Bits & Bobs

My project this week has been to set up a whole school blog  (still much to do on this site but it's workable..) - on which live the links to the blogs for each class in our school! It's taken me a lot of time as we're using wordpress and I've had to learn how to use it and have messed up numerous blogs along the way....

I used the Heathfield CPS blogs site as a model and at first I didn't realise it was a main blog with links on it and spent a long time trying to work out how to add new posts to various pages....didn't quite work! After chatting to our ICT man in school we decided to do this - a main wordpress blog  for the whole school which needs coding and things I don't quite understand which will be managed by him and primaryblogger blogs for each class which I will manage and give input when each class gets going....Year 3 is going to be the first class to get going with it and I'm very excited about the whole thing!

Here's the Year 3 blog so far....sorry not much there yet but do come back soon!

I have added Year 3 as a class under one name as a contributor and created an email address for them to send work to. I'm going to see how this goes and it might be that I need to add more generic names as contributors. I'm thinking that generic names will be easier to manage when it comes round to September and there's a new Year 3 class....I'll just have to see how that goes.

I have many ideas of what we could do and I hope that - as with the children at Heathfield - the enthusiasm for blogging and sharing  work with the big wide world will be infectious and in turn have an impact on what happens inside the classroom before any work gets to the blog!

Here are a few of my ideas, some of which have been stolen from other blogs so thank you!

•  Blogging rules - thank you to mvass from Twitter
• A praise page - thanks to Diane Spencer (Heathfield HT) - they do praise texts
• A links page - quite a few blogs have this and it seems like a good way to add fun/educational games
• A regular post under the title 'What I know today that I didn't know yesterday' ...
• The use of sites such as voicethread 
• The use of google docs to share work
• This site to create ebooks with turning pages
• Have a spellings page with sites such as Spellingcity

Blogging seems to me to lend itself very well to anything that's written, so how to use it for maths other than by embedding games etc is something I need to think more about so if you have any thoughts on this or examples on your blog then please leave a comment...I could also ask the children as they often come up with ideas that we adults don't think of!

Today we had a joint session between Y3 and Y4 to create E-Safety comics as part of our focus on E-Safety this week. We had the last morning session to recap on previous learning and I was delighted at how much my class knew about being a 'safe surfer!' Last half term we had spent every Friday afternoon learning about E-Safety online and offline and had already created good posters to help other learn about how to be SMART.

We decided to do a comic strip this time as it was different to the posters and so this afternoon that's what we did. Great session, mixed Y3 & Y4 groups, either in 3's or 2's. The children had a choice of comic strip layout, speech bubbles and cartoon characters. We gave a bit of input into what makes a comic a comic - we'd already revisited being a safe surfer - and off they went. All worked really well together - just lovely to see children who don't know each other so well getting to know each other better and enjoying it! If you look at the finished comic strips below I think you might agree...objective achieved with many delightful safe surfing sessions ahead of them!

      The title of this blog post is a comment just lifted from a tweet by David Mitchell - DH at Heathfield CPS in Bolton. This afternoon I was lucky enough to go and visit the school, take up about 2 & 1/2 hours of his time, be delighted by the enthusiasm he was greeted with at playtime by all children, be equally ( if not more) delighted by the enthusiasm of the Y6 in the playground as they talked to me about their blog and their blogging, the huge enthusiasm of the Y4 teacher and her class and their recent venture into blogging and thoroughly enjoy talking shop with Mr M!

    Blogging...hmm...people reading children's work from all over the world, comments, the globe on the blog....all things that were recommended to me by the Heathfield children. I just loved seeing how much blogging is inspiring them - I want that for my school.

  I asked Mr M if he'd been able to asses the impact of blogging on learning...too early to tell. BUT!...How can this enthusiasm not have an impact? How can a child wanting to be the FIRST to embed a maths game on the blog not have an impact? How can the carrot of the '5 best pieces of writing will go on the blog' not have an impact? How can comments from adults & children around the world not have an impact? Surely blogging makes you want to 'show off.' I know that's part of why I blog. I know that that's what one child at Heathfield said to me today.

  I'm sold. I am going to start my class blogging after half term. Tomorrow they will learn about what a blog is, look at Heathfields blog, read the comments I have left and leave their own comments for Heathfield. After that they will choose their own medium to tell me what they think about blogs....Watch this space!

   AS REAL AS IT GETS comes from an idea that Mr M had. He's at the end of a bit of persuasive writing with his class. He's going to finish it off by using Web 2.0 tools to enable them to persuade my class/my school/the world about blogging. Can't wait!

What on earth are Goo Towers you might well ask!....

 It's the week before half term and mornings will be taken up with mid-year tests so the afternoons will be full of more practical actitivies. On Monday afternoon we'll be having a 'challenge' afternoon in Year 3. The class will be working in small teams and will have to create a 'Tower of Goo!' The idea is that they will use what they have learnt so far from the World of Goo about building towers that stay up, to create a tower of their own that must also stand up on its own!

The materials I shall give them - another link to our current science topic of materials - are;

• marshmallows
• straws
• raisins
• midget gems
• cocktail sticks (with safety talk of course...)
• scissors
• jelly

This isn't a new idea by any means, I read about the idea in a forum somewhere a couple of years ago and have since done this challenge twice. Each time I have done this lesson I have tried different materials - cocktail sticks, marshmallows, jelly and raisins then just jelly, marshmallows and straws. I wasn't really happy with either of those combinations because I don't think that they really allowed the children to create a tall tower that would stand up. They allowed them to create a tall tower....but the towers didn't stand up or they made a wider based tower that wasn't very tall but did stand up!

This time I really would like them to achieve the end product of a tall tower that stands up!....So, I'm thinking that if I give a wide variety of materials with different characteristics and weights it may well work....and of course it'll be great fun!

I shall start by talking about/showing the World of Goo and how I think when I play it. I'll gradually let their ideas in when they have got the hang of how I am thinking -  What must I do to make my tower stand up and not collapse? Is the base important? What shape should it be as we build upwards? After that I'll show them the materials available and let them brainstorm in their groups about the various characteristics of the materials and therefore what job in the tower they might be suitable for!

I hope they think like this...

• Jelly is heavy and fairly solid - but still slightly flexible which makes it a good material for the base
• 
  Straws are flexible but not very strong
• Marshmallows are soft - good for sticking things into - light in weight and malleable (marshmallow 'glue' is very sticky!
• Raisins are malleable, soft and light in weight
• Scissors are sharp and are good for cutting straws, raisins and marshmallows
• Cocktail sticks are sharp, hard and stronger than straws.
• Midget gems are heavier and stronger than raisins

I'm very hopeful of successful, tall, strong tower building! Pictures to follow on Monday!

I had an idea last week.....well maybe more than one.... but I shall tell you about this one...!

I wanted to do something WW2 related in art.....so....I came up with the idea of using the 'Leningrad' symphony by Dimitri Shostakovitch as inspiration. He wrote this symphony whilst the German army was marching towards Leningrad if you click here you'll find a page that tells you a bit about it's history and isn't too musically technical! It's a fantastic piece of music and I chose to use the 1st movement...26 minutes long so selected a big chunk in the middle to draw to.... from about 7 mins to about 20 mins.


Very briefly, Shostakovitch wasn't in the Red Army because he couldn't see very well so he wrote this 'War' symphony. It's full of wonderful imagery - isn't most music?! Before we started with that work I 'warmed' them up to the idea with other pieces of music, the first couple were completely unrelated to war. I wanted them to get the idea that nothing was ever wrong and that it was ok to change your mind as the music went on. I do feel that music is wonderful at putting pictures in your head and it brings a certain freedom because how can it ever be wrong if it's what the music has made you think/draw?!

So we all got the hang of listening and drawing (on whiteboards in front of the IWB first) , I found it fascinating to see what unfolded...some drew pictures, some wrote words, some did nothing, some did words and pictures. What was great was that there were lots of different ideas that were all correct! I think we did four warm ups, the last two being war related - 'Run Rabbit Run' and '633 Squadron.' I then introduced them to Shostakovitch and after that it was time to go to places with A3 sheets & sketching pencils!

I decided to just play the music first before saying anything, I didn't want them to have any pre-conceived ideas from me, I wanted them to be free to think and choose for themselves, to know that it's absolutely ok and seriously cool to do your own thing rather than follow the crowd!

So off we went, I started at about 7 mins in - it's very quiet, they really have to listen. How proud was I? They all listened and quietly started to draw, this piece is a bit like Bolero because the theme keeps building and repeating. There's a 'rat a tat -tat' in the background on a snare drum that just builds and builds. At around 13 mins 30 seconds the 'na-na naa na' siren starts happening in the violins - it feels like the tension is mounting, the army is getting closer and closer, the music gets faster, at about 14 mins you can hear the 'tanks rolling in' in the trombones, the rat a tat tat starts to sound more like gun fire, an army on the move fighting! It just keeps building & sounds very exciting, my class got more and more energized as it went on - I have speakers in the ceiling which are fantastic for teaching with sound! At about 16 mins 30secs the trumpets unleash yet more power and there's a massive crescendo....and then....what do you think? Has the battle been won? Has the city been captured? What does the end of this symphony mean? At about 19 mins it all calms down...what does this mean? What do you think?

After I had stopped the music the children talked about what they had drawn and how the music had influenced what they had drawn. One child used a ruler and drew a straight line pattern, another had written big words - IT'S WAR - HELP, some had drawn poppies as they had remembered things from Remembrance Day and thought that this might have been similar...only one child just couldn't get going. I tried to get him to think in a different way - think of it as a story, what's happening? Does it seem like patterns to you? In the end he did but I don't think he was convinced by his drawing but that's ok I thought, the afternoon was about freedom of choice and it wasn't as though he didn't try!

As a plenary I talked through the music and tried to explain how I hear it...I got them all singing 'na na naaa na' with me in a screechy voice, they could hear the violins... I sang the tanks and rolled around the classroom!...They got it! They'd already spotted the gunfire and had got the idea that as the music got louder it meant that the army was getting nearer to the city and indeed a battle was going on! I kind of have a bit of a head start with music as it was my job for about 20 years...I told them the story of when I played it once and had to wear ear plugs because I had 5 trumpets blasting into my head. I had to wear ear plugs because there wasn't any room for the usual sound screens that orchestras use to protect hearing. Can you imagine how hard that was? Playing but not hearing to protect your hearing?! The loud bits were ok but in the quiet bits it was very disconcerting not to be able to hear!!...

I loved this afternoon and plan on doing similar this week - going to use Mars from the Planets by Holst - war again but in a different way and it'll be interesting to see what they think and if they draw differently.

You can buy this symphony very cheaply and I think it's very accessible to all - good luck if you decide to try it!