Friday, June 24, 2011
Voice thread trial
My second attempt at using voice thread.
I purchased a microphone for my class computer and am excited about chn creating their own avatars (do you like mine) and recording their voice!!!!
I'll share with everyone once I'm a confident voice thread user!!!
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Blogging support!!!
http://bling4yrblog.blogspot.com/
I found this great website with helpful tips on how to blog!! I'm going to sit done and have a good read through and see what helpful tips I can use for my class blog!!!
I found this great website with helpful tips on how to blog!! I'm going to sit done and have a good read through and see what helpful tips I can use for my class blog!!!
Voice thread
My trial with voice thread... I need a mic so my voice it louder!
I am going to set this up on my class computer and get chn to record... therefore capturing their "voice"!!
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Writing session with Pukete
I really enjoyed spending time at another school, with another team of teachers to discuss writing!!
I found out that we are both on the right track with thanks to the National Standards and the levels. The team I was with decided to place the sample of chn's writing that both schools had into groups; below, at and above. This was great because we could compare our school with their school and we actually found out we agreed with these samples.
We began talking about levels and as I am reflecting right now I know (I think I did already) that we (teachers at Vardon) are quite knowledgeable about the levels and what skills each level requires for chn to achieve at each level. We can thank our wonderful PD with Anne Grady last year. It was really drilled into us that you need to have a purpose for writing and it needs to be linked with the term's big idea.
We discussed this and found that we are doing this differently and in my opinion quite well. Our big idea in our team this term is "Strength". We are looking at bridges, our new school logo, Hotumaeua and the history of our Waikato River. We therefore write on topics linked to this big idea. There is then a purpose for writing.
We also discussed writing in pen verses pencil and this is something that my team and I are going to look into. We like the idea of chn writing in pen because they then do not rub continuously out their mistakes and sharpen their pencils!!!
We shared our idea of planning/brainstorming in notebooks. This is going really well in all our middle syn classses. We find that ALL chn are motivated to write and it doesn't matter what level the child is working at they all have a go at writing words, sharing and "hitch-hiking" other ideas. The next step for us is to think about how we can encourage chn to use their plan effectively to write!
Where to from here?
I found out that we are both on the right track with thanks to the National Standards and the levels. The team I was with decided to place the sample of chn's writing that both schools had into groups; below, at and above. This was great because we could compare our school with their school and we actually found out we agreed with these samples.
We began talking about levels and as I am reflecting right now I know (I think I did already) that we (teachers at Vardon) are quite knowledgeable about the levels and what skills each level requires for chn to achieve at each level. We can thank our wonderful PD with Anne Grady last year. It was really drilled into us that you need to have a purpose for writing and it needs to be linked with the term's big idea.
We discussed this and found that we are doing this differently and in my opinion quite well. Our big idea in our team this term is "Strength". We are looking at bridges, our new school logo, Hotumaeua and the history of our Waikato River. We therefore write on topics linked to this big idea. There is then a purpose for writing.
We also discussed writing in pen verses pencil and this is something that my team and I are going to look into. We like the idea of chn writing in pen because they then do not rub continuously out their mistakes and sharpen their pencils!!!
We shared our idea of planning/brainstorming in notebooks. This is going really well in all our middle syn classses. We find that ALL chn are motivated to write and it doesn't matter what level the child is working at they all have a go at writing words, sharing and "hitch-hiking" other ideas. The next step for us is to think about how we can encourage chn to use their plan effectively to write!
Where to from here?
- Liz (from Pukete) would like me to e-mail her ideas from our team on how we provide language experiences for our chn and how we link our big idea
- As a team we discussed mtg with the Yr 2/3 and Yr 4/5 team at Pukete in a couple of weeks. We would live to invite them to our school and discuss our writing levels at a deeper level and what they mean, how we link our big idea to writing and motivating chn to write.
- Trialing using pen instead of pencil
- explore how we can get chn to effectively use their brainstorm/plan to write
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Maths blogs
I am finding ways to extend 2 very capable mathematicians?!? We have grouped the 2 boys together (one is from room 10) and the other from my class.
In the past I have trialed making a blog for each of my maths groups so I decided to do the same for these 2 boys.
So...I have created a blog just for them :)
I met with these boys today (my student teacher is on full control so I am able to work one-on-one with them). They added their maths blog to the e-portfolios and thought it was very cool to have their own blog.
They are working on decimals at the moment - place value, ordering, skip counting in tenths and hundredths and adding and subtracting decimals. So I added some website for them to practice and asked them to post a reflection on their individual portfolios.
I will also add samples of work, or they will, and add on-going reflections from both the chn and myself.
Any other ideas on how to extend these 2 able mathematicians?
Here is the beginning of their e-portfolio:
http://ovalsgroup.blogspot.com/2011/06/maths.html
In the past I have trialed making a blog for each of my maths groups so I decided to do the same for these 2 boys.
So...I have created a blog just for them :)
I met with these boys today (my student teacher is on full control so I am able to work one-on-one with them). They added their maths blog to the e-portfolios and thought it was very cool to have their own blog.
They are working on decimals at the moment - place value, ordering, skip counting in tenths and hundredths and adding and subtracting decimals. So I added some website for them to practice and asked them to post a reflection on their individual portfolios.
I will also add samples of work, or they will, and add on-going reflections from both the chn and myself.
Any other ideas on how to extend these 2 able mathematicians?
Here is the beginning of their e-portfolio:
http://ovalsgroup.blogspot.com/2011/06/maths.html
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