Raw&Flawed, Published vs Perfect-Student Voice

I really like the idea of using our blogs to showcase the process of learning rather than the mastered learning. I like the idea of publishing raw ideas ready to get feedback all the way along. He is right in the momentum being great at the start. I notice this with comments as well. The sooner the kids see the comments the more impact they get from them.



Publishing student voice from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Giving kids choice-Who holds the power

I really like this idea as a way to get the kids thinking about who holds the power and to reflect on my own teaching. Am I making too many of the decisions? Am I letting the kids take ownership of their learning? How could I give them more choice in the day?

I would be interested in trialing this with my class and maybe adding a column with what they would  like to have more choice or say in?

Taken from Emma Winder's blog http://my-learning.me/2013/04/22/who-has-control/

Who has control?

Posted on April 22, 2013 by EMMAWINDER25Leave a comment

Interestingly, when I’ve spoken to the students in Year 6 lately, they’ve told me that they have lots of control in the classroom. I can’t say I agree, though they may well have plenty of control compared to previous years at school. So, to give both myself and the kids in my class a better idea of who had control over the various aspects of the classroom, I decided to have a big discussion around this.

Below is the result of this discussion:

Miss Winder controls:	Teacher and kids have joint control:	Kids have control:
Deadlines Direction of discussions Mathletics tasks Warnings Units of inquiry- “big ideas” Trips Visitors “Thoughts on this” board Brain teasers Planning: Tasks Opt in meetings Group meetings Class meetings Learning intentions	Choosing goals Deadlines Noise level Success criteria “Did you know” board	Planning the day – decide when to do things Where the furniture is in the room How we behave Who we work with or whether we work alone How we use our time Where we sit What we do for fitness Whether we attend opt in meetings Choose how hard we try Choose what rewards we get Whether you need to get a drink or use the toilet What/with whom/when you talk Choose what you want to learn within the big idea in inquiry Choose to add your ideas to the “thoughts on this” board Choose what to write about for goal practice Choose what to do when weekly tasks are finished.

Human Connections-Relationships

This is a great video about relationships an interesting point made about how kids don't learn from teachers they don't like. Nothing new but so right! I certainly had some teachers who I didn't click with or really truly respect. Because of this I either taught myself because I had exams that were worth something to me or gave up on the subject. Which if we let our students give up on a subject doesn't that mean that we have given up on the student? Have we done our best job if students give up?
I wonder how I can use positive affirmations each morning to raise students confidence in themselves?
I love her positive attitude and turning a negative situation (the F) into a positive and you can only imagine the student will next time try their best to do better not only to please the teacher but also do better for themselves. I think sometimes that is the key getting them to take ownership of their own learning.

Storytelling ipad apps Master Class

This morning we meet for a master class on Storytelling apps on the ipads.

Sock puppets was the first one we looked at for an animated way to tell a story.
The saved copies can be found under open and to delete you just hold down on one you want to delete and it will come up with a delete button to push.

Toontastic was another recommended one. This has a plot, setting, characters, problem and solution to all plan and plot your story out with.

With Puppet Pals you can insert your own photos eg: you as the character or our school as the setting. You can save it to your camera roll to upload onto your blogs by inserting as a video or going through safari on the ipad as it is a video.

Big cats are big book read-a-louds but you can also go to story creator and retell the story the kids have just listened to.

Book creator is another great app that you can then save as an ibook. With book creator you can add a photo, sound or even video.

TIP-To stop the annoying update beeps go to settings then notifications then find the app that keeps popping up and push to off.

Te Kowhai and iPads

Wow what a great afternoon learning from other like minded teachers experimenting with the use of iPads in the classroom. I felt it was a great sharing opportunity with both parties learning something new. It was great to see that even though we are both using pic collage we could see different uses for this app. My class are confident in using this app now and will often ask to go on it and create a pic collage learning tennis or gymsport etc. This app is being used in more of a showcasing way as a collection of photos in my class. One thing I started doing as I introduced these different apps was to ask the kids how else could this be used?  This is something I think I need to go back to and do more of. It was cool to see Te Kowhai using it to take photos of maths learning with materials out and basically writing what their WALT is in the middle. Another great use for this app and one I will be trialling in class. 

They also introduced us to a fantastic thinking hats tool. The teacher had used it for topic work but I could see how this would be great as a reading follow up, during shared reading as well as topic and I am sure much more as I experiment more with it. It was great that it reminded the kids what each hat stood for and could be uploaded to their blog. I think I might trial this first with a reading group, but it could have some value as a self assessment type of tool during our designing of our wearable art outfits as well???

Educreations was another app that they talked about which is very similar to the show me app. Except the benefit of educreation is that it has several pages. I know this is a problem some of my boys run into when they are explaining and they write too big running out of space. I also liked that with educreation you can upload a photo. It could be great to get the kids to work out a problem using materials take a photo and upload it. Then they could record what the materials stand for and how it shows the process of reaching the answer.

I loved the idea of the visual poet app it could be used in so many ways, sequencing their writing, sequencing a shared book, a collection of photos with key words, social stories etc. I think this app is one that needs time to explore all the possibilities it has.

Scratch was another really cool app for writing time. It split your screen in half, one half being a website and the other a notepad. One of their teachers used the website side to bring up an image from the Internet and then get the kids to write key words, describing words to do with the picture on the other side. I am not sure yet if you can import your own photos on the website side if you can you could take a picture of one page of a reader and get the kids to make notes about what is happening on this page, what this page shows etc.

They also talked about A+ spelling test which I have seen before. It is great for recording the kids weekly spellings words and saying them in a sentence. Then the kids can test themselves during spelling time. The same with spelling app spellasaur.

Grammar wonderland and parts of speech were other good apps for getting kids to work in small collaborative groups to refresh what nouns, verbs adjectives etc are and identifying which word is a noun etc. The parts of speech one even gave you a pie graph of what they got and what they need work on almost like a mini PAT analysis.

Talking to Krystal after the session the seniors talked about a cool maths slide app to teach the kids to use the iPad in a collaborative sense. It also keeps that competitiveness going to get the kids having a quick recall of their basic facts. It also means no one needs to be the teacher with some of the games I have got my less confident mathematicians doing I have needed a more able mathematician to be the teacher to make sure they are getting the answers right.

Some great ideas that I can't wait to start experimenting with! A very worthwhile afternoon.

Maths=Dancing

I love this idea of getting the kids to move to learn maths.
I can see how this will help with symmetry, rotation, translation etc miming the kids buddies movements.
Angles with tell them to move 90 degrees to their right etc.
I can also see how it could be useful with algebra and getting kids to see patterns getting them to come up with 4 counts and getting the buddy beside them to tell me what would come next.

Children's Books-Ideas for read-a-louds

Going back to University Scholastic were there to share some of the top trends in books at the moment and to remind us of the importance of the teacher reading to the class.
To begin with we were told how children who are read to each day are one whole year ahead of those who aren't regardless of socio-economic class or anything else.
Some good read-a-loud titles we were shown were the My New Zealand Story series
Emily Rodda's new series of The Golden Door, The Silver Door and one other Door.
Sally Sutton's Diary of a _____ there is a whole series with bat, pukeko and sea lion being three of them.
Picture books-On the road to Tuapeka
                     -Mind Your Gramma (good one for tense)
                     -Far Far From Home

We then looked at the top trends around books and some titles within those themes.
1. Bullying
          -Three Cheers for No Ears
          -Scrap, tale of a blonde puppy (This is a new series from Vince Ford with Scrap being on all of them)
          -Diary of a sea lion
          -Great Galloping Galoot
          -Payback
          -Ransomwood (intermediate plus)
          -The Great Orlando
          -Iris's Ukulele

2. Sci-Fi
          -The 4 Powers
          -Vitality Code
          -Extinction
          -Itch (series)

3. Non-Fiction
          -Bear Grylls (intermediate plus)
          -One Little Fantail
          -Eruption
          -Angry Birds (National Geographic)

4. Novels-in-Cartoons
              -Diary of a Whimpy Kid
              -Chickenhare
              -Captain Underpants
              -Dinosaur Rescue

5. Kid Lit on Screen
        She touched on how there is a growing demand for kindles etc but that people still enjoyed the choice between and book and a screen.

6. War
        -Here come the Marines (My NZ Story)
        -When Empire Calls  (Year 6 plus)
        -A medal for Leroy
        -My Brother's War
        -Caesar the war dog
        -Lest we Forget
        -The Red Poppy
        -Nice Day for a War

7. Touch Girls (resilient)
          -EJ12 (9+)
          -Gold (My NZ Story)
          -Wolf Princess
          -Torn

8. Survival
          -Saving Zasha
          -On two feet and wings
          -The Wahine Disaster (My NZ Story)
          -Castaway (My NZ Story)
          -A Winter's Day in 1939

9. Diversity
         -Old Huhu
         -Melu
         -Blue Gnu
        -Great Galloping Galoot
        -Seesaw Po
        -Colour the Stars (Describing colour to a blind boy-good for teaching description)

10. Nature runs Amok
            -My NZ Story - Earthquake
                                   -Tangiwai
                                   -Cyclone Bola

To end with we got a sneak peak at some new titles coming out in June
Luther and the Cloud Makers (conservation theme)
The Freedom Merchants
The Three Bears Sort Of - great humor two person narrative