Bits & Bobs

Photos...taking them, it's recentish passion, I LOVE it! Quite a lot are rubbish, but when they work I am thrilled! I need to learn more about ISO, aperture, shutter speed etc, I'll get there eventually, I am impatient and just want to get going...but by learning I will improve quicker....note to self, read the manual....These are a few recent favourites.

  This year, as well as teaching in Year 3, I am teaching music in all classes across the school. I do this over one whole day - a Tuesday, as ppa cover for staff. My background is music, for most of my life I played the double bass professionally in orchestras and such but also did many hundreds of musical workshops in schools with children of all ages. 

  It's been great so far - all of 3 weeks worth, I'm loving getting to know the children in KS1 and EYFS who as a Y3 teacher didn't really know too well, putting names to faces etc! During the summer hols I had to decide about a scheme to follow, we have Music Express but I had a look around to try to what else was out there. I couldn't find very much so I have decided to write my own scheme of work as I go along and hopefully come July will have a primary school scheme of music which works!

  How am I doing this?....well, good question! I started with the National Curriculum and the new EYFS curriculum and am planning in half termly blocks. This half term - aside from Year 3 - is all about music and how it works. Pretty much the 'ongoing skills' but with a Nicola touch!...pulse, rhythm, pitch, dynamics, ostinato, tempo, texture, timbre...I did all this in a teachmeet once upon a time, many moons ago. I'm quite lucky in that I find it easy to make musical things up on the spot, rhythm games, songs, bits of this and that that come from something a child has done, it's great!...so my planning review each week often involves scribbled out typing and new things written in. It's a work in progress...

  I'm finding the levels in each class are quite easy to figure out but finding I need time to get to know the children and what they can do to differentiate successfully. Sometimes it's by outcome, sometimes by ability or knowledge that a child has that comes from learning to play an instrument. Tomorrow in KS1 will be the first time they have recorded ideas, they've had targets such as 'I can create a rhythm from the 'bits' in words with a friend' etc and have performed these very well. Tomorrow is their first days as composers who can write their music down so that they will be able to play it again.

  KS2 have been very practical - body percussion and syllables - as you might expect but last week they started to record their ideas on till roll. Till roll is great because there are no limits or boundaries, the music lasts as long as it lasts. We talked about making sure you know what you mean so that you can play in next week...tomorrow will be finishing composing, performing and then reviewing and maybe writing a code for the symbols so that others can try to perform. Till roll compositions, great stuff!

  My plan is to write up what I have done so that it's not just a plan for me in my code, then I might put it out into the world and see if others can follow it.. :)

  
  

My blog has been dormant for a very long time...very long..but I'm feeling a bit inspired this eve and so here I am!

Writing...moving them on, targets, writing... moving them on, targets...each child is different, each class is different. What do you do?

If you're anything like me then you change things all the time to vary, suit, try to close gaps...etc etc For quite a while I've used a tick list for each child for their individual targets . Each child has 6 targets, varying in what they need to achieve and a word count target. Lately I got to thinking about using Wordle instead, a simpler, less to look at target system for each child. Each child has a laminated Wordle on which are their targets, I really enjoyed making them and even tried to 'colour match' to some children! I then, as always, asked the children for feedback. What do you think? Do you like the new way? Will it help you learn? Will it help you achieve your targets? Why?

They look something like this!













They love it! They write, then I give them ENOUGH time to check targets. They write the target in their books and they say if they have achieved it. At the moment it's smiley faces etc.. I might change this but it seems to me that at the moment it's ok as every child 'marks' themselves as they feel.

So - they write, then underneath is this;

3 different kinds of punctuation  ! , ? ( ie they write the different kinds down)

3 different connectives in the middle  because, but, however

Joining :-)

..and so on

I then mark and make a comment next to each one. At the end I total them. If they achieve 6/6 then they get 2 individual reward points ( magic marks), if they achieve 5/6 then it's 1 magic mark.

After every piece of target writing I give out Writers of the Week certificates, this can be for pretty much anything, achieving a certain target, achieving all targets..etc

I love how it's working and so do my class!

Wow, I survived Bett! After a very easy journey I arrived at Bett and walked in...HUGE...where do I start, what to look at first? There seemed to be no maps left so I wandered without a plan....much the best way mebbe.

The best thing for me was a brilliant seminar given by Victoria Crivelli on Friday afternoon, she's a Senior Specialist Teacher in Dyslexia and ICT Learning Support in Worcestershire. She really made me think about how it is to be a dyslexic child. Do I do enough I found myself thinking? Some of the things she talked about require no special software... using sassoon infants font, spacing out the lines, using a coloured background - anything but white - putting sound clips into my ppts so a dyslexic child can hear the text as well as see it, use the IWB spotlight more or use the screenshade tool...etc etc - Simple things that we could all do. She also used a coloured reading ruler on the IWB, I think it must be this one here but maybe you know of something elsewhere, if you do please leave a comment and let me know!

Her demonstrations of Claroread and Clicker 5 were also thought provoking as was her data about how these have impacted on the standards - and interest in learning - in her experience. There was an amazing 'live scribe pen' - found here - that records as it writes using pixellated paper...wow!

I also loved the presentation given by Tim Rylands along with Simon Widdowson  and Kevin McLaughlin.
It was a joy to watch people present with such enthusiasm and passion for what they do. Their work using Epic Citadel was fantastic!

Mouse Mischief is a new tool from Microsoft that looks both fun and exciting! It was demonstrated on their stand by Dan Roberts and his colleague Stuart Ball  with a 'live' demo at the end. Basically it can help you to make your ppts more interactive...I shall try this very soon!

Philip Armstrong from the wonderful 2Simple (what a buzz there was around their stall!) gave us a brilliantly clear demo of Purplemash and their extended version of this....thank you.

The teachmeet on Friday evening was also buzzing, around 250 people attended which was slightly scarey as I'd put my name down to present. So many wonderful presentations with new ideas for me to take away and think about as well as much wit and humour - especially from Dughall McCormick and Zoe Ross! My name didn't come up to present in the end which was slightly disappointing as I'd 'geared myself up' to go for it...always another teachmeet though!

It was great to put faces to so many tweeters, many I had met before but there were also lots of new ones...great to meet you all, thank you for all the new ideas and roll on next year!