Friday Fun - 1/5/09

It was great to be back at work this week with a fresh start to the term. As always at the start of the term, we had a couple of pretests to determine what students know and the direction we should take with their learning. The Maths test covered the topics we will be studying this term, so we can group students by ability to cater lessons to their needs. The Australian History test shows us what students already know about Australia's history prior to 1900 including Indigenous lifestyle, significant historical figures, and major events and phases. We were quite glad to see that they don't know much at all yet, because that means that we can continue with our program as planned! Now that the tests are out of the way, let's look at what we did for fun.

Fun This Week

Readers' Theatre
On Tuesday we watched the video of the Readers' Theatre Performance at the end of last term. Students used a self-evaluation sheet to record their thoughts about their own performance. They also jotted down notes about the performances of others and shared these with their peers. On Thursday we read a poem/folk song called The Wild Colonial Boy and students worked in groups to decide a way to perform the poem to the class. Here is a You Tube video performance of the song from raymondcrooke.

Bus Timetables
This week students learnt about calendars and timetables. I talked to my class about catching buses and suggested that while they don't use buses much at the moment, they will probably want to use them more when they go to high school so that they can meet up with their friends. I told them about the first time I tried to catch a bus and how I failed miserably! We looked at a few bus timetables that you can pick up at the bus interchange, and then I showed students the phone number they can call for information and also the website.
We went onto the website and looked at the local bus routes that would get us to the closest shopping centres. I handed out copies of the map and timetables and students could use these to create their own imaginary journeys. One boy worked out how to get to McDonalds for dinner and home again. Another went from home to a cafe for breakfast and then still arrived at school in time.
We finished up with a sharing circle where everyone shared their journey and then we did a quick review of the steps for reading the timetable. This was a lot of fun and I'd be keen to revisit it again later in the year.

Story Parts
Miss Eschauzier taught my Literacy group this week. She showed students how to create descriptive phrases for settings in pictures and then they worked on individual descriptions of a setting of their choice. They then did a Kagan strategy: "Stand up, Hand up, Pair up" to share their work with numerous partners.
On Thursday students thought about characterisation in a couple of texts and then created their own characters using a Character Profile sheet. They will be doing more work with these characters next week.

Science for Smarties
Miss Eschauzier also taught a science lesson on Friday afternoon. Students explored what happens to the colours when smarties dissolve in a bowl of water. They used this experiment from the Surfing Scientist. It was amazing to see the way that the colours remained separated when more than one smarty was involved. Why not try it for yourself?

Next week I will be out of the school at the Microsoft Innovative Schools Conference on the Sunshine Coast, so there may not be a post next Friday.

Tech Tips Tuesday - New Toys

Last week I got two new 'toys' for my classroom: a Blue Snowball Microphone and a Flip Mino. I put both of these items on the wishlist for the P&C this year. They will make it easier for us to record our ideas, discussions, performances and much more. I thought I'd share them here with you today.

The Blue Snowball Microphone

The Blue Snowball Microphone is a USB microphone that plugs straight into the computer ready to use. It produces great sound quality and can be used effectively to record group discussions without the need to pass the microphone from person to person. This makes it ideal for recording things like book chats, readers' theatre, radio shows and podcasts. At $180 (plus postage) this is more expensive than most computer microphones, but I read such great reviews on its quality that I couldn't resist.

Yesterday I used the microphone with small groups to record a discussion on the book Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda. Students gathered around the microphone and leaned forward slightly when they wanted to record their views. The microphone was able to record from all directions, but worked best from the front. I used Audacity to make the recordings, and was mostly happy with the result. I am aware that I will need to tinker a little with the microphone volume in order to achieve the volume I desire. I am now able to listen back over the recordings to hear the perspectives shared by individuals and further ascertain how well they have comprehended the text and the underlying messages.

The Flip Mino

The Flip Mino is a pocket camcorder that records up to 60 minutes on the internal flash-based memory. Recording is started or stopped with a big red button, and viewed through the little LCD screen. It is kid-friendly - allowing for instant playback and can be plugged into the red/white/yellow sockets on your TV (or IWB if you're lucky enough to have it - like me). It has a built-in USB arm making it easy to move videos onto your computer for further editing and sharing. One of the things I really love is that it charges while plugged into the computer.

In summary, for $308 (plus postage) the Flip Mino camcorder is a fun tool that's easy to use, portable and a great introduction to using video in the classroom. Video quality is good without being great, so if you want high quality video this may not be the option for you. (Flip also produces a HD version that may be worth considering).

There are an increasing number of flash based camcorders being created now, but they are not as easy to access in Australia as they are in the USA. The one that we purchased was through ITmadeSimple! based in Victoria, Australia. They are also selling the Kodak Zi6 which seems better in some aspects, but takes AA batteries rather than containing a lithium-ion battery. (Which is what turns me off.)

I'm sure I'll be telling you more about these tools throughout the year, but I was just so excited when they arrived that I wanted to share them here! Have you got any new toys for your classroom lately?

Friday Fun - 3/4/09

Fun this week

This week was packed to the brim with exciting learning experiences.

Communication - Assessment Task
Students began this task last week. This week they finished preparing their presentations and presented them. Three groups chose PowerPoint presentations, two chose role plays and a talk, and others chose posters (with or without a talk). It was very interesting to see how students organised their ideas and cooperated in their teams. As this was the first time I've given my students this level of student direction with a task, I learnt a lot from the process. This time I gave explicit details about what the presentations needed to contain - in the way of a rubric - but I did not give students a tool to help them organise their information and plan their presentation. Fortunately a very experienced relief teacher was in the classroom with me at the time and was able to throw something together to give students more direction. This is something that I will remember for next time.

Maths
We got to play with angles again this week in our Maths lessons. Miss Eschauzier (an intern who will be with us for eight weeks) took small groups out to work on ordering acute angles and measuring them with a protractor. I worked with the rest of the class exploring angles with compass directions and clock faces. Yet again, students loved playing with angles and learning how to name them. Students also completed a test to determine areas of strength and areas for development from this term.

The Ridge
We finally started our ridge project this week. Doug and Jenny from the Park Care group, came to speak to students about our school's previous involvement with the ridge and start a project with this year's Year 4s. They showed us pictures of some of the plants to look for, and some of the weeds that we will be responsible for pulling out. It was really enjoyable to learn from people who are passionate about plants and maintaining the natural environment on the ridge.

Part-way through lunchtime, we walked up the ridge to see it all for ourselves. I chose a few people to be our photographers, and other students had the option of bringing notepaper and pencils to record information. The following slideshow is a collaborative effort from students and myself.

A few students discovered the magic of moss in a drought-stricken land. The following video shows their discovery.



When we returned to class students worked in self-chosen teams to "graffiti wall" all the things that they had seen and learnt. Each student had a different coloured texta. They worked simultaneously to record their ideas. Most of the groups filled a huge page in just 15 minutes!

Our project on the ridge will involve students in taking responsibility for the care of their local community through protection of the ridge. We hope that students will develop a greater understanding of and connection with nature in the local region.

Performance
Students performed for parents this week to celebrate their learning this term. Students from the Fife and Drum Band performed five songs and Readers' Theatre people performed four plays that we learnt throughout the term. I was really impressed by how well the students read and played. They looked really professional and seemed so confident. Parents were invited to stay for light refreshments, and many commented that they had enjoyed the performance.

Homework
This term students have had the flexibility to work with a Homework Matrix. We encouraged students to choose at least two activities during the term and do quality work in presenting these. Activities chosen relate to the Higher Order thinking strategies of Bloom's Taxonomy and Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. Students have chosen a range of activities to explore and demonstrate their learning. One student created a video about friendship and welcoming a new neighbour. Another student created a lego animation of one of the scenes from Rowan of Rin. Please visit his blog and leave an encouraging comment.

People who support us
After exploring some introductory resources on "Support", students considered people who support them at home, school, and in the wider community. They used Kidspiration to create a diagram of these connections and wrote about how these people support them. Students got off to a great start and their mind-maps were very detailed. They will have the chance to finish them off at the start of next term. We hope to add these to the student portfolios. Once students have finished, I will check if someone is willing for me to share their diagram here.

Self-evaluation
Next week we will be having three-way interviews. These involve the student, parent and teacher coming together to discuss the student's progress. We prefer for students to do most of the talking in these interviews. Students have been reflecting on their development in their "reflective journals" since the beginning of the year. Each week they write about their challenges, successes and plans. They used these reflections and their recent maths test to decide what they will share and discuss in their three-way interview. I haven't done three-way interviews with students this age before, so I am keen to see the result.

Rowan of Rin
I will not be posting about Rowan of Rin this week, but instead will include a final Rowan of Rin entry next week.

Friday Fun - 20/3/09

This week was busy and flavourful. For me, as a teacher, I was significantly challenged and stretched in the after school hours through meetings, professional development and the start of my Graduate Certificate in Educational Leadership. During school hours, I balanced normal teaching alongside assembly preparation and organisation for Harmony Day festivities.

Fun This Week...

Maths
The focus this week was on addition and subtraction. For fact practice, my group worked on adding a one-digit number to a two-digit number, and adding two-digit numbers with no re-grouping. We touched on subtraction with re-grouping, but students struggled to understand this. It is an area that we will need to work on some more, perhaps taking a step backward before progressing forward. We had some fun practising addition with a boat race game we found on Smart Kiddies - a maths teaching resource.

Harmony Day Activities
One of our students has arrived at our school from Malaysia. She is from the state of Kedah. We looked online at some facts and photographs of Kedah to get a greater sense of this student's background. We asked additional questions that came to mind. We then did a craft activity on the twin towers (Petronas Towers) in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. The pictures were really colourful and effective on a black background.
Other classes learnt about harmony through stories, playing soccer together, making a paper chain with their names, poetry, multicultural games and craft activities. Each year level was responsible for determining how they wanted to approach the theme and presenting what they learnt in assembly.

Assembly
In our school we aim for fortnightly whole-school assemblies, however due to other events that occur on Fridays, there are generally only three or four per term. Year levels take turns to host the assembly. The parts to an assembly are:

• a welcome
  
• an acknowledgement of country
• the singing of the national anthem and school song
• one or more class items
• the presentation of merit awards (usually 2 per class)
  
• other announcements; and
  
• the presentation of a class award for good audience behaviour

Sometimes these also include school band performances and special awards. Families are welcome to join us for these assemblies and parents make a special effort when their child is part of the hosting class.
This week's assembly was a special "Harmony Day" assembly, so as well as the normal routine we had a parade of national costumes, class presentations of Harmony Day activities and two special songs that everyone in the school had been learning. It went for longer than usual and concluded a long, hot, tiring day and so students were more restless than usual. The general feeling, however, was that it had been successful.

Eco Bus
Because our school is taking great strides in terms of Environmental Sustainability, we had three bus loads of visitors come on Friday to see our approach. The Enviro Squad was on the job, proudly explaining our recycling system and taking visitors on a tour of the school. Tim and Tina, the Trash Twins, were out and about enthusiastically promoting the appropriate use of our bins. Everyone was doing their bit in the classroom and on the playground to demonstrate what we've learnt about protecting our environment. It was a superb effort from all the teachers involved in the Sustainability Committee and a credit to the school community's commitment to Environmental Sustainability.

Readers' Theatre
Students learnt and performed a readers' theatre of the story "The Amazing Laundry Hamper" This was a fun story with a lesson to encourage children to be helpful and clean up after themselves.
We're planning a performance for parents in two weeks time. They will be able to come along to see students present readers' theatre scripts and hear the Fife and Drum band play. The performance will be in the morning, so if we find that parents are unable to attend, we may see if some of the students from Years P-2 would like to come and watch.

Rowan of Rin
To read the next installment of our Rowan of Rin literacy unit click here.

Friday Fun - 13/3/09

As I pointed out to the parents of my students, this week was a "hold your hat and enjoy the ride" sort of week. Monday was out due to a public holiday. My teaching partner, Jonno, and about a fifth of the Year 4s were out on Thursday for a rugby day and Friday was our swimming carnival. We had a bit of teaching in the middle there, but had to pack a lot into a few days!

I must say that Jonno was absolutely AWESOME this week. I was impressed with how calmly he pulled off all the sport organisation - and so professionally as well. The swimming carnival was a huge success and the kids had a fantastic day.

Fun this Week

Readers' Theatre
I spent Monday night making a quadruple batch of playdough. Hubby was confused: "Aren't you teaching Year 4 now?" I figured that even Year 4s like playdough now and then! Or at least the chance to express themselves creatively and explore ideas physically.
This week's readers' theatre was about B.W Hawkins and the Dinosaur Models which are displayed at the Crystal Palace Park in London. In line with the Art-full Pedagogies strategy from the Springboards into Literacy workshop I went to, I decided to give my students a chance to create their own playdough dinosaur sculptures before reading the script. Students worked in small groups to create their dinosaurs using playdough, match sticks, pasta and sequins.
Then, as students began practising the readers' theatre scripts, they had personal experience of what it's like to create dinosaur models and the text was far more real to them. Students put a lot of expression into their reading and were interested to see the process of B.W. Hawkins when making his models.

Assemblies
On Tuesday we had a special farewell assembly for our retiring PE teacher who has been in the school for 12 years. He has had a huge impact on his students over the years and has fed their enthusiasm for an active lifestyle. He will be greatly missed by the students, staff and wider school community.

We also had a visit from Stirling Mortlock, a well known local rugby union player. He spoke to students in grades 4-6 about Earth Hour and discussed the importance of looking after our planet every hour, every day - not just for Earth Hour. When we got back to class students began creating their own posters to remind people of appliances that use electricity and provide tips for reducing electricity consumption.

Class Meeting
We had a class meeting to discuss and complete a Biodiversity survey for the school's Student Representative Council (SRC). Students considered the areas of the school grounds they like, dislike and use. They listed the types of wildlife they have seen within the school grounds. They then considered changes they would like made in order to improve the appearance of the school grounds and the opportunities for biodiversity. The SRC is collecting this data from all classes, staff members and families in the school community.

Visitors
We had a number of visitors in our school this week. Some teachers from the UK visited to see our school and the programs we run. My teaching intern also visited to meet students and get a greater sense of the classroom organisation. She will be beginning her 8-week internship at the end of March.

Maths
This week we looked at lines and angles in our maths lessons. I was surprised by how interested and enthusiastic the students were when it came to learning about angles. The questions students were asking showed great depth of thinking. It's disappointing that we could spend so little time on it due to all the interruptions. I look forward to exploring it further later in the year.

Will You Be Funky 4-Eva? Quiz
As mentioned above, Jonno took some of our kids (and some Year 5/6s) to a rugby day on Thursday. For a bit of fun and relationship building, I designed a trivia quiz (in PowerPoint) for part of that day. Students got into mixed groups of six and created names for their teams. Questions came from a mix of subject areas and some included photos or videos. Each team was given three coloured match sticks that they could trade in - one for a dictionary, one for a calculator and one for a computer - to help them with a question. Every fifth question was a "Who Am I?" followed by a team challenge. The challenges we got to were:

• perform a nursery rhyme
• present a tongue twister
• build a sculpture or building with no more than 20 pieces of lego

It was a lot of fun and gave students opportunities to shine both academically, dramatically and technologically.

Swimming Carnival
The carnival was a lot of fun. Students competed in races (including a 'boat race' with rubber tyres) and then played in the pool. They even had some time on a water slide. We were all exhausted by the end of it, but the kids also had a disco at night. (I admit - I skipped out on that one).

Rowan of Rin
For details of our Literacy Unit on Rowan of Rin, click here.

Friday Fun - 6/3/09

Fun this week

The Egg
Our egg finished hatching and the alligator swam out into the container and kept on "growing". The girls took it home on Friday as we think it may have grown as big as it can.

3D Model of Rin
The same girls also made a lego model of Rin (from Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda). They brought it in to share with us. They said I could include a photo on the blog. (I hope I've labeled it right!)

Readers' Theatre
This week's script was about a family walking across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It included lots of facts about the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Prior to reading the script for the first time, I played a Flickr slideshow of images of Sydney Harbour Bridge and gave them some time (about 5 minutes) to talk about both the images and their own experiences of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Students were allocated to new groups and settled and sorted themselves quite quickly. We performed on Thursday - some in the school hall and some at the school amphitheatre. I made a video recording that we can look back on later to determine the progress students are making.

Integrity
Our Integrated Inquiry focus this week was on Integrity. This is a tricky concept for children (and many adults) to grasp. We broke it down to honesty and responsibility. I also tried to explain it as knowing the right thing to do and doing it, even if no one else will see. We read and discussed a story about a king who was looking for an heir to his throne. You can read a version of the story here. We watched the following video:

We read and reflected on a comic about a boy, George, who wanted a puppy and had to learn about responsibility. I tried to show the following video where adults discuss the topic of integrity, but only the sound would work.

Maths
We were working on four times tables this week and using the strategy of double it, double it again. For example, if you are trying to work out 4 x 3, you can double 3 which is 6, and double 6 which is 12. I found that I needed to use a number of strategies with the four times tables as some students were finding them quite difficult. We will use next week to review the strategies we've learnt so far for the 2, 5, 10, and 4 times tables.
We've also been trying some more difficult number patterns that include two elements. For example, in this pattern the rule is + 3, then -1:
6, 9, 8, 11, 10, 13, 12, 15, 14, 17, 16
We also did some pre-algebra work balancing equations. For examples, please check out this video clip.

My Classes and SuperClubsPlus
In the lab this week had all the passwords we need so we spent some more time becoming familiar with My Classes. Students were able to create their own book reviews for others to read and comment on. The reviews were pretty good for a first try, but I'd like to see a little more effort put into content and editing. Students are getting a little lazy in an attempt to get their ideas down quickly.
Students are incredibly engaged with SuperClubsPlus and it's giving them a chance to achieve many of the outcomes in our curriculum. Students are communicating with one another both online and in person in order to "get their stars" and set up their homepages. In their reflective journals, this week, many students commented on their challenges, successes and plans in terms of what they are achieving in SuperClubsPlus.

Friday Fun - 27/2/09

Fun This Week
This week we had minimal interruptions to normal teaching time. It was nice to have things running to schedule, but was by no means boring!

Alligator in the Classroom!
We have been encouraging students to take charge of their learning, exercise their brains and share their knowledge. One student was a great example of that this week. On the weekend she purchased a cracking egg toy with an 'alligator' inside. When put into water the alligator starts to grow and begins cracking out of its shell. She brought it into school to share the experience with us. Everyone is very excited to check it out in the morning to see how much it has grown.

Maths
We looked at different strategies for working out the five times tables. We talked about how it's easy to count by fives to work out the lower tables eg. 3 x 5. For the bigger numbers we tried multiplying by 10 and then halving the answer. For example: 8 x 5 becomes 8 x 10 (80) halved (40). I found that this is a good strategy in theory, but students need to be confident with doubling and halving larger numbers first.
We also worked with data collection and graphing this week. We explored different types of surveys and the types of information they are able to gather. We looked at how Venn diagrams can be used to collect and sort information. This first diagram shows student preferences when asked "Do you like going on the internet and/or playing computer games?"

This second diagram shows student preferences when asked "Do you like chocolate, strawberry, and/or plain milk?" Readers' Theatre
While some of our students were doing Fife and Drum lessons, the others did Readers' Theatre. Students read and performed "Spider Woman and the Gift of the Loom" from a resource book full of Readers' Theatre plays. We will be doing one each week in the hopes of improving student reading fluency and expression. I would like to see students performing radio plays at some stage, and would also like for students to write some scripts of their own.

Respect
We focused on 'respect' this week in our FRIENDS values program. We looked at examples of respect/disrespect in both a comic and a picture book ("Zen Ties" by John M. Muth). Students thought about why respect is important and wrote about how they show respect to others. We also performed roleplays where students responded to scenarios assertively, but not agressively.
SuperClubsPlus
We have been busy registering our students for SuperClubsPlus and some have been able to get on already and have a play. It's amazing to see how much they've been able to do at home without teacher instruction. They seem to be loving it so far and one student commented that it brings students together who wouldn't ordinarily talk at school.
On Friday we had a session with SCP in the computer lab. One of the year 5 students who really knows her way around SuperClubs came to talk to the group about what she's learned with it. She really inspired them and was a great support to them as they got started.

House Meetings
Our Swimming Carnival is only a couple of weeks away so students met in their house teams to elect house captains. The air was buzzing with excitement. It's always great to see how things like this bring students together and build school spirit.

Rowan of Rin
I will write a separate post about "Rowan of Rin" over the weekend.