a segment of Hating Alison Ashley by Robin Klein. As we read we jotted down Erica's feelings and viewpoint as outlined in the text, and considered Alison Ashley's feelings and viewpoint during the same events. Students then repeated this task with a scene from the books they are currently reading for Cooperative Reading Groups.

Dancing with Footsteps
We had a free trial lesson with Footsteps Dance Company to consider their possible use for further dance sessions early next year. Students learnt a Kung Fu Panda dance and absolutely LOVED it! The dance instructor, Rachel, confidently managed the group and taught about 120 students at once - very impressive.

Treasure Seekers
My iPhone alerted me to the fact that there was a geocaching adventure just waiting to happen right near our school. I gathered up my class and let them in on the secret life of geocaching and off we went in search of our treasure. On location (and with the help of some additional hints) we found our prize and traded some school magnets for a balloon to hang in our classroom. (Photo by: JC)

Progress with Promos
Students have now completed the planning phase of their ABC3 Promos and are well underway with making backgrounds, characters and scripts. I'm a little nervous as to how we are going to pull it all together by the 18th September, but hopefully we'll find a way! We plan to dedicate some decent time to the recording side of things next Friday.

Tie-Dying Delights
The students from my home group began their Alkira projects this week with the support of some instructions on KinderArt. Students used rubber bands to create their desired effects and dyed the material up to three colours. Next week we will begin stitching on some additional items to complete our Spring Designs.

Fife and Drum Combined Practice
On Thursday Mr Tucker took the Year 4 Fife and Drum Band to another school for a Combined Band Practice and Performance. They practiced about six songs together and then performed for the students of the host school. It was another great opportunity for our musical talents to be developed and shared.

Maths Coaches
On Thursday I paired up students from Mr Tucker's maths class with students from my maths class and got them to work together on solving some word problems involving money. The coaches really took their roles seriously and gave an appropriate amount of support. They then ordered the prices on some photos of grocery items and rounded the prices to the closest 5c.

Seedlings Sprout
In a few weeks time we will be opening our school's new environment facility - The Sunlight Centre. Students have planted some seedlings that will be on sale at the opening function. It is exciting to watch them grow (but hard to remember to bring them all in at the end of the day!)


Assembly
The Year 4 students hosted this week's assembly and shared their completed homework projects for our Textiles and Design unit. The students from the Fife and Drum band were the presenters and our newly named "Showboating Showoffs" (previously Non-Fife-and-Drummers) performed dances they created themselves. The Year 4 Indonesian Dance group also performed, demonstrating how talented our Year 4s are when it comes to dancing.

Friday Fun - 28/8/09

I want to pause for a moment to brag about the wonderful kids I teach. They are a lovely group of kids with an interest in learning and willingness to focus on a task and get the job done. I am impressed with how self-directed they are and also with how well they cooperate together. For the most part, I can trust them to do the right thing. The teachers who have been taking my classes while I do courses and executive duties tell me that they are delightful to work with.

On Monday I arrived at school to this message:

And this morning I was greeted by a student who had written me a poem.

I feel so spoilt to have the pleasure of working which such great kids.

Fun This Week:

ABC3 Promo
In Australia we are in the process of getting a selection of new free-to-air television channels. One of these will be ABC3, a television channel aimed at programming for children. They are currently calling for primary school students to create promo videos for their channel.
I was recently challenged by the need to create more opportunities for students to write for a real purpose and audience. When I saw this competition, I thought it would be a great opportunity for students to write/create a persuasive text for a real purpose.
This week students from both Year 4 classes formed small groups and began thinking about and planning their approach to this task. They are feeling very motivated by this project and (in my opinion) should be able to create some high quality video promos.
For more information about the competition, visit ABC3 By me.

Listening for the Author's Voice
Last weekend I was reflecting on how I teach my students to write. I was going through the First Steps Writing resources and considering what I'm doing well, what I'm not doing well, and how I want to implement First Steps further in my writing program. One thing I realised I wanted to put greater emphasis on, is the concept of personal voice.
Trent Lorcher at Bright Hub provides some tips on how to explain 'personal voice' to students. I shared this with my students and then we investigated the voice of different authors we know using the following chart:
Students then went on to do their reading for the week and jotted down notes about the voice of their selected author. They discussed this further with their Cooperative Reading Group on Tuesday. The next step is to help children to get a better sense of their own voice.

Bringing Dance to Life
We are going to perform some dances for our assembly next week. The students chose from two themes - 'flight' or 'fireworks'. We explored these themes earlier in the term and students had a chance to create dances in small groups. We are now asking them to fine-tune a dance to share with the whole school. They began practising their dances and we pulled out some scarves for students to use as costumes. It's beginning to look really effective and the kids are keen to perform next week.

Wakakiri
The Year 5/6 students performed in Wakakirri this week and did a really great job. Their dance was spectacular as were their costumes and backdrop. The rest of the school got to watch it on Monday afternoon.


Textiles and Design Homework Projects
Students have been handing in homework projects they created using their textile and design skills. Don't they look great? We plan to share these with the school community at the assembly next Friday.

Place Value and Multiplication Tables
This week we explored place value in Maths and practiced multiplication tables. There were some great interactive websites for this. The Crickweb Maths Teacher Toolkit had some handy place value activities. Woodlands have some great interactive times tables games. My favourite for using on the interactive whiteboard is Hit the Button. We also made our own whiteboard page. Students gave some digits from their phone numbers and I wrote these up on the board. We then ordered these four-digit numbers from smallest to largest, simply by touching and dragging them. You've got to love having an interactive whiteboard!
Students also played with a range of other manipulatives to practice their tables and place value including dice, tables wheels and wind-ups. They rotated through the activities over the week.

Making Movies - Second lesson
Students continued making their movies this week and some finished them, ready to share with parents at our upcoming Learning Journeys. We had a bit of a set-back this week, as many students wanted to include songs, and we needed to find something appropriate that wasn't protected with copyright.
I need to find some Creative Commons songs and collect them together into a common pool that students can select from. That will be one of my jobs this weekend. Any suggestions? I'm also looking for a site that collects "kid safe" songs and won't be blocked by my school.

Senior Sport
In Terms 2 and 3 students in Years 3-6 select a sport to attend on Friday afternoons. Options include things like tennis, indoor soccer, aerobics, circus and ten pin bowling. This term I have been going along to supervise ten pin bowling. The kids love it and are so supportive of one another. It's a great way to end each week.

Friday Not-so-fun

I spent Friday curled up on the couch snoozing, sculling down liquids and gobbling down food in an attempt to help my body fight what I assume is swine flu. The doctor said it is a virus and that I am contagious. Given that I had the flu injection earlier this year (which should cover me for most of the known flus they have vaccines for) I expect that it is probably swine flu. The doctor said that they aren't testing everyone for swine flu now, but only those at risk - asthmatics, elderly, pregnant women, and people with a temperature over 38 degrees Celsius.

I've been achy, coughing, and OH SO TIRED! It wasn't all bad though, as I got to enjoy a lazy day while it rained outside my window. I love the rain. And, today (Saturday), I'm actually feeling a lot better. I woke up this morning to find my feet tapping (something they do when they want to go for a run) and as I prepared my usual coffee and porridge, I looked out at the gorgeous day and felt it would be a perfect day for a bike ride. Obviously, I'm not going to put my body through any of that today - I still need to rest a little longer. But it's good to see I'm well on the road to recovery.

So, I spent even less time in the classroom this week and when I was in there, it had it's own little elements of higglety piggletiness.

Fun This Week

Chance and Data
We covered Chance and Data in Maths this week. I taught one lesson on this for my own Maths class and one lesson for Mr Tucker's class. (His relief teacher had to go to her sick child and I was off class for my executive day, so I went back on his class to fill the gap.) We explored ideas around rolling dice, pulling counters from a hat, tossing a coin, and spinning a spinner. Students really enjoyed these activities. For teachers in Australia and New Zealand, there are some great Chance and Data activities available on Scootle that allow students to explore these concepts.

Textiles and Design Projects
This week we introduced students to the next phase of their learning in our Textiles and Design Unit. We told them that they need to create an item that they can sell at school (at a fete, or market day or other). They need to consider the needs of their clientele and design something that they can make in three weeks using easily accessible resources and drawing on the skills they've learnt so far. We talked about the need to create quality items and determine a fair price. We also suggested that students speak to their proposed clientele prior to making their items in order to determine if their is a market for their product. It is exciting to see the ideas that students are coming up with and their enthusiasm in getting started with the process.

Cooperative Reading
I used my iPhone to record students thoughts about our Cooperative Reading Groups. I plan to use this information to make some adaptations. Here is a summary of their thoughts:

Good

• You can discuss your books and how you're enjoying them
  
• Learn more about how to write better stories
• Small groups with different books and we tell each other about those books
• Get to space out the reading time
• Have little groups and get to discuss your ideas and can have your own opinions
• We share our ideas with people
• Learn how to use a roster
  
• Allowed to read a book and do activities to get you more into the book and learn how to write better stories
• People are enjoying their books and having fun
• After we read we write it all down and the teacher gets to see what we're reading and then we share it with our groups too
• Get to experience new authors and how they create characters, settings and plots
  

Bad

• Most of the activities are too short
• You get through the writing activities too quickly
• Some of the Reading Response Journal sections are too easy
• It's hard to know what to write in Reading Response Journal
• Reading Response Journal is too repetitive and can get boring
  
• People with large books are having trouble finding the time to do their allocated reading AND the writing tasks.
• When there's too much talking it's hard to concentrate
  

Based on these responses, it seems that students find the discussion time very beneficial, but the Reading Response Journal needs to be re-worked. Perhaps it would be best to have a focus for each week and students write to that focus and share about that focus during their discussion groups. For example, one week might be focused on "interesting words and phrases", another on "descriptive passages", another on "characters", another on "author's style", another on "my perspective" and so on. That would mean there would be less repetition and that students would focus on these areas in greater depth.

Friday Fun - 14/8/09

Fun This Week

Maths - Volume
This week I held a Circle-Time Maths session to teach Volume. It went as follows:
Check In: My name is... I think volume in Maths is...
Mixer: Show students the definition for 'volume' using the Mathletics Dictionary. Also look at related terms. Students are each given a box and sort themselves in order from smallest volume to largest volume.
Main Activity: In groups of four, students use informal units to compare the volume of their boxes and to check whether they ordered themselves correctly.
Debrief: Discuss student findings from their measurements. What did they find easy/difficult about this task?
Energiser: Beginning with the largest boxes, students add their box to a 'box sculpture' in the middle of the circle. Try to add all boxes without the tower falling.
Check Out: My name is... and one thing I learnt about volume today is...

My Reflections - This lesson didn't go as well as I would have liked. It was difficult for students to measure the volume of the boxes as the units didn't fit nicely, and they all tried to measure their boxes at once which meant there weren't enough resources. It did lead us to a discussion about the value of having formal units and a systematic way of calculating volume. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I only taught my Maths class once this week, and my relief teachers chose to 'leave volume to [me]', I didn't get to explore the whole length x width x breadth idea with them. I'll have to make some time for that next week. We didn't get to the tower building energiser either due to time constraints. I guess it's just one of those lessons that held a lot of promise, but didn't quite make the cut.

Movie Maker
In lab time students had the opportunity to create their own school movies using a bunch of photos and videos that have been captured recently. This week the focus was on using the Movie Maker storyboard to sequence images and add transitions and titles. In our next session I will teach students how to include audio files and alter the length of time their photos are displayed. I was impressed by how quickly students picked up on the skills - some took it even further than I demonstrated. It emphasized two things: how easy Movie Maker is to learn, and how quick digital natives can transfer skills from one program to the next.

Cooperative Reading Groups
Cooperative reading went really well this week. Students are becoming more familiar with the way it works and are focused on the tasks they need to complete. I find it really exciting to see that my students are all working on different tasks and at different paces with minimal assistance from me. I have the enjoyable job of shoulder hovering as they work and giving them tips for how they can stretch their skills further.
Before Tuesday's Group Discussion time I played video snippets from the group I sat in on the week before. This allowed me to give students some more direction in the way these groups should function. I sat in on another group this week and enjoyed hearing students discussing their books and the connections they have with each other, with movies they've seen and also with events in real life.

Puppy
On Friday we had a special visit from the puppy of one of my students. We made a circle on the floor and Bruno (?) went from person to person to 'say hello'. He was very cute and it was nice to watch students interacting with him. Some of the kids worked out that he was more likely to come to them if they tapped the floor and called his name. Others discovered that he liked having his belly scratched. It was just a short visit, but it's always nice to have an animal in the classroom for students to interact with.

Survey
The staff of my school are in the process of defining how we approach student enrichment. Our Enrichment Committee feels that all students have the potential to be gifted and talented in one way or another, and we feel that teachers should work to identify each student's potential and provide opportunities through which students can grow. Part of this involves understanding how students like to be acknowledged for their achievements. We are conducting a survey across the school to gather this information. I created a survey using Tiger Survey and the Year 4 Students completed it in about five minutes during lab time on Friday. (You can see a PDF print version here.) I'm going to get some computers set up for it in Year 3 next week so that students can take their turn at some point during the week. The most popular options in Year 4 were "a class reward - class party/free time etc", and "opportunities to learn about things you're interested in". The least popular was "teacher contacting your parents to let them know what you're good at". Fascinating!

Friday Fun - 31/7/09

I'm enjoying my time acting School Leader C. I enjoy getting to know the other teachers better. I enjoy the variety. I enjoy the challenge of trying something new. I enjoy seeing the big picture perspective and then zooming into the detail in the classroom. I enjoy supporting other teachers with what they are doing in their classrooms. It has been a very enjoyable week.

Fun This Week

Weaving
Last weekend I stocked up on ribbons, wool, beads, buttons and numerous other bits and pieces to use for our Textiles and Design unit. I raided the art storeroom and found some hessian just waiting to be used. I then handed the ideas over to my relief teacher to bring to fruition in my absence! Students pulled some of the strands out of their hessian square and then weaved ribbons through what remained. They threaded on beads and buttons to enhance their designs. Everyone was engaged and enthusiastic with their work.


Cooperative Reading
We made a great start to our new Cooperative Reading process this week. Last week students planned how many pages they need to read each week in order to complete their book by the end of the term. They also planned writing tasks and which weeks they will complete them.On Monday students read their required pages and completed an entry in their Reading Response Journal using the four roles of the reader.
On Tuesday students met together in their groups to discuss their reading. As I wasn't there for this session, I asked students for feedback. Next time we will allocate more time and try to find an easier way for the recorders to determine the key points to write down. We also need to get new batteries for the stopwatches that the Time Keepers use!

Group Meeting Recording Form

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On Thursday students began working on their writing tasks. Some focused on the planning stage while others began their first draft. Still others worked on their reading as they still had additional pages to read. At the end of the session we had a sharing circle to report back how things were going and what everyone was working on.

So far I'm impressed with how well students are taking responsibility for their learning and working through the tasks they have planned for themselves.

Don't Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late
This week my literacy group read Don't Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late by Mo Willems. Students discussed the different arguments one might give for staying up late. They then wrote a letter to their parents pleading to stay up. While I wasn't teaching for this lesson, I heard that my students were very enthusiastic about this book and enjoyed the activity. They have been giving me suggestions for what they would like to do next. One suggested that we could record our letters with the Snowball Microphone. Another suggested we make our own "Don't Let The Pigeon..." books. Yet another told me that she had found this file to show you how to draw the pigeon.
Look what happens when you hand back some control to students! They actually start to think of ways to learn for themselves!
Thank you also to Allanah K for sharing this Pigeon Teachers Guide. I'll have to buy The Pigeon Wants a Hotdog next time I'm in the US.

Division in Real Life
My Maths group has been having some trouble with both approaching word problems and using a calculator. This has been worrying me, so I have been trying to find ways to include one or both in my Maths lessons. This week we pulled up the Qantas website and made up some word problems, pretending that Qantas was having a half-price sale. I wrote up the word problem on the board and just changed the student's name and the original price each time:
..... found out that Qantas was having a half-price sale. If the original price of a ticket was .... how much is it on sale?
I selected students to choose where we would go and then the whole class tried to work out the sale price using calculators. This was an important process, and it was great to see students thinking through what you press on a calculator in order to work out half of a number.
To extend this further, I showed my class how they can use Excel as a shortcut to work out the prices by typing in a formula. This is something I hope to build on further.