Interwrite- how it is working in the class

One of my goals with interwrite was to get the kids using the mobi pad more so that when they are using it at maths/reading/writing time they are confident and not spending half their time trying to use the tool.
Below are some examples of the children learning to use the mobi pad in the mornings before school.
Spelling looking at 'un' and what words we could make with it.

A maths number of the day where kids had to show how they could make the number 95.

And for writing we created similes using the tough as nails comparison.

Interwrite Session

With all the new exciting technology in the classroom it is important not to forget about the teaching station in my classroom. I use it lots as a projector and always have but the challenge is to use it for MORE than just projecting.
I love that when a child doesn't know what an animal looks like for example you can just jump on the laptop and pop it up on the screen for them all to see and really get feeling for what you are talking about.
I have been incorporating it more into my rotations lately (maths/reading/writing). I find the children do need to practice using the mobi pad and where to put the pen as they can sometimes accidently rub out their work. But like anything it just needs practice and this means me providing them with the opportunities to practice. Perhaps having it up in the morning with different learning tasks eg: adding a simile to the chart, could mean that they are using the technology in an educational way and are practicing using it.
Some ways I have recently used it are; with a maths group to look in a fun way at before and after numbers. I have used it in reading to collaboratively work together on finding the main idea. In writing we have used it to model creating an emotion poem.

The kids love working on the teaching station but I do find I need to have a leader as there can otherwise be fights over the pen and controlling it.
My challenge now I guess is to try to use it for at least one maths/reading/writing session each day.
I need to also look at ways to use it for spelling.
The key to the teaching station is to make it interactive and like many forms of technology the more you play the more creative you can be with it.
Perhaps another challenge of mine could be to try and share once a week/once every two weeks a new way I have used techonology in my class??

Promise Jar

Well the promise jar has been a success!
On Monday we started the week by coming up together with our classroom goal and how we would achieve this. Then we sat in a circle to share what we were going to work hard on with our behaviour to put in the promise jar. What a great day we were all able to have, the kids really responded to this circle time and talking and I guess giving them a chance to think about and acknowledge the behaviour that sometimes gets them into trouble because they have completed their work or they are distracting other etc.
Some examples of comments that went inside the jar were...
-I will be kind and I will get my work finished on time.
-I'll be nice and friendly and responsible for what I do.
-Be a good role model and I won't break any of the Golden Rules.
-I will follow the Golden Rules and be responsible for others to learn.
(Just for time, as the children went around and shared their promise I wrote their name at the top of the page and their promise).
Yes there were still times where I had to remind some children that they might have to look at their promise again on the whole I was very impressed!
While this week is set to be another busy one and the weather will mean a lot of indoor lunchtimes I am confident that it will be a good week :-)
Below are a few pictures of our class goal and promise jar.

 

Busy Term+New Student=Circle Time

This term has been a busy one so far and is only about to get more hectic!
My class had our class assembly in Week 4. We have started production rehearsals, we have performed our  Kapa Haka and dances to parents, we have had cross country practices which has all led to the usual timetable been somewhat thrown out the window.
All week I found myself getting frustrated that I had limited time to squeeze the reading, writing and maths into the day and that when it came time to do these things the kids were often off task, loud, calling out on the mat and it felt as though they had forgotten all the things we had worked hard on building.
Getting a new student on Monday I had talked to the kids about being role models and demonstrating the correct behaviour for our new student and gone over the reflection book and room and what these meant.
But by Thursday night I knew I had to think of a different way to approach things as the kids were still rowdy and I could feel myself becoming quickly annoyed by their behaviour.
As a result we started Friday morning off by talking in pairs about what is expected in Room 11 behaviour wise. We then shared these ideas back to the class. We re-visited our Golden Rules and looked at examples of what these meant. Then we sat in  a circle and made a promise to work on one way we would make today a good day. (That might have meant putting our hand up to talk, or being focused on our work etc).
I explained that I knew their normal routine had been interrupted lately but that we had to be resilient and flexible to change and remember to work really hard when it was time for learning.
This set a great tone for the day and the kids got off to work well and yes it did really cut into the morning but I think it was important to take that step back for everyone to have a reminder. Because if learning time had continued it wasn't the most productive anyway so half an hour-three quarters of an hour I am hoping will more than pay its dues with the kids work habits.
There were still times during group work that I had to remind students of what they promised today and I did still use the reflection book when students had been reminded several times. But I feel that on the whole the day was a lot more enjoyable for me and therefore must have also been more enjoyable and satisfying for the kids too.
Come Monday I plan to let the kids share their weekend news in small groups like normal to get it off their chest and then we will have another quick refresh of the Golden Rules and making another quick promise.
Perhaps I set up a promise jar?? Then when children are not living up to their promise I can tell them to go to the jar and read their promise rather than have me harp on reminding them. (Maybe this will be more effective? And a constant reminder that they can refer back to when they need re-focusing).
Having had the addition of a new student has highlighted how far the kids have come with the restorative process which is pleasing to see. And while their behaviour hasn't always been perfect this week they have still been quick to remind our new student of how we behave and what is and isn't acceptable in our classroom. Which I think shows their respect, ownership and pride for their classroom environment and that they do want to get on and learn.

Maths Symposium

In the holidays I attended the maths symposium, I was lucky to have quite a bit of PD around maths last year in my first year of teaching and this provided me with another boost and way to look at my maths programme. Two of the three workshops I attended were all for integration of maths. They talked about how many of us will teach addition subtraction for the first seven weeks then multiplication and division for the next seven, always beginning the year with statistics and so on. But why? Why do we have to start the year with statistics? Shouldn't it be brought in throughout the year when it actually fits, when kids can engage in a more powerful statstical investigation than how many people in the class have brown eyes etc. In my first workshop the teacher was all for fully integrating maths. She would select her big idea (often one driven by the kids interest, she would pose the question to the kids what do you want to learn about)? She would then brainstorm all of the maths that linked into that big idea (INCLUDING ALL STRANDS) to become more than just creating word problems around the big idea. Because "REAL LIFE IS A PROBLEM TO SOLVE."
She gave us one example to look at that she had used with a Year 5/6 class who were heading to camp. She asked them what they would have to prepare and get ready for going away. Naturally the kids came up with the maths they needed to use and highlighted areas that needed teaching. Questions like what will we have for dinner? Deciding to have burgers one night they had to do the costings (working with money) then the butcher might give them the price in kg's rather than a set price so they have to work out how many kg's of meat they have and how much it costs per kg to work out what their quantity will cost etc. The distance (measurement) from school to camp and how long the travel time is to book the bus etc. She would have what she called teaching clinics where if children had to learn a particular skill/strategy to work out their problem she would bring that group together for explicit teaching to happen. Meaning the teaching was relevant to what they were doing at the time. I can see how this would increase children's buy in particularly for students who often don't see the relevance of what we are teaching. Also if they are using the skills they are naturally getting the practice needed to consolidate a new skill.
I can see this idea of integration working really well. However I am a bit nervous about the fact that each group might be responsible for a different part and therefore if you are not on the dinner team you might not learn about weight and using kg/g for the burger patty pricing. How do you ensure that every child gets taught every strand in a fully integrated maths programme?
During the workshop she gave us a chance to brainstorm all the different ideas we had for a big idea with a lot of us looking at the Olympics we decided to run with this big idea. The ideas we came with were;
-MEASUREMENT-distance between NZ and London
                               -times recorded eg: in swimming, running etc with split seconds
                               -time zones (NZ being ahead of England)
                               -mapping-distance between one venue and the next
                               -money-cost to get to the Olympics
-STATISTICS-most popular sports watched
                       -most popular athletes
                       -probability with medal prospects
-RATIOS/PROPORTIONS-chlorine/water ratio for the pools
                                            -decimals with the times eg: 1:12:45
-GEOMETRY-Olympic rings/shape (working with compasses)
These were the ideas that we came up with in a quick five minutes I am sure there would be more still but you can see very quickly just how much learning there is behind a big idea.
I still find it a scary thought that I am skimming over a number of areas and the children are not given time to master a skill or that particular strands or strategies are being taugh to some children but not others. So I am going to try and meet this idea of integration halfway until I become more confident in it. I have started a new thing called mailbox maths in my class where the class receives a letter from a book character that we are reading or have just read about. They pose a problem to the class to solve for them. I am going to make sure that I use a range of word problems across the various strands for these. (The idea for mailbox maths was taken from http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.co.nz/). I like the idea that it is teaching children to find the number problem in the word problem and share strategies being able to explain to the character who wrote the letter how we worked it out. As well as using reading skills to read the letter and writing in following the structure of a letter when replying.
I am going to use Olympic maths in my rotations. As a class we have found that the cheapest kids flight to London return is $2100. So as a reward for good behaviour I am giving out 'dollar points' to see who can reach the Olympic Games the fastest. Every second Wednesday Michelle comes into my room for BT and I usually get her to take a strand with me reinforcing it as well. This term we are looking at geometry to tie in with the Olympic ring shapes (I can see the kids doing some circle art work-praticing the skill of using a compass). To hold the interest in the Olympic games we will look at doing some statistics around our medal count and most popular athletes and sports. Some of these integrated ideas may end up beng more whole class but it still exposes children to the concepts while maintaining their numeracy projects maths.
Other things I gained from the key note speakers was the idea of letting kids wonder and then focus them n on what you want them to look at. Learning from our mistakes is a common saying but often kids are too scared to give things a go because they know it will be wrong. We need to encourage kids to put commit an idea to paper because doing something even if you know it is wrong and then working out why it is wrong may bring you to the right way of doing it and therefore the answer.
One key note speaker who was also a classroom teacher and DP talked about how he would often pose an open ended rich word story problem with three levels of the same sort of question. Children could then choose which one they wanted to tackle or may choose to do all three. I found this an interesting point as it is simliar to three level guide questions in reading. We get children to do all three in that case but they are scaffolded up to the tricker questions. I like the idea of giving children the choice as I think the more reluctant mathematicans might be more willing when they have choosen which problem they which to solve. This teacher encouraged students to have a go at solving a problem and then sharing back to the group but he gave students the opportunity to rehearse their explanation in two's or three's. When it was shared back to the group he encouraged the rest of the group to question the student sharing. He initially gave students a copy of these maths questions to train them in probing each other for more information and understanding.
-What does that number mean?
-What do you mean by...?
-Can you show us what you mean by...?
-Can you convince me...?
-Why did you...?
-How do you know it works?
-What about if you say...does that still work?
Use these words 'so,' 'if,' 'because,' and 'then' in your questions.
And lastly I really liked one problem a keynote speaker posed around fairness.
The question was 'Who is the most generous?'
KIM-Had 10 fish and give up 2 fish
KELLY-Had 10 fish and give up 3 fish (so Kelly is more generous she gave up more)

KIM-Had 8 fish and gives up 2 fish
KELLY-Had 20 fish and gives away 2 fish (so proportion wise Kelly had more to give away so Kim was more generous even though they both gave up 2 fish)

KIM-Had 20 fish and gives up 4 fish
KELLY-Had 10 fish and gives up 2 fish (so they were both as generous as each other)

KIM-Had 20 fish and gives up 5 fish
KELLY-Had 25 fish and gives up 5 fish (again despite the number of fish given up being the same Kelly had more to give away so Kim is more generous)

KIM-Had 20 fish and gives up 5 fish
KELLY-Had 25 fish and gives up 6 fish (Kelly had more to give away and gave one extra away then Kim so she is slightly more generous)

I liked this problem as it would challenge children's thinking having to justify their reasoning and understand that while some of the time they were giving up just as much as each other it wasn't always equal.

Jill Eggelton

Before the holidays I was lucky enough to attend a workshop with Jill Eggelton in our school hall. It was nice to be able to put a face to the name that so often crops up at reading time! She spoke a lot about the importance of poetry to the point of SATURATION. She considered it an integral part of the literacy programme promoting creative and critical thinking encouraging children to think and imagine as poetry "wears what it fancies." I enjoy teaching poetry both in the writing and reading sense. I find the boys I have taught like that in writing poetry they are not expected to write much. The actual craft of poetry is often more challenging then a straight recount but the length makes it seem more achieveable to most. It was interesting that she touched on having a collection of little chants or raps to perform to get children used to that natural rhyhm of a chant or rap and the rhyme found in nursery rhymes that so many children can no longer recite off by heart. At the time my class were learning about sound and gearing up for our sharing assembly with the Middle Syndicate and parents I had taught my kids a little chant
"I eat a strawberry
pop it in a bite.
Eat it with some ice-cream
oh it tastes just right!"
The reason for learning the chant was to teach the difference between beat and rhythm. So half the class clapped a steady clap to create the beat while the other half recited the chant to create the rhythm.

She used the example of the Copycat Rap which I am keen to use as much as a singing activity as a reading and listening to the rhythm of the chant activity.

Copy me cat! … Come on and rap! …

Copy that boogie … Copy that clap …

Fingers that click … And feet that tap …

Twist your tongue round the copycat rap, yeah

Rap, rap, copycat, copycat rap! …

Verse 2

Put a bit o’ rhythm … In the gap …

Be a drum machine … Pow! and Zap! …

Bounce your lips round the copycat rap, yeah

Rap, rap, copycat, copycat rap! …

Copy me cat! … Come on and rap! …

High voice

Low voice

Quiet voice

Copy me cat! … Come on and rap! …

Copy me cat! … Come on and rap! …

Copy me cat! … Come on and rap! …

OH YEAH? … We’re DONE! … OVER and OUT! …Teaching poetry does give children a love for language, they love discovering that oh the last word of each line rhymes, and in turn we expose children to the power of words.
Jill was very much for FREE VERSE over giving them a particular structure to work within the confines of. I do still think that it is important that we expose children to different styles of poetry so that they can choose when one might be appropriate for what they are writing. As well as for those students who struggle to get started often they need some structure to flow because free verse is way to broad. However I will experiment with some more free verse to get the creativity flowing. I have recently signed my class up to the literacy shed (with the idea of opening their blogs up to a wider audience) but it has some cool images that could be used to inspire poetry along with images from Worth1000.
Jill talked about having a picture/photo to inspire children to create a poem about. She then used the idea of creating a thought picture and say the photo was of a tree the children would write to them not about them.

The elements of poetry that Jill went over were;
-Rhyme-letting the words sing
-Rhythm
-Sound of words-such as alliteration, soft words, hard words, lovely words etc.
-Imagery-using personification, similes etc
-Meaning-having emotion to reach the eye, the ear and the heart
-Word order and choice-to get the most out of the limited words on the page
-Tone to bring the poem to life
-Senses-using the five senses in creating poetry

Two quotes that I really liked from her talk that I will end on are "Poetry will dance in a child's head long after the words are finished." And "Future is the past returning through another gate."

Verse 1

Etherpad

Having spent part of the term learning to write a procedure we have followed this on with writing an explanation which is along the same lines but more difficult. So knowing that my lower writers were still struggling with writing a procedure with all of the structure and instructions which are easy to follow I thought we would start off our explanations working in groups (mixed ability so that kids can learn of one another particularly the lower ones seeing from the more capable ones how it is done). We began with the topic of how milk is made. I gave each of the four groups a powerpoint which I found on http://www.farmersdairy.ca/pages/community/HowMilkIsMade.php which was awesome because it had a picture with a blurb underneath. They then had to cut each part out and create a flowchart which is a great way to plan for an explanation piece of writing. Once they had created their plan they had to use it to as a group create their group explanation beginning with a tittle, opening statement or question and then the explanation. In the class we have four netbooks so one group at a time I thought we could use etherpad to collectively write an explanation. It was cool to see that those who wouldn't generally write much in one writing lesson were wanting to play their part and loved seeing how much they were writing and what parts were theirs. It was definitely great for motivation (even for the more able writers). I managed to capture some videos of their initial thoughts which was exciting to see.

Next we did an explanation on how a tadpole turns into a frog. I found a cool template for creating their tadpole and turning it into a frog on http://teacher.scholastic.com/lessonrepro/lessonplans/profbooks/tadpole.pdf and then printed off some information on the process. From these I got some of the group to work through with me highlighting the important points while the others that are more hands on learners to create the tadpole/frog model. As a group they then created a flowchart plan from their highlighted texts. Then from their plan they created their explanation. The groups have all used great opening questions and are obviously learning from the experiences. Once the group had finished their explanations together I conferenced with the group against the tick checklists that we use in their books for different writing genres. This got them justifying that they had completed the explanation.

So next step is to write an explanation on why birds chirp and then why popcorn makes a popping sound. I have got notes for each child to highlight and put into order. From there I will get the two groups that have had a turn on etherpad to have a go at writing their own explanation and the other two groups will take their turn on etherpad working collectively with their writing.