This year got off to a great start with the Learning @ Schools Conference to gather lots of new ideas to use in the classroom.
Etherpad (a collaborative writing tool) is one thing I learnt about at the conference and have enjoyed using. It has really motivated my students to write and helped other more capable students step into a leadership role, while others have gained from having additional modelling.
It has been awesome to have a year with the netbooks and these have become integrated into my programmes. Planned for during reading, writing and maths time. Netbooks have become a huge hit in the class and I have had to roster the kids on for a morning each so that all the resources are fairly shared around because they are so popular.
I have become more confident in using my teaching station this year. Setting challenges before school for the kids to jump on the mobi and add a caption to the photo, or do a number of the day.
Next year I am fortuante enough to be heading to the Thinking Conference so I will no doubt be inspired again with new goals for 2013.
STEPS FOR NEXT YEAR
-I would like to continue using my interactive teaching station more particuarly in literacy. I would like to integrate writing using it by having a sentence starter up in the morning and getting students to add a sentence or so each before school and then bring it back up during writing time so that everyone has contributed to our story.
I started using it more for my spelling programme this year and would like to continue this in the mornings having blends up and getting the kids to write as many words as they can think of using that blend/diagraph/word family. Then using the highligher tool to highlight the chunk.
-I haven't really used the i-pod touch that is available in the Middle Syndicate to use and I would like to see how this tool can further motivate my students.
-Train experts up in all areas (with new Year 3 students coming through) so that the kids can go to a voice thread expert, photo expert (to upload a photo to a blog) etc.
-Get kids confident in using a range of tools and become confident in asking to use them for a particular purpose.
-Use the easispeak with my less confident writers so that they can get their ideas down and then replay them to write, before losing their thoughts.
