Friday Fun

Here I am, trying again to keep the Friday Fun posts happening. I think the trick is to write it as we work through the week. A little each night is much more manageable than a big chunk at the end of the week when I would really prefer to be relaxing with my husband, enjoying take-away Indian food and a glass of Shiraz!

Our Inquiry

As well as continuing our work on reconciliation this week, we have jumped further back in time to learn about Indigenous Australian lifestyle prior to European settlement.

On Monday and Tuesday I worked with each group on their reconciliation plan and helped them to do some fine-tuning. One great thing about using the Explain Everything app, was that it was fairly easy to edit and make adjustments - changing pictures which perhaps weren't as effective, re-wording phrases where inaccurate information was being shared.

Through the students' work I was able to see some common misunderstandings and correct these during class discussion. Some things that needed clarifying were: that the stolen generations were taken long ago and are now parents and grandparents, and that Indigenous Australians don't want our pity - but rather our acknowledgement of the past and a commitment to an improved future together. On the weekend I had found out about an Aboriginal health service in our local area, so we have tailored our fundraising proposal to that end.

In the afternoons we watched the "before time" episodes of My Place Series 2. Students took notes on the first day, recording facts and questions under the headings - "The video showed" and "It made me wonder". Part way through viewing, we paused the video for students to discuss what they had seen and wondered so far. We encouraged students to think about Aboriginal lifestyle prior to European settlement (food, clothing, shelter, customs, environment) rather than focus on the plot of the story. Students then worked in teams of four to create a mind map with the Inspiration iPad app. The My Place Website is a great follow on from the videos.

Here is a picture of my mind map:

As part of our 30 Days of Drawing project (not consecutive days for us - more like one a week!) students took the statements about the connection to the land from Idjhil by Helen Bell and illustrated what one of the statements meant to them. The quality of student images was very impressive.

We also discussed the central idea of our inquiry unit: Indigenous cultures change over time. We thought of other words that could be used in place of the words in this idea. Students then used Socrative on the iPads to log how they would phrase the inquiry in their own words.
This was a quick and easy way to compile our ideas in one document, print and display. It was my second time with Socrative after a miserable failure last time. This time we ensured we were all connected to the internet before starting the app.

Maths

In our Maths lessons at the start of the week, we worked on the four times tables. We looked at the strategy "double, double again" and students practised applying this method. We practised with the Tables Toons on Mathletics along with a dice rolling game and a card game.

For the dice game, students simply rolled the dice and multiplied by 4 (doubling, doubling again if they couldn't recall the answer immediately).

For the card game, they played in pairs with a standard deck of cards (K, Q, J = 10, A=1, Jokers removed). The first student shuffled the cards and fanned them out for the second student to select one. The second student multiplied the number by 4 and gave the answer. The first student then tried to work out the card number by dividing by 4. This game helps students to see the connection between multiplication and division and assists with recall of facts.

I encouraged students to use these games at home to practise their tables.

Students also explored fractions using resources on Scootle, as well as iPads. In one of our sessions they used Notability to compare fraction sizes. In another session they worked with fractions of a group and used Explain Everything to record their thinking. These lessons will be explained in greater detail for Tech Tips in upcoming weeks.

Literacy

Students have been working on stories that they planned and began writing earlier in the term. We are trying to see these through to publication as books to put on our shelves. It is taking quite some time for students to complete the whole process, and we have had many interruptions.

We also read some Dreaming stories and students used post-it notes to jot down their thoughts on the following questions:

What are Dreaming stories?

What are their features and purpose?

Who is the audience?

We discussed these ideas and they were compiled into one document.


We've had another great week, full of new learning and challenges. Next week we head off on our school camp - hoping for warm weather and no rain!

Friday Fun

It has been quite some time since I wrote any Friday Fun posts. Generally, my school has had other ways to share learning with families, thus I haven't had time to double up. At my current school, I started writing up weekly reflections for families, which highlight the main learning in the grade level, some class specific items, information about events coming up, and some snapshots. This takes a bit of effort to put together each Friday, and needs to be left fairly broad in order to cater for all Year 3 classes. When I do Friday Fun posts, I like to add more detail, and give a better sense of the task, its purpose and how we went about doing it. In doing so, I hope to make it interesting for students and their families, as well as the teaching community. I make no promises in terms of whether this will return as an ongoing feature, but I thought I would give it another go this week at least!

Reconciliation Week

This week we launched into our new Inquiry unit, "Why Say Sorry?" The central idea of this unit is that Indigenous culture changes over time. Given that Reconciliation Week is this week, it seems very good timing on someone's part - though I think there was quite a bit of luck involved this time! 

On Monday I read Idjhil by Helen Bell to my class. This story shows the connection Indigenous Australians have with the land and tells something of the impact of European settlement in terms of loss of land and the stolen generation. I chose this narrative to give students a glimpse of these concepts through the eyes of a boy of their age. 

Once we had finished reading, we used a modified version of the thinking routine "Step Inside". Students imagined they were Idjhil and wrote down the things they thought he knew and believed. They then wrote down the things they thought he cared about. A second column labelled "What makes you say that?" prompted students to give evidence from the book for their ideas. I moved around the room marking student work, and those who finished early glued their sheet in and illustrated the border with symbols and images that were important to Idjhil. 

To conclude the lesson - we played "Hot Seat" where one student took on the role of Idjhil, and others asked him questions. It took a few questions before everyone engaged in what was happening, but by the end we were getting some well thought out questions. 

On Tuesday we read Walking for Reconciliation By Beth Hall. This followed on nicely after our story of Idjhil, and helped students to gain a better understanding of what Reconciliation is about and why it is necessary. We followed this reading with another thinking routine called Making it Fair: Now, Then, Later: Finding Actions. We talked about the stolen generation and students discussed how things could have been done differently in the past to make things fair, what we can be doing now, and what could be done in the future. Students used Google Docs on the desktop computers to record their ideas. I was a bit frustrated by some of the nonsense I got when students were contributing anonymously and had to keep on top of everyone to ensure they weren't erasing each other's ideas.

On Wednesday we looked at our Google Docs list (teacher edited) as a class, and everyone chose one idea that they would like to expand on. They wrote their individual responses in their Inquiry books and wrote the steps that would need to be taken in order for the plan to be enacted. These ideas were shared with the class and we sorted our ideas into things that could be done now, and things that could be proposed for the future - both for the school and for our city.

On Thursday students worked in teams to put forward their proposals. One group focused on writing a letter (using Google Docs simultaneously) to our local government about how we would like our city to celebrate at NAIDOC week, one focused on a fundraising proposal for our school and two focused on proposals to our SRC. The ones for our school used Explain Everything on iPad as we felt that a video presentation would be more appealing to the student audience.

On Friday I gave feedback to students and helped them to edit their proposals. I still feel that some need a little reworking to create a more professional product, however I'm impressed with the quality of their efforts and technical ability.

Maths

This week students learnt how to work out their three times tables mentally by taking the double and adding one more group. Students practised their three times with a friend. We then worked on times tables using an erasable multiplication chart and songs from the Mathletics website. Some students were extended to multiply two-digit numbers by three, and also to investigate the divisibility rules for 3. We will continue with this next week.

We also returned to some fraction work that we began earlier in the term. Students practised writing fractions along a number-line. In our computer time, students completed fractions activities from Mathletics including Rainforest Maths.

Literacy

We revisited Idjhil by Helen Bell, and discussed:

• What was the author's purpose?
• What does she want us to take away?

Students then wrote their personal response in their books using the prompts:
I think the author wrote this to...
I learnt...

It was definitely a busy week, particularly with parent/teacher interviews in the afternoons and planning for school camp. I look forward to seeing how things progress next week, particularly as we further explore our Inquiry unit of work.

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 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.