Bits & Bobs

After Bett 2011!

2011-01-16T08:57:00.002Z

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!

Bett 2011 - My First Visit!

2011-01-13T07:07:00.001Z

Today I'm going to Bett..my first visit and I'm quite excited! I'm planning on being there this afternoon, Friday and maybe Saturday morning. I only booked to go last week so am way behind on deciding on seminars, figuring out where stands I want to visit are and trying to find the the teachmeet takeover stands and meeting a few fellow twitterers... I'm wondering if it's a bit late in the day to sign up for that but I'd love to talk about how our school is getting into blogging!

On Friday there's one seminar in particular I'm hoping to go to if there is a space, it's the Music transforms children’s lives: Lambeth’s “In Harmony” Project delivers online benefits given by Brenden LePage. I'd also love to go to Tim Rylands seminar but am geussing that will be full but I shall try!

I decided to be brave a sign up to do a 7 minute presentation at the teachmeet on Friday evening all about taking the mystery away from musical terminology and giving people a few ideas as to how they can achieve this with their class...It'll be just me, a bit of audience participation and a pair of claves...nothing whizzy or technical which does feel a bit 'old fashioned' amongst all the technology and amazing teachers who use it so brilliantly..but hey, I bit of 'old fashioned' is a good thing in my book!

So..fingers crossed there are no train delays and see you there!

My Class Blog!

2010-12-11T16:24:00.001Z

   It's been a long while since my last blog post here but I have been busy sorting out blogs elsewhere...namely for our school and my class! In September, John Sutton set up a whole school blogging system for us - found here - and it's been work in progress getting everyone going and sorted. Last week with our school being closed for 4 days due to snow and ice, they really came into their own when each class had work set for them on their own class blogs.

   I love my class blog, I think of it as one of the best tools in my teacher toolkit and it's about to get even better! We've started off slowly as bloggers in Year 3 in that so far it's just been a showcase for work and a tool for me. My class are motivated by having their work showcased online - from writers of the week, to data handling to various art projects - they love showing their parents, their parents love seeing their work and have left comments to say so. It's enabled me to give them a choice of how to do their PAL (homework) in that we also use the amazing Purplemash from 2 Simple and the choice is either to to their work in their PAL books or on one of the templates within Purplemash. I can then download their work from PM and upload it to our blog. It's given my class the chance to be more creative and expressive about how they do their work - if you look at our blog you'll see many wonderful examples!

   How else do I use our class blog? Well...

As spelling support - we have a spellings page, a group uses this daily in reading as part of a carousel.
As maths support - we have a maths page, used both at school and at home.
For research - it's easy to make a page for topic research that enables my class to reach the sites I want them to access very simply and quickly.
We have a page that helps parents to understand the methods we use for calculating.
We have an e-safety page for a constant reminder of the importance of being safe online.
We've currently got a 'Christmas Fun' page that'll change to a 'normal fun' page in the New Year, with some sites suggested by the children in my class.
We have a science page which changes with each different topic we do.
We have a revolver map - this almost teaches the children where in the world continents and countries are without any specific teaching...they love this globe.

The next stage is to make my class 'users' of their blog. This will allow them to login and write a post - always approved by me first before publishing. I told them about it this week and there was much excitement so I'm going to try to get that all sorted before Christmas. When they become users I'm planning on taking them on a global blogging journey to class blogs around the world to help them understand why we blog. Again it'll be a constant reminder of e-safety when they learn to leave comments on other blogs and in their own blog posts....

So - we're looking forward to taking blogging a stage further and becoming more global, watch this blog!

A few weeks in...

2010-09-30T19:33:00.002+01:00

So, we're currently in week 5 of the first half term of the new school year...busy time! I've been getting to know my lovely new class, setting up routines and expectations, rewards systems and generally tweaking things to suit both the children, me and my TA's and we're getting there! My class love both their 'Ping' whole class reward system and their 'Magic Marks' individual reward system, I'm getting used to doing the register online and we're all getting to know our routines pretty well!

New to our school this year is the wonderful Purple Mash from 2 Simple. Our ICT technician Steve had the brainwave of an idea to ask 2Simple to make us our own gateway page to make it easier for KS1 to login and now the whole school accesses this from our school website - that Steve also created and manages. This week is really the first week that the whole school has been 'Purplemashing.' We sent out letters and login details and classes have been using it in their ICT lessons to make/do various things. Nabby 3 have been using it to learn to type and to create posters about what they have learnt about their teeth so far in science. Nabby 4 have been using it to create an image of their dreams which links with their literacy at the moment. Nabby2 have been using it to create documents about fairies...all classes love it and they can use it at home so even better! 2 Simple have the most amazing support network, I can't imagine any company doing better than they do. Thanks guys!

Also new to our school is a whole school blogging site created by John Sutton and his company 'Creative Blogs.' John has been great and sorted things out very quickly, couldn't ask for a better service! Our main school site can be found here and at the moment it's work in progress as everyone gets to grips with how blogs work. The start of the new school year is an incredibly busy time and all teachers want to blog! I've been helping staff learn how to blog after school on many occasions which is just great! I know how much our blogs have already enthused the children and can't wait to see how whole school blogging really develops.

I wanted to upload a few of the songs I sing to get children's attention but it's proving to be rather problematic...so I'll list them and hopefully add me singing at a later time when I have figured it all out!

I sing a capital letters song to get my class to check they have them
'Hocus Pocus let's have focus'...it works!
Or - Hocus Pocus Bob's got focus!
One, two, three, four, five, six, one...and in French
Ooopa lumpa tickety tee, now it is time to listen to me....
Wave at me, wave at, wave at me and stop your talking! - for the ICT suite!

I think that a teachers voice is such an important tool...but that's for another blog post.

Switching off...

2010-08-15T09:01:00.008+01:00

Switching off, can you do it?

As a teacher I find that hard, there's always something lurking at the back of my mind that 'needs' to be thought about and fiddled with in my head, discussed on Twitter or researched on the internet.....

At the end of last term I decided that I was going to try to take a whole month away from anything that was school related. The summer term was very difficult for us at my school - if you've read a previous blog post you'll know why - and I really felt the need to just stop....so I got quite a lot of things ready for next term before we finished such as books, labels etc and then I stopped! My memory pen hasn't been anywhere near my laptop, my brain has rarely been in school, very little Twitter - one ukedchat, a bit of thinking when I had a lovely lunch with Jan Webb, it's been great! I realised I had truly managed to do this one day last week, I was on holiday in Northumberland and went for a walk from Seahouses to Bamburgh (see photo below) and back...it's a big favourite place of mine..the tide was as low as I have ever seen it which made that vast expanse of beach feel even more special. I love it there when the tide is way out and when it's windy and sunny...which it was...it feeds my soul and gives me peace. I walked along, watched gannets fishing and just sat on the rocks watching the sea for at least an hour...when do I ever sit still for an hour?..Rarely because there's always something coming into my head that just needs doing!

So, you might ask, what have you been doing for a month?!...Well I've been learning ...I have a new passion, which is nature.

I've always been an outdoors sort of person and way back in February a friend who works for the RSPB at Old Moor told me that they wanted volunteers to be 'reserve guides.' This sounded interesting and so I went along on a very cold Saturday, chatted to someone about it, put my name down and went for a wander round. I realised that I knew very little about birds! Garden birds, yes I could name a few, but actually not very much else! At Old Moor there's lots of water so there are waders, ducks, geese, warblers etc etc..Luckily for me there are charts in the hides from which you can work out what you are looking at!...that was the start ...

Since then I have absolutely loved my volunteering at Old Moor. As a reserve guide I wander around all day chatting to people in and out of the hides, I chat about what's currently around, from plants to birds, to insects to butterflies and about Old Moor in general. If I chat to people who have never been before I might explain what you might see and which hide to see it in, sometimes people come who are just getting into 'birding' and are a bit worried that they don't know much. I can then tell them that they were me before I started volunteering and just chat about all the things I now know! I am constantly amazed by how much some people who visit the reserve know.... they pick out calls, see a glimpse of a bird and instantly know what it is...I talk to them and I learn!

Sometimes I help with pond dipping on the 'Wild Wednesday's' which are days with activities for children, sometimes I help out on walks around the reserve, whatever and wherever really. I once went on a walk down the river at the side of the reserve with members of the Yorkshire Dragonfly Society. I went along knowing absolutely nothing about them but that didn't matter, these lovely people were only too willing to help me learn. I came back from that walk knowing something about dragonflies (big chunky bodies), damselflies (little thin ones) and demoiselles (somewhere in between) and that's something I have been able to pass onto others as I wander around.

So during my month away from school things I've spent quite a few days at Old Moor. Did you know that birds are confusing?...They have winter plumage, then they have another one for breeding, then they lose that one and look a bit different still...then there are their chicks....I found I just got the hang of one bird and then it changed! Luckily I have an iphone and I bought a brilliant app - Birds of Britain and Ireland (pro). This app is great, it gives you pictures of all the different ways the birds can look, male, female, their chicks, details about habitats etc and also their calls. This is such a fun way for me to help people on the reserve and learn at the same time. If I find people unsure as to a call, then I check it out on my app, is the 'app call' the same one as the one they are actually hearing?...oh yes, there are songs, calls and alarm calls...more confusion! I can show pictures or actual photos to 'prove' it's a certain bird...it's been a great hit!

Another reason I love it there is because of the staff and fellow volunteers. They are all passionate about nature and it's importance in our world. I thoroughly enjoy being around people who love what they do and who are enthusiastic, passionate and have a want to share that with others....teachers are like that too, that's another reason I really appreciate my PLN on twitter and those I know in 'real life.'

Come and visit, it's a great place!

My other learning has been with my new camera. Again this is related to my nature passion! I have never taken a huge interest in cameras or photos and have had a £30 'just point and click' sort of camera. One of the lovely people at Old Moor loves taking close ups of insects, butterflies, flowers etc...I kind of got the bug from him and found it amazing to see such tiny creatures in close detail! So I did a bit of research and decided to go for a 'bridge' camera. These are cameras with all their lenses in one so there's not too much fiddling around or things to carry before you can actually get around to taking a shot. I have spent hours looking and photographing insects and butterflies...great stuff!

Here are a few of my favourites...

A month off....throughly recommend it to anyone....back to work from tomorrow!

P.S

I've been thinking more about this post today as I've wandered around Old Moor....'teacher mode' sort of thinking.

As a learner who started with very little I haven't been afraid to say so or ask. Is this true for children as learners?
I have found myself at times 'saturated' with new things and unable to take anything else in. Is this true for children as learners?
I've been lucky to have been 'taught' by such enthusiastic people, it's been so enjoyable. Is this true for children as learners?
I didn't know much but didn't really know what I wanted to or even could learn until I started. Is this true for children as learners?

I think all those bullet points ARE true for children as learners, it's been a good reminder.

I've had a very big 'wow' factor in all this. The thrill of seeing something for the 'first' time or more likely the first time when I have actually know what it is I am looking at! When I was at uni (I did music) I remember one lecturer saying how much he envied us listening to certain pieces of music for the first time - we were about to listen to the Schubert 5tet for string quintet (2 cellos)...I have felt this this year. Big wow seeing the marsh harrier flying, the brilliant blue darting of a kingfisher, the gorgeous call of the little grebe, just how playful birds can be and just how aggressive birds can be!

When we go back in a couple of weeks I hope to take all this with me to enhance my teaching...I think we should remember that for some things and some children it will always be a 'first.'

I want to make that 'first' very special and memorable.

P.P.S

Here are a couple more photos I took today and that have wowed me, if you download them then you can zoom in even further!

A nearly one year anniversary.....

2010-07-08T17:16:00.005+01:00

I decided today that I need to keep my blog going and keep writing...but what to write about?...I feel I've sort of 'dried up'...not that I think I have become a wrinkled prune or anything but I don't feel I've got a lot to say right now. I think that's OK though!

So I decided to mark a 'nearly one year on Twitter!'
Twitter - just DO IT!

I absolutely love how much I have learnt and how many gorgeously wonderful people I have got to know via this very stimulating social network site.

Things I have learnt:

I have a PLN - personal learning network of all the people I follow and who follow me, no idea what I would do without it now...
PLN - gives me ideas, support, resources, inane banter, laughter, real life meetings, advice
it's very wonderful to meet people that you know but 'don't'...
teachmeets.....great social and learning events
collaboration...
that blogs are cool, both for me to learn from and for children in my class to use
I love blogs....
web 2 tools
how to use google in many ways, docs, maps etc
how to use a Wii as a teaching tool
that the use of gbl is very stimulating for children
that so many twitterers are incredibly generous

Twitter people

all my PLN
but especially @janwebb21 follow her she's cool
@ideas_factory follow him, he's cool too just don't get him in to mass debates...
@dughall wow, ta for your confidence in me, help and support
@timrylands have absolutely loved meeting you and chatting
@sarahneild thanks also for your support and just love how you are, smiley and energetic
@dawnhallybone, I nick your ideas all the time
@bevevans22 - just fab, wonderful resources and ICT guru
@chrisrat @deputymitchell love your enthusiasm
@diannespencer birdy people rule OK!.... and she has a wonderful blog

Perseus..

2010-06-05T16:49:00.003+01:00

Last year at about this time I did a great project based around the Greek myth - The Adventures of Perseus. I'm planning on repeating it in this half term and by blogging about it, it helps me to evaluate what I did last year and hopefully make it better and more interesting! All my resources for this project from last year can be downloaded here should you wish to see them! I was lucky enough to be given the myth text by Pie Corbett and if you do use it & blog/post about it etc then please give him lots of credit!

The basic outline plan is this:

analyse the myth in reading, what is a myth/key features etc
make a list poem of the important characters and 'bits'..
use this myth as the basis for a reading comprehension
use this medium to teach how to write speech
multi-sensory writing from the view point of certain characters - maybe 2/3 lessons
create a new mythical creature from the names of the characters in the myth - in groups
draw this creature & create a presentation - in groups - about it - film it
analyse the films & improve
write a non-chronological report about this new mythical creature
create individual, illustrated books from the non-chrons to be read to Year 2
make the new creature using clay
revisit myths, what makes a myth a myth, key features etc
write a myth using the newly created creature as hero/villain etc

The 'new bits' for this year are the clay models and the myth writing. Last year I felt as though I hadn't allowed enough time for the class to really get to grips and become immersed in the myth so this year I'm setting aside 4/5 weeks with a back up just in case!

I'm a big fan of doing a non-fictional text type in a very fictional and imaginative way. I feel that by creating presentations and actually making a new mythical creature, the children will become completely immersed in the whole project and hence write a great myth!...Will let you know how it goes!

Recently....

2010-05-21T18:52:00.017+01:00

Hello lovely blog, I'm sorry I've neglected you rather a lot lately.....

I seem to have got out of the habit of blogging, very few posts this year compared to when I started it last year....so I'm aiming to gear myself up and start again!

So....recently there's been a lot going on...I'm going to start by writing about my headteacher who sadly died 3 weeks ago from cancer. Dave Murgett was the HT of our school, Holmfirth JI&N. He absolutely believed that every child matters, that every child should be allowed to be an individual and be encouraged to fly in whatever way they chose or could...in our school this shows in many ways, one of which is that we have an optional uniform that he fought hard to be allowed to have - I love to see my class looking different and definitely individual!

He also encouraged us as staff to be individual and fly in our own individual ways, he seemed to have a knack of knowing what we are all about...with me he nagged me to accept praise which is something I'm not very good at doing! When he found out he was poorly he came in most days to say something lovely and then would ask me if I believed him yet! For him, I'm determined to become a person who can accept praise without making some glib remark and believe that it's said because that's how it is!

He was passionate about ICT, he believed in the power of ICT and how it could be used to stimulate and enhance childrens learning. At school we have an ICT suite and each classroom has a mini-suite of 6 computers so that we can use ICT as an everyday part of our lessons. One of the things he said to me as I started teaching was that I should remember that this generation of children learn in a very different way to how I did learnt at school, that ICT was part of their lives and to think about what I could do to bring 'current media' into the classroom to enhance my teaching.

This has stuck with me all through my - so far fairly short - teaching career, it's become a kind of mantra.

We all miss him terribly, he was a very engaging person with a huge smile, we loved him, children loved him and if he came into class there was always a buzz at his presence...

So, he would have absolutely loved what's been going on in my life over the last 3 days!

On Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of a phone call from Tim Rylands! He was in Leeds training teachers in various ways like he does and on one day in particular he was showing them the possibilities of using a Wii in class. This was where I came in....some kind soul (really sorry I've forgotten who this was in all my excitement ...) had suggested to him that I might be someone that he could put the Leeds teachers in touch with as I'd used a Wii in my class. The idea was/is that they can get in touch, if and hopefully when, they start to use a Wii as a teaching tool to ask questions etc. We then kind of carried on chatting, Tim suggested a possible Skype session and I sort of volunteered myself to go along to Leeds to the actual session...which is what I did and thanks to Chris Cocker our acting HT for letting me go! Tim & Sarah were kind enough to blog about it all here! For me it was a first, the first time I'd ever 'spoken live' to other teachers about what I had done with ICT - in particular the Wii &
the African Safari game - in my class, Nabby3. Everyone was very kind and said they'd enjoyed what I said so in true 'new me' style I accepted it all because that's how it was! ....I was so excited about the whole thing and was just thrilled to have been asked to go along by Tim!

So on to yesterday, the bMobLe conference in Bradford.

Months ago I was asked by Dughall McCormick if I'd 'do something with him in Bradford in May,'....it was only about a month ago that I actually realised what that 'something' was and needed to be! I feel quite honoured that he asked me - so ta muchly Dugh!

I loved the bMobLe conference, I'd never been to one before and found myself starting to buzz. Tim was keynote speaker in the morning and wowed us all with an amazing presentation, his enthusiasm and lots of wonderful information that he kindly put in a link bunch which you can find here... I just loved meeting Tim and his colleague Sarah on both Tuesday and Wednesday. I loved how they welcomed me with such friendliness, how they were enthusiastic with me and also about how they were enthusiastic about what I was saying - massive thank you to both of them for that!

I then went to Tim and Sarah's breakout session and learnt much about using powerpoint. They also gave me ideas about how I could do things with my class and powerpoint. Another breakout session I went to was the one given by Steve Dale. This session was about using Flip cams for maths using a 'storyboard.' The idea is that the children think of their maths explanation as they would do when creating a storyboard, step by step in the right order. I tried this with my class today - still to video them - but the storyboard explanations worked really well. They worked in mixed ability pairs and really helped each other out and mostly wrote very clear explanations which I look forward to filming! Thank you Steve!!

After lunch I collared Dugh and we got round to having a bit of a practise for our breakout session, we'd already decided not to do a whizzy thing but to go down the simple route of talking and showing short but effective videos. I think this worked really well! I'd never done the 'conference presenter' thing before so I just kind of did my thing and hoped it would be interesting! It seemed to me that having a whizzy thing would make it all a bit scary in case it didn't work and by just talking and showing videos there was lots of leeway for me to go off at tangents!...too many 'things' in this paragraph! ...as I'd say to my class, what could you use instead?...mebbe that's a job for tomorrow. :-)

It went well! I really believe that people enjoyed it and found that we were interesting and said useful things. I wish we'd had more time as it seemed to me that we had to stop when it was all getting interesting with much audience participation...I could have happily gone on for much longer...

I also really enjoyed meeting a few fellow twitterers. It was great to see David Mitchell again (called him James to start with - big oops and very sorry :-) ) and to meet Doug Dickinson albeit very briefly,Doug Belshaw, Nick Jackson as well as James Langley & Steve Dale who I have already mentioned!

So - great day, huge thanks to James Langley and his team who worked incredibly hard to make the day a success....roll on the next one!

bMobLe - 'Next Generation Learning Conference'...20th May, Bradford

2010-04-18T07:30:00.002+01:00

I've been lucky enough to be asked by Dughall McCormick to present a break out session with him at this conference - click here to see more details - and have decided to blog about what I am planning to present to help me to gather my thoughts!

It's the first time I will have ever presented at a conference and I feel quite excited by the whole thing....what do I wear? ;-) I also feel quite honoured to have a little presentation spot at a conference in which the wonderful Tim Rylands will give the keynote presentation....I'm very excited at the thought of meeting Tim!

After a quick chat with Dugh we've decided to present about using a Wii in the classroom as a teaching tool. My part will be to talk through the following:

how I found out about Wii's being used as a teaching tool
how I feel about Wii's in general
my - slightly inaccurate - prior assumptions about children and Wii's
why I decided to try it in Nabby3 - my class
what I was hoping to achieve by using a Wii as a teaching tool
how I planned it into my lessons
how the project actually worked and what we did
what was actually achieved by my class
real life & simulated life
my thoughts since this project and how it will be better next time..
and my thoughts for future use of the Wii in my class

My aim with this presentation is to encourage others who have maybe never even thought about using a Wii as a teaching tool to have a go in their classrooms. We're going to make a series of short films to show the Wii being used in the classroom and will concentrate on the use of the African Safari Wii game. As we're about to start the Romans in Year 3, I also plan on making a short film about my use of the Horrible Histories(Romans) - Wii game. We also plan on demonstrating the games and how to play them....maybe get a few volunteers to have go....can we do that at a conference? :-)

Teaching Primary Music? - You CAN do it part 1 - Pulse & Rhythm!

2010-04-02T17:02:00.010+01:00

Last week, I'd planned on going to the TeachMeet in Doncaster...I kind of forgot the map and didn't quite make it! I was going to present about teaching music in primary schools, about how it's something that many primary schools teachers seem to have a fear of and how to take the fear out of the terminology! I know that many primary teachers have a fear of teaching music (apologies to those that don't..) as in my previous life as a professional musician I worked in hundreds of primary schools delivering musical workshops & insets with colleaugues and this 'I don't really know what I'm doing with music' theme cropped up over and over again.

This was the terminology I'd planned to talk about:

pulse
rhythm
pitch
dynamics
texture
timbre
ostinato - cyclic pattern

Pulse - this is musical 'glue.' It's the 'thing' that keeps people in a band, orchestra, choir etc together. You can have pulses of different speeds but it's a constant. The speed of the pulse doesn't change unless someone tells it to, eg a conductor in say an orchestra.
Pulse can be related to science and your heartbeat - if you run around you have a fast pulse, if you slob out then you have a slow pulse!
2 Simple Music is great! If you look at '2Beat' you can readily develop pulse - it's very visual as the pulse flashes across the IWB, it can be speeded up and slowed down. Children could learn to clap the pulse by watching, they could then turn around and learn to listen for changes! You could also use body percussion to have a change from clapping - stamping, slapping knees & thighs, chests etc etc. This also develops listening in that the children learn to recognise different sounds....Less is more! Developing pulse could easily take three - 30 minute sessions with whole class and small group work!..Metronomes are also excellent to have to help you to develop pulse!

Rhythm - I talk about rhythm as being 'more interesting to listen to' than pulse. Pulse is vital and very important - if a bit dull. Rhythm works as a team with pulse, rhythms have to fit to a pulse and if there is more than one player than they have to work as a team to the same pulse so that the music sounds as good as it can by fitting together like a jigsaw!
So how do you find rhythms?....Words are a great source of rhythm for children. Words have syllables which mean that words can have rhythm. Practise saying words to the pulse yourself, can you fit syllables to a 4 pulse pattern? Listen to 4 beats of a metronome or walk steadily for 4 steps and say words to see how they fit. When I'm out walking I can often be heard chanting things to myself as I step/clap in time to work things out!....so if you see some strange woman out and about doing something similar then do say hello!

Choose a theme for your word rhythms, flavours of crisps is quite a fun theme!

You can have a rhythm that's the same as the pulse.
You could either clap these rhythms, chant them or do both!
(blue balls = 1 beat, brown balls = 1/2 a beat, ie 2 brown balls = 1 beat.....maths!)

You can have a 'simple' rhythm.

You can have a more complicated rhythm for those children who play instruments etc.. G&T

Rehearse your groups until they really know what they are doing. You then have choices!

You could have two groups chanting at the same time - you then have TEXTURE - 2 different layers
You could use multiples (maths) and have each group do their bit for 2 multiples of 4 - or whatever you choose
You could have all 3 groups chanting at the same time - TEXTURE
You could have one group chanting and 2 groups doing body percussion - TEXTURE & TIMBRE (timbre is simply different sounds)
You can vary how loud the groups perform - DYNAMICS - (dynamics is simply how loud or soft something is)...
You keep repeating it - say 4 times - you then have an OSTINATO or CYCLIC pattern.. an ostinato is simply a pattern that repeats and it's another word for cyclic!

Anything you say, you can play!

I always start without instruments. Body percussion is great fun to do and can be used to develop ongoing skills. When you and your class have built up confidence and skill in pulse & rhythm using body percussion it's time to get out the instruments....Less is more, take as long as you feel you need before moving onto instruments!

I prefer to start with the whole class when using instruments and I always set out the rules as well as talking about why I have these rules when we use instruments.

No fiddling, when people are talking instruments are out in front of you away from hands
Instruments need to be respected and treated carefully
Play them as loudly as you need to to hear others playing - ie not so loudly that you can't hear anything else
I talk about rule 3, why is it important to be able to hear others when you are also playing?

If you don't feel as though you want to give out instruments to the whole class then stagger it, use instruments as a reward for great effort with body percussion.

I feel it's important for any children who are learning an instrument to bring it into class and play!....this doesn't need to be something that you feel you don't know how to cope with. You can simply ask them to play a rhythm on a note that they know how to play. If your groups are using tuned percussion (glocks, chime bars etc) then ask them to play the same note(s) as the groups on tuned percussion.

I shall end part one of my musical saga by just saying how fantastic I think it is that in this world of ever increasing technology, music uses rules created hundreds of years ago by composers such as Bach! Notation of traditional music is the same as it has always been, all the terminology means the same as it always has, the rules of harmony, composition and form were all created hundreds of years ago...we use them today.

One of my favourite workshop things was to talk about musical form and classical composers...if in a high school then this usually got a groan.... ABA form, you have one bit, then a different bit and then the first bit comes back...I use Vivaldi and part of his 4 Seasons, then I find a pop song that has a similar form....mouths drop. I talk about film music, what their favourite films are and who has got the soundtracks etc...well what are they played by? Orchestras in many cases. Orchestras whose players use instruments that were created hundreds of years ago - they may have a modern version but they are made in the exactly the same way! It's my favourite fact about music - that that was created hundreds of years ago is alive and kicking today in our ever increasing modern world!...

Whole School Blogging

2010-03-05T18:02:00.001Z

3 weeks ago I started to learn how to use Wordpress in order to set up blogs for each class in our school. After many errors on my part this is how we've done it.

We set up a 'main school' page from which there are links to the blog for each class.

The main page blog is a full blown - using coding - Wordpress blog. I decided that as I find coding a bit confusing I chose not to learn it at this point in my life (enough to do at the moment but not to say I won't find much enjoyment in the language of coding at a later date...) and so each class has been set up with a 'primaryblogger' blog which is relatively straightforward to use. Primaryblogger has been fantastic at responding to my various and frequent requests! They have helped solve many of the things I didn't know very quickly and mvass from Twitter provided me with this great link to help me even more!

There's a setting on the dashboard under 'discussion' that allows everything to be approved before being published to the world. This keeps things safe.

I started the Nabby3 blog nearly two weeks ago now and have been thrilled with how enthusiastic my class are about it. I've also learnt about how blogging helps learning in different ways....from E-Safety every time they write a comment or a post, to how much they have learnt already about whereabouts countries in the world are from who has visited our blog. We're excited that a school in New Zealand loves our butterfly pictures and as we've been learning how to write letters, we thought we'd write letters to them as well as sending them copies of our butterfly pictures!...great application of 'real life' learning! Some children have relatives in far flung places, how fantastic for these relatives to be able to have 'contact' via the class blog! How fantastic for parents to be able to have contact with what goes on in Nabby3 via their blog!

I have now set up most of the children in my class as contributors. This means that they can log in to the blog and write posts whenever they want to. The role of contributor however doesn't allow the posts to be published without approval....hence keeping things safe.

I introduced the other class blogs to staff in the staff meeting this week. Everyone is keen to start their blog - having looked at the Nabby3 blog - and also because at the moment we have a poorly HT who we can support by blogging - this allows him to 'look inside the classrooms' despite not being in school.

I absolutely recommend Primaryblogger, and if you're thinking of blogging with either your class or your whole school then check it out!

New Year 3 Blog!

2010-02-21T08:23:00.000Z

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!

E-Safety Comics!

2010-02-11T17:21:00.001Z

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!

As Real As it Gets!

2010-02-09T18:37:00.005Z

      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!

Goo Towers!

2010-02-06T15:53:00.001Z

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!

WW2, Music & Art!

2010-02-01T18:41:00.006Z

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!

World of Goo Part 2!

2010-01-28T18:24:00.007Z

Last week the World of Goo was installed in our ICT suite and my class had their first explore last Wednesday at the end of their ICT session. Their task in that lesson was to create number bond games to 10 for Y1 using 2DIY but what they were more interested in - as soon as they logged on - was the new icon on their desktop! A few of them have this game at home and couldn't resist telling the class it's 'PIPS!'....Their current favourite word for 'WOW! - AMAZING! - FANTASTIC!'...I hadn't planned on them using it last Wednesday but such was the buzz that I had to promise them 10 minutes at the end of the lesson to explore...providing of course that their 2DIY number bond games were made and saved....which of course they were. So I let them explore and decided to talk about the game afterwards.

Basically the World of Goo wants you to build a structure to enable little chattering goo balls to be able to reach a pipe. You need enough goo balls to go into the pipe so that you can go on to the next stage of the game. It's very inventive because each stage is a bit different and hence requires deeper/different thinking to solve the problem of how to get the goo into the pipe! They keep adding new elements...whistling, balloons, motion....etc etc

I love the game that's shown in the image below. This requires you to create motion! You need to attach the balloons to the structure on the left to make it airborne, you then need to work out that it has to move somehow to get to the other side so that it can pick up the goo balls that are asleep! Once the structure is airborne you need to take a balloon off and quickly re-attach it to create a circular motion that'll make it move! Once you've done this enough times to get to the other side, you then need to take the balloons off so that the structure will go down (don't bin the balloons...love and cherish them.. ). The goo balls then attach themselves happily and after that you need to re-attach the balloons (even more of them because it's now heavier), do the circular motion thing to the middle, take off balloons so that it sinks down to the pipe that takes the goo balls...! Wow! Took me ages...I figure that if I am learning how to think from this game then the impact will be huge on the children!

Back to the ICT suite....as they explored I walked round the suite and tried to talk in 'maths problem solving' language to help them work out what to do. I'd told them the basics - goo needs to get to a pipe via a structure that you need to build - some children needed a little help to get the idea and then they were off!

What's the clue? How do you need to think about 'xyz' to help you solve the problem?

What do you need to do differently this time to try to solve the problem?

Why didn't your idea work last time? What could you do differently next time?...etc

Afterwards I talked about why I'd let them play a game in their ICT time- that solving maths problems is all about thinking... What are the clues? What kind of maths do you need to do to solve this problem? If you read a problem and it doesn't make sense then is there a different way of thinking about it that could help you?..etc - so that they understand why they are doing this. Next week I plan on having a Goo session followed by a problem solving session in maths to start to evaluate my idea that this will help their understanding of how to think to solve maths problems.

Be aware that the 'undo' function creates a flash - might not be suitable for all...we had to check it out with a parent...

If you google 'World of Goo recommended age' you'll see it's an 'E' game. On amazon it's got a PEGI rathing of 3 which means it's suitable for all ages. One I found recommended that it was for children over 6, some recommend that older children will get more out of it and I agree as it gets more difficult as it goes on. I think the 'summer' section is suitable for my class as it's not too hard and that they will understand how to develop their thinking into other things from it.

It's early days yet but I plan on relating their 'games based learning' thinking to their maths lessons and evaluating the impact. If I get it right then I think it will be a great help! I am also hoping it will help develop their memories. Once you've learnt what to do in a particular game it helps if you remember what you did the next time.... as with maths problems! A very current, enjoyable medium to develop thinking skills and learn about how to 'think outside the box' to solve problems!

Making Bird Food & Science!

2010-01-23T11:20:00.001Z

Every January the RSPB has it's Schools Birdwatch (Jan 18th - Feb 1st) - if you visit their website they have many lovely ideas that you could use in school. This year they are also doing a Little Schools Birdwatch which again has many good ideas to use in your class. I tend to do the Big Garden Birdwatch which is next weekend so that I can set it as homework - not just the bird watching but also as data handling revision of the information they collect. I think that it's also important that the children realise that birds need our help to survive in bad weather such as the snow we've just had and I've been encouraging them to leave out food.

The Year 3 classroom has windows that look out over our school meadow, this means that I can hang feeders from the trees which can clearly be seen from the class. I've not been able to get into the meadow recently with all the snow but finally last weekend I stocked up the feeders and put out many of those half coconut things.

We're now starting to get the birds back and we often have 3 or 4 male and female pheasants sitting on the wall staring at us all in class! I'm hoping that next week we'll have several more species of bird for us to identify and I'll have a different bird each day as background on the IWB to help them to be able to recognise the birds more easily.

So, onto science. Our science topic this half term is 'materials' whch fits very nicely with making bird food! We use lard, cheese, raisins and sunflower seeds and put them in a plastic pot with string for a hanger.

Lard is malleable and soft, the plastic pot is waterproof and strong, the string is flexible and strong, we need scissors to cut the string - hard, sharp and strong, cheese is for protein and if you use cheese string it's flexible and malleable and the raisins provide sugar and again are very malleable!

It's a great activity to apply their learning in this science topic, it's also fun - try washing your hands after making balls of lard!....and it's very useful as the birds get a tasty ball of food!

Teaching WW2 in Y3

2010-01-18T20:59:00.002Z

I've just signed up to do a teach meet presentation on Thursday (THIS Thursday...mad woman) and have decided to do a completely non-whizzy/techie presentation about my thoughts on how to teach WW2 to Year 3. If I get my act together I might learn to use Prezi to help things along...but I might not. I've decided to blog about it to collect my thoughts and work out what I might say!

A bit about me - I'm in my 4th year of paid teaching and before that I drove around the country like a maniac for about 20 years playing the double bass professionally for anyone who would pay me before deciding that that was a bit of a mad - often brilliant- life! Mad driving such as a concert one night on the Isle of Wight and the next one in Newcastle kind of made me decide that I needed a 'proper job.'...so....I did the GTR course, did playing & teaching for 2 years (+2 other jobs) and then decided I just needed one job when I was offered full-time teaching last year in Y3.

So, last year at this exact time I taught WW2 to Y3 for the first time - boy, what a tough thing to teach I thought. How on earth do I get that across to children who are 7 or 8 years old? How do I make them understand the terror, mindless killing, madness, horror - and also goodness, working togetherness, goodness despite everythingness in a 'Y3' way?

I decided to use videos from U-tube, videos that hit home - especially those with powerful music...BBC newsreels, quirky things such as an instructional video on how to put a gas mask on or how to dispose of an incendiary bomb that might have fallen in your back garden...all to be found on U-tube or teaching videos.co.uk...I was thrilled at the response I got, shock, worries, thought about questions - some just not understanding and being helped by others to understand...very good teaching tool.

Then I thought about 'living history.' My mum is German, she was about 7 years old when her town was completely flattened - see photo below. My 'Opa' (grandad) was hauled out of bed in the middle of the night by the German Military and conscripted. He was in Stalingrad just before it was invaded - he got leave 2 days before this and so enabled me to know him. My mum's neighbour's husband (sadly no longer with us) escaped from Colditz Castle - his wife has his diary, photos, memories and his tale to tell. My mums' other neighbour was a Land Girl...Living history - grab it while you can...my class last year were hooked. I hope to repeat the afternoon with my class this year....

Then there's 'Hide-away Day.' When I taught about Anne Frank I wanted a way to make it come home to my class how difficult the 'hiding' must have been. How difficult not to have fresh air, how difficult to leave all theri friends, how difficult to be quiet all morning- most mornings. ...how difficult to live for 2 years in such a confined space....

I blacked out the classroom (link to science (materials) and checking out which material was the best for a blackout using a data-logger) one night after school. The next morning I brought them in urgently...EVERYTHING had to be brought in, it had to appear to the rest of the school as though we weren't there. Blinds were down, dim light in the classroom, no IWB on. I explained in a hushed whisper what was going on, they had to be quiet (tough call) all morning, no noise for fear of being discovered...They also had to amuse themselves apart from one set task - a diary. They had to write about what they thought/felt at the beginning - at playtime when they were missing their 'basketball day.' and at the end of the morning.- Each day a class gets the basketball court as their special area - mostly boys play football and girls try to avoid the footballs!..I picked their day on purpose, hoping that missing something they loved would help them to understand to some extent how hard/difficult life must have been in the Annexe.

I'd also arranged for a member of staff to knock loudly on our door...the class froze!! We later discussed this - how must it have felt in the Annexe when they thought they were about to discovered? Indeed how did it feel when they were discovered?

Toilet watch was a popular job - they had to work out when the best time was, try to be quick, not be seen and definitely keep an eye out!...

All in all I think this worked, they really didn't like missing their football time - this was ONE 20 minute session in their life - Anne Frank spent over 2 years cooped up and missing her life...their diaries were good, full of thoughts and feelings, especially about missing their playtime and what might have been happening! As the morning went on it became harder for them to keep quiet and there was a big sense of relief when it was all over. It's so difficult I think for us - in this world we have - to really have any idea of what that must have been like....

So - WW2, 'real' videos, living history and a bit of a creative idea...feel free to steal!

Want to be infected with the 'I can' bug?!

2010-01-14T22:08:00.001Z

I first saw this video this morning and was absolutely wowed by it....I've watched it twice since then! A talk by Kiran Bir Sethi from India at the first TEDXorenda event at Bett 2010 about the 'I can' bug infecting the world! So inspiring...do watch it!

Dipping a toe into the virtual lesson pool...

2010-01-11T15:56:00.009Z

Thanks to Nicola for letting me hi-jack her blog today!

I've been following a fair number of inspirational teachers through Twitter for a while and hopefully contributing along the way too. After the continuous disruption from the weather recently, I've been paying close attention to those posting about online lessons, lurking in the background, dying to do one of my own!

This morning, I got the call to say school would be closed today, so I thought it was now or perhaps never. I decided to use 'Coveritlive' following David Mitchell's (http://mrmitchell.heathfieldcps.net/) success last week. I set up a simple account, had a practice and wrote a brief lesson plan with links and resources ready to upload.

My first problem was how to put the word out there. We don't have a parent messaging system, so I posted on our website (in the area announcing the snow closure) and emailed all the KS2 children. I also got in touch with all the teachers...more about this later. I have a fairly active VLE in Year 5, so it wasn't long before I had a few children emailing me, so I asked them to spread the word too.

1pm arrived and the lesson went live. Coveritlive, enables you to approve comments before they are posted, so you have to be quick - sometimes the conversation looks a little out of sync as you post your main bits and others are still commenting on what went before. However, I feel this all adds to the 'virtualness' of the lesson.

I used a simple image to inspire some sentence work, leading to a more polished opener. I also used a virtual jigsaw to get them hooked. If you get chance take look at the replay, please do, I'm really proud of some of the work and most children went off wanting to finish their stories.

My online lesson is here!

I had 11 'readers' on line and my TA, but that will not stop me trying out this type of activity as I have got so much out of it, as have the children.

Thanks to Dughall and Nicola for the collaborative learning between our two schools today also - I'm amazed at how a seed of an idea can grow into an oak tree of reality by lunchtime.

Collaboration IS the Way to Go!

2010-01-11T15:24:00.006Z

Last night the heavens opened and let out their snow again which meant that we were shut as it was all very dangerous out on the roads. We officially shut at about 7.30am then the online lesson buzz started via Twitter! If you have read a previous blog post you'll know that a few teachers tried this last week - as did I and another teacher at my school.

A fellow teacher -Emma Barker at a neighbouring school was online and already talking about her online lesson using Coveritlive. I had this idea that we could do something together about differences and similarities between the 2 schools. We decided that as the schools are not that far apart, some of the children probably knew each other already.

Then along came more collaboraters! We couldn't have done it without them. Massive thanks to my HT for giving the go ahead, Dughall McCormick for massive help on the Digital Brain - also helping on the DB thanks to Tom White and James Greenwood!

We started off with a primarypad that enabled us to share ideas for online surveys to get the differences and similarities ideas flowing. Primary pad also enables you to share with others and chat. We then created 2 wallwisher walls for then children to post their ideas and questions.

The DB was firing on all cylinders with ideas! Dughall created the joint community, children were added, surveys created, threads in the forums were added by all of us. As we - or someone else had an idea the whole thing grew and grew - now all we needed were children!

We sent out a group text - Emma Barker will guest post on here and tell you how she contacted her class. So far we've had some uptake but not massively - this gets my brain working...

I've recently read a blog - can't remember who but if it's you then get in touch! - about how schools could have something in place for online lessons in weather such as this when many schools are closed. If online lessons are to be truly successful then most of the children in a class need to want to log on and access it. So far we have had a few between us - it's still early days and many may well contribute this evening.

So - how do we get the children to log on for some part of the day to access online lessons?

Here are a few ideas...

Give online lessons a high priority in class, especially if the weather is forecast to be bad
Decide on the online, collaborative tools you will use - live or not live
Teach the children how to use them
Give them the expectation that there will be an online lesson and how they will be notified as to the time if it is in live real time
Be enthusiastic and excited, make them want to log on!

My evaluation of today is that what we achieved could not have been achieved without online collaboration. Several varying activities were set up for the children to do that involved learning at their level - collaborative project + work via their year group page on our VLE.

The way forward is to set this in stone so that all KNOW that there will be an expectation to take part in an online lesson should the school be shut due to bad weather.

Emma Barker did a fantastic online lesson using coveritlive which I hope you will enjoy reading about.

There is no reason that this should not become the norm - we the educators just need to embrace the technology and use it!

Building Class Teamwork..

2010-01-08T17:28:00.004Z

I'm a great fan of building teamwork within a class. I feel that if 'I and they' feel like a team we all work better together! I give it a high profile and talk about teamwork whenever I can. If we are doing an activity where we are working as a team - we can achieve better results by understanding what we need to do to make out team work.

Last term the children achieved/learnt a huge amount about how to work well as a team when we did the African Safari Wii project. I felt that this has been an unsettling week due to snow & school closure days - especially after the 2 week holiday - that we needed something to pull us together yesterday.

Last year a lovely parent gave me a few books, the '104 Activities That Build - Alanna Jones' was one of them.

I often use this to find a creative task that the class can do to build teamwork. One of my favourite ones is the one called 'Creative Colouring.' So this is what we did yesterday afternoon.

We first of all discussed what we'd already learnt about how to work well together as a team before I went through the ppt. They did really well and had already talked about all the bullet points on slide 2 as well as saying that the encouraging point was important and that teamwork doesn't work well if people say mean things to each other if they don't agree. We went through the other slides, sorted the class out into teams - I just gave each child a number and a table so a very random selection - I could also have use the HAT software to select.

The themes we chose were, dragons, monsters, patterns, a zoo or a castle. I gave the class 5 minutes to choose one of those themes and select their 2 colours. This was a very interesting 5 minutes, some teams were able to select a theme and colours very quickly - others took longer and had a split decision that needed sorting out....again class teamwork helps to solve this as the teams that had selected easily spoke about how they had decided which helped the others! I gave them 20 minutes to draw their theme and off they went.

As I went around the room it was so interesting watching how differently the teams worked - one team had chosen 'patterns' and they talked about how not everyone wanted to draw a pattern so they had a 'shading in' job. Another team chose a zoo & said that they'd decided on this because everyone could draw an animal with the 2 colours that they had. A different team also chose a zoo and had decided that the people who could draw well should draw the hard parts of the animals and leave easier bits to the others so that their zoo would look good.

After 20 minutes I stopped them and each team spoke in turn about how they thought they were working, any problems they'd had and if/how they had sorted them out as a team - we decided that it was actually going very well! I then gave them another 5 minutes to do as much as they could...we also needed to talk about whether it mattered on this occasion if they had finished their drawing or not (reminding of the objective of the afternoon etc..).

As a plenary each team came out, showed their drawing and talked about their teamwork. I asked each team what they would do better next time & here are a couple of the replies... use the all space on the page so that it was easier for everyone to have their own bit rather than drawing a big castle in the middle, try to work more quickly so their drawing could be more finished, nothing, we worked really well!

So a very worthwhile afternoon building teamwork, this book has many other good ideas that are easily adaptable to different ages - some lend themselves better to older children but a worthwhile buy!

What did you learn today Miss S?...

2010-01-06T16:08:00.008Z

Inspired by others via Twitter this morning - snow day for me, at home planning & tweeting every now and then - I decided to try to set up a 'live online' session for our school. I already had a topic based research lesson in our ICT time that would work online so initially I thought that that would be what I'd do. After chatting to another teacher we decided that it would be better to do a joint project between Y3 & Y5 as an experiment;

To see if children would log on
To see if they liked the idea
To help us learn about how to deliver a live lesson so it could become the norm if we have more snow days..

We decided to 'meet' on the VLE for about an hour - the 2 classes were sent a group text and asked to meet at a certain time online on the VLE. I'd prepared a page that gave them instructions as to what to do and explained the 'big idea.'....which was to use 2 images of snowmen to stimulate descriptive writing in the form of notes to be posted on wallwisher.Our plan was to see if enough descriptions and ideas could be generated in order to use it as a start for planning and writing when we return to school - most likely tomorrow.

We decided to first of all ask the children to write their name on one wallwisher so we knew how many had attended and then choose one of two snowmen to post descriptions about. When the session was live the wallwisher was open, now it's 'not live' we've changed the settings to all posts must be approved...just to be safe and sure!

I was SO excited when children started to log on and post on wallwisher! We've had maybe 15/60 so far (only 2 hours ago at the time of writing this) and I am hoping that as the day goes on more children will log on if they were out enjoying themselves in the snow.We've had about 40 posts on the name wall and about 70 on the description wall so far. We ( myself + another teacher) started to give feedback as children wrote things - can you think of a better word for xyz/can you develop that idea a bit more kind of thing.

I did feel that this was a 'short burst' activity that could have done with another stage - maybe mindmeister or bubbl.us to then start collaborative planning before using another medium for individual writing....I'm thinking PPT or a website such as Class Tools .

I then went back onto Twitter where Pete Richardson had posted this link to what he had done for an online lesson...I loved his lesson - real 'live' teaching online with all sorts of interactive activites for the children. He used Twiddla which I didn't know about - great online tool for live collaboration - to give instructions and feedback as the lesson went along. Twiddla also has a sound option which is both a cool tool and a useful tool to have in an online lesson.

David Mitchell also did an online lesson with such enthusiasm that he inspired me to have a go! Do read his blog account as to what went on!...click here for that.

Next time - bound to be a next time - I'm not sure which medium I would use, I think that depends on the task I wish to set. I will definitely use Twiddla - might do 'live' online homework very soon, I like wallwisher because it's so easy to use, child friendly in that it's great to see the wall growing with posts and I think the VLE came into its own today as a great place to 'meet.'

Thanks to Dughall for his VLE help..to my HT for his help and to Gemma (fellow teacher) for her ideas and help...

What have I learnt?

Live online learning is exciting for both teacher and class
It's a learning curve for me to make it better next time
It's an upcoming thing - lots of interest from lots of people on Twitter as to how all these lessons went..
I've learnt that Twiddla exists..

So the next time we have snow....look out for more online learning!

2010!

2010-01-01T07:31:00.009Z

Welcome to the New Year!

As many people are doing blogs about what they like, wish for, are going to become better at and are looking forward to I thought I'd do the same! I am most definitely looking forward to going to Bett for the first time and a highlight of this visit will be to meet the Brainpop people and help out on their stand for an hour or so!...I am sure there will be many highlights on this day and hopefully a lot of inspiring ideas that I can take back with me to help my teaching.

I'm also looking forward to going to my first TeachMeet in Doncaster in March, I'm hoping I will be brave enough to have a go and present something....I love the idea of meeting teachers who are very passionate and very good at what they do.... I know this will be both stimulating and developmental for me.

Next I'm going to recommend a friend to you all. Her name is Helen Quayle and she's a professional musician (trumpet) and music educator. In my previous life (professional musician) I worked with her on many, many occasions both in concerts and musical workshops with children of all ages. She's fantastic at creating, organising and delivering musical projects for all ages within any educational setting.

She runs the education part of the work that the Lancashire Sinfonietta do - click here for information about her projects that are up and running very successfully via this orchestra.
She also does the same for the Northern Chamber Orchestra and is an integral part of the education team at Manchester Camerata. She can also be contacted individually via her mobile - 07737 327 471.

Since I joined Twitter in August 2009 it has provided me with huge amount of learning. I follow many brilliant & inspirational people, read their tweets and their blogs which has given me both help and ideas to improve my teaching with Web 2.0 tools in particular. I would never have known about or thought about using a Wii in class without Twitter. I have used GBL before but after reading what others do I shall use it more widely - always with the comment 'teaching tool' being uppermost in my mind.

I shall mention a few of the people I find inspiring - if I don't mention you then I am sorry but I know that you've inspired me!

Mark Warner and his wonderful Ideas to Inspire
Tom Barrett and his blog - always makes me evaluate, think and go 'wow!'
Bev Evans - her resources site and her blog - wonderfully inspiring ICT ideas!
Peter Richardson and his blog - he's on a similar path re ICT as me & it's great to share ideas
Read Write Talk because it's sooo creative and a bit whacky with things that just grab my mind

I decided to stick at 5 bullet points but the list could just go on and on, Dawn Hallybone , Simon Haughton , Simon Widdowson , Simon Finch to name a few others.

Thanks to Dughall McCormick for helping me with the Wii in Y3 and I look forward to his further help and involvement with this.

I also find Rachel Orr to be a source of inspiration, she posts on a different forum and regularly writes comments such as the one below which always make me evaluate my own practice - do I do this?

Whenever I give feedback to NQTs and teachers early on in their career (plus those who are established and struggling) I always ask them to think about:-

1. What is it I want the children to be able to....do, know, use, apply etc... by the end of the lesson.

2. What I am going to teach them in order to help them learn this

3. What task/activity/vehicle will enable this successfully, be differentiated and and still provide appropriate challenge

Whenever a new concept is being learned it is our job to provide the appropriate scaffolding to enable a child to learn and if this means providing a simple WALT - this is what we are learning ..... and the success criteria - this is what you have to do, use, know, include to be successful....this is teaching and learning.

Providing process criteria is great in maths - particularly if the teacher extracts this from the children before they set about using and applying it.

Some children will need to be given the process criteria - the steps they need to include to be successful - this is differentiating the success criteria.

If you are assessing formatively you may ask the children to provide the success criteria for a given WALT.

If this is summative assessment you may remind the children to think about what they will need to include etc... to be successful.

Teaching and learning - this is the core business of any school - not testing whether a child has got it or not.

I observe many lessons where WALT and Success criteria are used and also Must/Should/Could are used - what I see being missed frequently are opportunities to challenge and aim high - this is often because the teacher thinks they have differentiated and provided a challenge task but miss the immediate opportunity of TEACHING challenge.

Again, when giving feedback, I ask the teacher to think about their focus group. What is it the focus group will learn because of your input? If they can do the task without your input why are you there?

I am also lucky to work in a school with fantastic staff who support, help and inspire in my daily teaching life in so many different ways...

2010 - can't wait! :-)

Interesting Projects for.....or about!

2009-12-29T09:39:00.007Z

I had this idea today and with the consent of Tom Barrett have hijacked his 'Interesting Ways' idea...

My idea is to share any interesting projects that you have taught within a topic that have both inspired you and your children along the journey of learning!

This presentation can also be found on Mark Warners site - Ideas to Inspire.

I've started off with an interesting mini-project I used within my teaching of the WW2 topic in Year 3 last year.

Using games to develop thinking for problem solving.

2009-12-24T08:03:00.012Z

When you have thoughts you just have to go with them....even if it is Christmas Eve and the world is full of snow! For some reason I woke up thinking about using games to help develop the 'out of the box' kind of thinking that can be necessary when solving problems in all sorts of subjects. I am thinking specifically of maths here but this kind of thinking can help in many other situations - from what to use to paint with in art to get a special effect when faced with the stituation that you can't use a paint brush (much more fun using bits of twig, fruit peel, bits of plastic flowers, moss, stones etc...) to planning investigations in science.

A couple of years ago I was teaching part time in Y5 & Y6 and read somewhere about a teacher using the Dyson Game to help develop this 'out of the box' thinking to help with problem solving. It's a fun game which quickly gets more difficult and hence thinking. The basic idea is that you use the telescope to either push or suck the ball into a hole. You need to develop a strategy pretty quickly otherwise you just push and pull aimlessly in the hope that somehow you'll hit upon the correct moves to get the ball into the hole. The one that works for me is to work out which telescope ( you end up with a lot of them on your screen....) MUST be the one to push the ball into the hole...ie start at the end and work backwards....a bit like sometimes in maths!

To start with the class wondered why they were being given 'a game' (which they all loved) to play as part of their ICT time, we then chatted about it and worked out how we could use it to help us in maths. I think that it certainly helped the children who read a problem and find it difficult to know what to do or how to even start to work out the answer. The class had maybe 10-15 mins of one of their ICT sessions each work for a number of weeks (as well as at home if they wanted to) & their confidence increased by understanding that problem solving is about 'how to think' before actually doing the maths, that the problem always gives you a clue and trying to apply what they'd learnt using the Dyson Game - thinking around the problem of trying to get the ball in the hole.

So on to another game I have just discovered that could also work in developing thinking skills for problem solving....The World of Goo! In this game you have to develop thinking strategies in order to solve the problem of how to build things with little balls of goo that twitter cheerily as the stretch and stick. ...they have a nasty habit of tippling over when you think you've just made it to the collection point - each stage has a number of balls of goo that you have to collect in order to move along to the next stage..The goo balls also do different things in the different stages - sometimes you have to detach the ones at the bottom in order to climb higher...the problems happen when you pick the wrong one to detach and the whole thing collapses!..

You should be aware that some parts of the game contain very bright flashes which may not make it suitable for all.

I will start with a whole class session that introduces the game and its concepts before using it in a class session in the ICT suite...maybe 2 children per computer so that they can discuss how to solve the problems they encounter....followed by a plenary discussion in which I'll get them to talk about their thinking, what they discovered/what they learnt and how this thinking might be applied to a maths problem - I'll write a few good ones that fit the Goo. I also think that it would be very useful for understanding how to build a strong structure in a D&T project...

The World of Goo comes as both a PC game and on Wii. As yet I have to use it on Wii - I somehow bought 2 pc games instead of a pc and a Wii... - but I'm thinking it would be good as a follow on from the use of Wii African Safari for developing collaborative team work as the same kind of skills apply and it's a current & fun medium in which to develop such skills!...more on that when I get to use the Goo on Wii...

So watch this space to see what happens & Happy Christmas!

Class Blog

2009-12-16T20:38:00.002Z

OK, it's taken me a while but finally I have decided what to do....

I shall create a class blog for Y3 in which they will be the authors. To start with I am going to restrict access to Y3 and their parents. I would really love it to be their blog and not mine - ie posting about what they have done.

So, I am going to create one, ask permission from parents and explain why I would love to do this and that I think it'll work brilliantly if we all buy into it - ie WW2, online 'diary' versus WW2 one sort of thing. WW2 is our massive topic for all of the Spring term.

I then plan on adding all the children as authors using their VLE email addresses and hopefully all parents too, I reckon the blog will work best if both parents and children buy into it.

Every week/day?...not sure but will find out as life goes on!...I plan on having the children write a blog about what they have learnt about WW2 and how they feel about what they have learnt.

When we learn about evacuees I'd like them to become evacuees as they blog about their journey, new life, feelings etc

When we start to write diaries when we learn about Anne Frank I'd like to start a 'fictional diary' about what children in Y3 might have done that day if they had been in her position.

I hope that this will really make them think about what it must have been like for children in WW2 and for Anne Frank...

More about this exciting plan - at least to me! - as it progresses...

Elastoplast Stories and Writing time....

2009-12-16T06:05:00.004Z

A few weeks ago the Y3 homework 'Website of the Week' was http://www.elastoplaststories.co.uk/ . This is a website that is both great fun and extremely inventive with the use of plasters! There's also a teachers activity pack and a creative kids pack that you can download for free. One of the children in my class entered the story competition and we found out yesterday that she is one of the 3 winners! Woohoo - well done her! Her prize is a creative writing workshop for our class by the author Paul Geraghty . Her story is called 'The Sad Spider' if fancy searching for it and reading!

You create your Elastoplast story using many different plasters, you have a choice of 'moving' plasters or not and you can even add your voice!
You start with a blank storyboard and are given tools to work with - Creatures, People, Plasters and Backgrounds. You can also add description as you go through your story! I think it's a great website with much potential for use in a primary school!

If you're anything like us, we do half termly writing assesments which are then levelled and new individual writing targets are set. We did ours yesterday - great theme to do with Christmas from our Literacy co-ordinator - we're not allowed to give input as such but can talk about targets etc before giving the writing prompt. I always give the children their literacy books and get them to look at how much they have improved since they started Y3 - I LOVE to watch them do this because of how excited they become when they realise that they are better writers than in Sept - some huge gains in handwriting etc....and I pick a few children to show off their work to the whole class using the visualiser....very motivational and creates a lovely atmosphere for the writing assessment.

Low Key Instructions!

2009-12-11T16:51:00.003Z

I always think that Instructions are a great text type to use around Christmas - fairly straightforward to understand and doesn't require a huge amount of writing - perfect when children are a bit weary after working hard all term!

Earlier this week we'd analysed lots of different instructions to get the hang of what they need to have and why we have them in the first place. We then put some mixed up instructions in order - of how to make a paper snowflake - before writing the whole thing up and then making the snowflake from their own instructions! Went well but a bit laboured so I decided to inject a bit of fun into the proceedings...

Today they used their instructions planning sheet to plan instructions on how to explain to a blue alien how to shake somebody's hand....boy...great fun! I made a bit of a whizzy fun PPT ( don't groan...I am inventive with ppt!) with flying ski-ing santa's, huge snowmen and chattering blue aliens which went down very well!

Great lesson because they realised how clear they had to be with something that seemed SO simple.. We talked about how blue aliens might not know that you need to specify which hand and indeed that you have to have a hand to shake - the blue alien may well have come from a planet that had aliens without hands...

The challenge - with prizes for successful instructions - was to then read out the instructions to 2 blue aliens - ie other members of Y3 who had to do exactly what was asked!

Missing instructions about actually holding hands, using the right or opposite hands created a lot of mirth when the 2 blue aliens just moved hands up and down in thin air with nothing to hold onto! Some children thought about what to say and asking permission to grab hands which was very gorgeous...if you fancy having a go and would like my whizzy ppt then please ask!

Christmas Ripts!

2009-12-11T16:41:00.003Z

Here are a few of the Ript collages that they made today. They decided that they would share the 2Paints that they had made so that everyone had more than one image to use. We also agreed that it was a big compliment that other people might want to use what they had created!

I then printed them off and they used them this afternoon as part of their Christmas cards which were also decorated with colourful sparkly things!

TeachMeet Doncaster

2009-12-10T17:37:00.002Z

So, my first teachmeet that I plan on going to and I would like to do a completely non-techie thing of just talking about what I'm good at and how it's gone down and the results achieved etc....no presentation at all...

OOH!..bucking the trend of doing whizzy techie things - which I also love - and can I do it?!

For me it seems that teachmeets are all about what whizzy things people do with ICT, I do just fine with that but I feel that the thing I am good at is creative ideas, which isn't necessarily ( I always say, Never Eat Cake Eat Salmon Sandwiches and remain 'ily) what people might want to hear...so...what do you think?

Are you up for non-techiness?...or not?

Christmas Ideas...

2009-12-06T15:24:00.007Z

Two weeks to go before school stops for 2 weeks.! Time to get your classroom buzzing with the excitement of Christmas...

If you haven't already got going with an online advent calendar then we're using this as our online calendar because the wonderful santa.gl polar bear one seems to have died this year.. :-(

We've also got a massive Father Christmas advent calendar hanging on the door with a chocolate for each child. We're using the Hat software to pick someone every day... if you download it then just be aware that you might want to stop the flashing and the shaking - I find I am uncomfortable when it's doing that!

Literacy in the last 2 weeks is going to be instructions, I plan on photocopying various Xmas 'things to make' for them to analyse, do lots of prep on what instructions need etc and then I think I will link lit to maths and use Bev Evans wonderful shape challenge . We'll do the challenge and then write instructions on how to successfully meet this challenge for another class to follow.

I'm thinking that I will use our ICT time to create Xmas cards - firstly by using 2 paint to create an Xmas like picture which will then be saved and dragged to Ript ( still got to check that it's possible to do that...), printed off and stuck onto a peice of card and duly decorated with tinsel and written on.

I also found many ideas here - discovered by a colleague - and here .

I'm planning on doing Christmas sandwiches - What kind of sandwich would Father Christmas
like to eat on Christmas Eve?...links to our current D&T and I am also going to show the old Walt Disney Christmas videos (downloaded from utube) - they are wonderful!

Also from utube is a video of the 'Little Matchstick Girl' for some Christmas PHSCE...

We have our class party - might do karaoke - plus umpteen other Christmassy things that I haven't yet thought about....What do you do?!

Then there is the wonderful animoto site for all manner of Xmassy things which will be wonderful!

Music that comes to mind for a Christmas animoto is...

Lieutenant Kije Troika
Nutcracker Suite
Any Xmas carol
Kate Rusby - Sweet Bells, carols with a difference
Bach - Christmas oratorio..

And try this - from Porchester

Wii Day!

2009-12-04T17:04:00.004Z

Wow! What gorgeous children I am lucky enough to teach! They tried their socks off today and achieved masses so well done them!

Today was the end of our African Safari Wii project, we had our special visitor - Dughall - in class to help us through the day. Both of us were interested to use the Wii to aid learning after reading about so many teachers achieving great results through it's use as a teaching tool. If you've read my previous bloggings you'll know what we've been doing....if you haven't I reckon it's worth a read if you are at all interested in using a Wii as a teaching tool!

We started the day with the usual class things, letters brought back, homework books etc etc, Advent Calendar (using the Hat software to pick a name) and our online Advent Calendar about Zac the elf. Dughall then introduced himself etc and then we launched into our special day!

I'd split the class into 6 groups of 5, each child had a job within that group. We've had massive learning this week about what good teamwork looks like and Dughall - as he'd never met a lot of the children before - was to be in charge of the Wii and judging teamwork.

We were lucky enough to have 2 rooms to use - Y3 classroom + ICT suite. This meant that each group had about 20 mins 'uninterrupted' time on the Wii. Everyone else was working hard in the ICT suite. They used Word to type up a previously written animal report in literacy before creating a 'photo - journalist' like report using Ript. Everyone did a good job and the finished Ripts look amazing! They will all be printed off and made into a book that will be displayed in our classroom. I also plan to do a google docs of them so that they can share what they have achieved with their parents via our VLE.

Dughall was thrilled by how well the teams worked together....me too! They have come such a long way in a week and this game has proved to be a wonderful way of teaching the life skill of how to work well in a team... One of the best examples of what has been achieved was that one team applauded each others efforts and made wonderfully positive comments!...Wow!

My evaluation of my first time of using the Wii as a teaching tool would be this....

Brilliant for PHSCE - great 'current' medium to teach life skills
Great cross-curricular tool, once you get your mind working about the fact that it's a teaching tool rather than a game, more and more things crop up..art, maths, PHSCE, ICT, geography, literacy, science, could have done music but ran out of time...etc etc
Allow MUCH more time for children to get used to the game than you think - I had lunchtime & playtime sessions + one whole class session
I liked that it was a special project, having 1 week in which everything was achieved worked well because the focus was constant
Use real life alongside the Wii - lots of great utube videos to help the children understand that in this region the animal is the MOST IMPORTANT thing...
The 'wow' factor it gives is immense...the children love it, it's current, they have them at home etc etc

If you're a bit doubtful, get in touch, I definitely think it is worth using a Wii as a teaching tool!...Just got to decide which Wii game to use next...kind of fancy the 'Goo' one for science but I need more info as to what it's about... :-)

Furbles & the Wii

2009-12-02T16:26:00.006Z

A blog free day yesterday...goodness me! Entirely due to a horrible cold inhabiting my head and giving me a nose that's redder than Rudolphs...One child suggested they did a tally of how many times I needed to blow my nose...

I used Furbles yesterday in our ICT suite with great success! It's a very clever piece of software that really tests if a child understands data handling or not...

It allows you to set tally charts, bar charts, Carroll diagrams, pie charts, Venn diagrams to two levels. I haven't quite sorted it all out yet but it looks as though you can input childrens names and so have a record of what they do - we did the 'Free play - explore' yesterday. Children can also be set up in an account.

For each type of data handling there are 3 options that test in different ways.

In 'Which' mode the Furbles test if a child can select the correct chart for the Furbles they have.
In 'Match' mode, the Furbles test is a child can match the Furbles to the chart - they do have to work it out and change a Furble if necessary.
In 'Change' mode the Furbles ask the child to change the tally so it's the same as the Furbles they have.

Each way is a bit different and challenges the child to really think about data handling. I think it's very clever and my class loved it! They especially love the way the eyes watch you as you watch them and the way they chatter as they fly to the chart when a child has made a correct selection!

I find it very easy to use both in a lesson on the IWB and for one to one in the ICT suite..great!

On to Wii things...We've now had a few lunchtime and playtime sessions in groups and good discussions about how to achieve good teamwork so that the group can meet as many of the Wii objectives as possible. We've also discussed why we're using the Wii and 'real life' videos of the Serengeti ( from utube) and which they prefer. This was very interesting! Everyone loves the Wii but not all had thought about the fact that real life is simulated in it. The discussion carried on and one point raised was that the Wii game allowed them to search and explore the landscape in a way that isn't possible on a utube video. They like having the time to look around, look at the Wii landscape and search for things and in things (ants in the termite mound for example..). They also really like to see real life, the real animals in the real surroundings.

This want to see the real as well as the simulated make me really think about me and the Wii. I can really see how the Wii inspires the children - all fully engaged when we have a session. I think my problem is that I do prefer real life - I am not really a gamer - so when I teach with the Wii, as I will continue to do, I will teach the real alongside the simulated if I can.... Eg Endless Ocean - I have the game, I love the sea and all that encompasses but I will also use the real...Blue Planet being one example that springs to mind...and not at all because in my previous life I did the 'live Blue Planet' show which is AWESOME!

So, tomorrow is the last prep day before our big day! We have the ICT suite all morning so the Wii will be in the Y3 classroom along with me or Dughall + TA, the class will take it in turns and have about 25 mins each using the Wii to achieve as many of its objectives as they can. There will be rewards for excellent teamwork! In the ICT suite they will be typing up their animal reports using Word or PPT, finding photos from switch zoo and finally creating their final 'ript' report.

I plan on having a 'show and tell' of experiences in the afternoon as well as the rewards for good teamwork!...Roll on Friday :-)

Wii Week!

2009-11-30T16:42:00.003Z

So, Wii Week in Year 3! I started off this morning by asking my class about their homework and how it had gone. I'd set 'Serengeti' PAL (parent assisted learning) using this site . The feedback was great, everyone had enjoyed it, had learnt many things and so had their parents! Literacy this week is writing a short non-chron about the animals that they researched using Switch Zoo last Friday. We talked about how to write a paragraph correctly - topic/development and concluding sentences - as well as reminders to make sure they check their individual writing targets and try their best to meet them! I'd made a finished 'ript' about the African Elephant so they got to see where they are aiming this week and I also used that to help remind about the structure of a paragraph...drawing all over it to illustrate my points!

Two teams practised on the Wii at lunchtime, we talked about how important it is that each team can work well together and that not everyone will be using the Wii controls...that's a toughie because everyone wants to! I tried to solve this by talking about the directions being the most important job and that the success of the team depends on how well this job is done....that did work mostly!

I am amazed at how well this works to inspire good teamwork. The groups today were easily able to talk about how it needs to be to be successful - from talking in a nice (not shouty) voice, to being encouraging if someone doesn't quite go the right way, get the photo first time etc...Fab!

We then had an afternoon that started with us visiting KS1, Reception & Nursery to give them our PPT Advent calendar - full of animations and messages - and then went back to the Serengeti for a 'Where in the World'/habitats/how to look after animals etc

I used Google Earth right from the start, loading - where's Africa? Where's Tanzania? How do we find the Serengeti? My class loved this - what an impressive classroom tool it is - we looked at the photos it gave us and knew how to do this from our google maps session a couple of weeks ago. We talked about the landscape, the differences and what we could work out from the things
we saw...such as dry brown grass = hot weather.

We then talked about the roads there, somebody asked why they weren't like ours, ie tarmac This led to a great discussion about who is important there, humans or animals? I also showed a couple of safari like films I had previously downloaded and checked from utube. The ones I'd chosen had lots of film about elephants and rhinos which led to another good discussion about tusks, horns and hunters....great session, all fully engaged...

Then on to afternoon play and another group on the Wii....I think I will need to give up all my lunchtimes etc this week in aid of this project, not that I mind at all and next time I will know that I need to make time for the children to get used to the game!..

So far so good!

Wii project - final ideas!

2009-11-29T09:18:00.002Z

Yesterday I somehow managed to delete my last post whilst editing it which was annoying!...I've had quite a few more thoughts and ideas going around in my head since the first Wii session last Friday.

After that session it was obvious to me that plans I had were too big! I am very good at having 'grand plans!'

The main problem is that I think the children need much more time to get used to this Wii game which might not be that easy to provide. I plan on having the teams of 5/6 coming in at lunchtime on a rota so that they can each get used to their role before our big day on Friday.
Their 'jobs' will be..

Navigating on the Wii
Taking photos on the Wii
Giving clear instructions and directions on how to achieve the Wii objectives (2 children)
Taking photos with digital camera to use for their reports

Last week they used Switch Zoo for part of their research. I'd prepared a ppt that had various photos of animals that live in the Serengeti with links to the info page about them. The children took notes about 3 different animals. Their task in literacy this week is to continue with their work on how to write paragraphs correctly by writing a factual report about each of the animals they chose. They will then type this up in our ICT session and will use it as part of their final session when they use 'ript' to create their final report. These ript pages will then be printed and made into a book that contains information about some of the animals in the Serengeti.

I also plan on having this finished book uploaded onto our DB so that they can share their work with their parents.

During the week we'll have 3 afternoon sessions about this project,

geography - where in the world/landscape and how it's different to ours - use the Wii + utube videos
an introduction to habitats and why these animals live there/endangered animals
art - a map of the Serengeti with the animals they have written about

On Friday the big focus will be on the use of the Wii and the good teamwork necessary to get the best out of their Wii session - I'm thinking of giving rewards for the number of objectives achieved - ie the higher the number of objectives achieved the better the teamwork will have been. After each Wii session I'll download the photos taken with the digital camera so that the children will be able to use them in their 'ript' reports.

When the children aren't using the Wii they will be in the ICT suite creating their final report.

Wonderful story by a 7 year old child...

2009-11-26T19:21:00.006Z

Yesterday was 'story telling' and then 'story writing' day....My class have loved doing their work on stories in familiar settings. The sketching and painting of story boards has been particular popular - many children chose to write their story from their painted story board rather than their written planning and said that it was 'much easier this way because they could 'see' what to write...maybe a lesson to learn about how to help children write successfully?!

There has been a lot of good writing and meeting of individual writing targets, the story below is the best one. I was blown away by it. It's as the child wrote it, she's 7.

Trouble in the woods

One bright day a girl called Louise who was 8 years old decided that she would go into the wood even though she was warned not to because the eval trolls were there! She egored her mum completely. You see Louise's favourite animal was foxes and the best place to see a fox was in the wood. Louise had big green eyes and long black hair. So one sunny day after dinner she snuck out, put her fox suit on, said bye to her dog and off she went....

Louise was looking round a huge oak tree when she found a pound coin on the floor so she picked it up! But it was a trap because it flipped her up and a rope wrapped its self round her foot. Suddenly a two headed troll jumped down from a branch. It was hungry and danced around the trap singing, your going to be my dinner, my dinner, my dinner! He was wearing a bright pinck T-shirt and green shorts. His skin was brown and he had a flat nose as well.

Suddenly from out of the shadows came a fox. The fox pownsed on the troll and with one scrape of the paw he killed the troll. He un-tied the rope and took Louise back to her cottage in the middle of the woods. Her mum was furious but happy adn she was sent to bed without any tea.

The images below are made by Microsoft Auto-collage, it's all of their story boards and is the current desktop background in Year 3!

Beautiful Storyboards

2009-11-24T18:12:00.008Z

These beautiful story boards were finished today - many more equally gorgeous in class! Tomorrow morning will be storytelling morning, more work on openings and then we'll practise the telling. All will tell their story to a friend and a few will be recorded using the Easispeak mic. I then plan to listen back and get the children to evaluate and suggest improvements which I will then feed into the afternoon session which is the actual writing session.

African Safari Wii Project in Year 3!

2009-11-23T18:01:00.005Z

I've just had an exciting meeting with Dughall - twitter fame person who many of you know and follow. He's my class governor and is coming in for his first visit in a couple of weeks. I am keen to have a go with a Wii in my class after reading about all the wonderful things that many teachers are doing and I also know that Dugh is keen on this idea too....perfect opportunity with his class visit to put it altogether.

The first thing to sort out was the technical issues I had - 33 children, small room, wires everywhere...not ideal. We have a great ICT technician who came up with the idea of using a different projector ( ie not the one attached to the ceiling) and projecting onto the back wall. Brilliant! This solves the safety issues. Dugh solved the problem of where to put the Wii bar thing (sure there is a techie name for it that I don't know..) by asking for a bit of blu-tack. It was duly stuck on the wall under the image and it was all working beautifully!

The next thing to sort out was what to do with African Safari, I had a bit of ppa this afternoon and had jotted down my ideas - I had thought of linking it to databases but changed my mind. Before we got going with that we played the game as Dugh hadn't seen it and needed to know what it was all about. Despite me having seen it already I still managed to think that trees in the distance were giraffes...ho hum. Dugh was much better at navigating than me - I take a mean photo!

I wondered if it would be possible to upload the photos the children would take in the game to use in our ICT suite- we don't think it is but if you know better then please comment!..Steve, our great ICT man suggested that the children take a digital photo with the class camera and that solved that problem!

My idea is that the children split into eight groups of four. Each group will have a focus, each child will have a role. The overall objective will be to describe using multi sensory language - this will follow on from their current literacy - in whatever their task is.

Each group will use the Ript programme on which to write up and display their findings...still toying with the idea of some using Ript and some using Animoto.

These are ideas for themes for the 8 groups -

giraffes
elephants
landscape including water and plants
vultures
hyenas
lion
wildebeast
habitats
respecting the animals re distance/disturbance
Serengeti - although most likely this will be for all

I plan to have a carousel of activities. We will have 2 - maybe 3 rooms to use, one of which is the ICT suite. Definitely one Wii, maybe 2.

When a group is using the Wii these are the roles we are thinking they could have;

2 playing - one photo, one navigating - this can be set to alternate
1 using the digital camera to take photos
1 using the easispeak microphone to record a running commentary - focus on being precise and not waffling!

I still have a lot of sorting out to do but this is the basic idea. I'm going to give them an afternoon exploring African S on Friday and maybe set homework around the animals/Serengeti so that it's not all completely new when Dugh comes in for the day.

Music & Maths Starters..

2009-11-23T06:11:00.008Z

I then went onto thinking about maths. At the moment Year 3 are doing a lot of work on number bonds and I'm trying different ways of trying to get them to see that if they know that 5 + 5 = 10 then that information can help them to know what 25 + 5 is etc.

So my mind started playing with rhythms and rhymes...

I'm going to use 2Simple Music to help make it sound funky - there's a part of it that will provide a pulse. This is what I'm going to try...hope it makes sense!

I'm thinking of it in 8 - 8 quite up tempo beats - of the 2Simple pulse and I shall teach it in 2 bits before I put the whole thing together. Hopefully it'll provide a great starter, be a learning aid and a memory aid for my class.

So - speaking the rhyme....

four add six is ten yeah, four add six -teen is twen - ty.

The 'teen' bit has a bit of funky sync to it as it goes across the beat.

I'm a bit stuck on the rest of the tens numbers because they each have 2 syllables - thirty, fifty, sixty etc instead of one syllable as in 'six'teen so it doesn't have the same funky sync as the teens.
I might do it straight in a very robotic style or a rap or change the number of beats...will see what I come up with on my next walk! I finding walking great for ideas and practising little rhythmic ideas such as this one...

Story Things

2009-11-23T05:55:00.004Z

Sunday night always seems to be my worst sleep night, last night was one of those night...brain whizzing so I got up and did some work.

So far in stories in Y3 we've studied characters - and drawn them, examined plots, used the wonderful Fox & Child film to help with multi-sensory work and made a list of ideas about the actual story. This morning they are each going to create a written storyboard of their story before a fantastic local artist comes in this afternoon to help them paint their story.

My idea is that their story will be created visually in art so that each of them can vocally tell their story from it....maybe a woodland background with the story elements on top etc....then my whizzing brain got to work!

I love the programme 'Ript'...it's easy to use - drag and drop- and looks amazing. My plan is to either take a snapshot of each piece of storyart either under the visualiser (more satisfactory for them) or by camera. The children can then create their story in Ript using their art work and their writing. It can then be saved in their folders on our VLE to be shown off and printed at home if they wish....Might well print them at school too....

I'm going to have a storytelling session where the class rehearse their stories vocally using thier artwork. I then plan to record a few children using an Easipeak microphone. Hopefully there will be quite a lot of 'and then's... that we can talk about and improve before they write the whole thing!

School Bird Feeders

2009-11-20T17:44:00.003Z

In Year 3 we're lucky enought to have a view of the school meadow. A couple of weeks ago I put the bird feeders up again along with those half coconut fat ball things.

I love being able to look out of the window and see birds feeding. It's just getting going now and the children are learning to recognise the birds on the feeder - blue tits, robins, female partridges and squirrels so far!

Last year I put sunflower seeds in the feeders and had to fill them up every two minutes so this year I decided to do mixed seed rather than sunflower seed...not very popular so might change back!

Last week - after only a couple of days of the feeders being up - we had a lesser spotted woodpecker! Woohoo!! It was kind enough to stay while and both feed from the feeder and hammer into a nearby tree....we've not seen it since then so fingers crossed it comes back.

We had woodpeckers last year on the feeders with peanuts - completely destroyed by the squirrels - so might put one up again.

I love teaching them about nature, there seems to be so much in this life we have these days that isn't anything to do with nature..hopefully by the end of Y3 they will at least be able to recognise a few birds.

Friday things.

2009-11-20T16:48:00.007Z

Hmm, Friday things....capital for things or not? I decided not but went against my teacher code which is why I did it!

Children in Need - I had a great idea that the children in my class could pay a small amount for the pleasure (!) of putting a spotty sticker in my hair...this did seem like a GOOD idea...but they preferred to have stickers for themselves rather than me so I put them in. BAD IDEA!

I have pulled out quite a lot of hair in removing them...still, good cause!

My Furbles disc finally arrived - it's taken about 3 weeks - and am looking forward to playing with that this weekend when I plan data handling. (It's Friday and am just wondering whether to have curry delievered this eve...)

So,back to class and stories. Today they all chose a story formula to follow, most chose the 'Warning' story because they felt a connection with it. ... We agreed that if somebody says 'don't do that' the first thing that you want to do is to do it!

One child - quite a talented writer said that he didn't think that any of the story patterns worked for him, so we chatted and he decided on a different one - 'Losing something story.' Everybody finished choosing but not all finished their list of ideas re their stories...so some have a bit of catch up to do on Monday during reading.

We then went onto databases - I find this tough, doesn't grab me much but I try to make it interesting. We use Textease Database CT which seems straightforward enough.

I did input on databases before the ICT lesson - I'd made one about trolls and got them all to make up info about a troll....Did you not know that the world needs a database about trolls just in case you have one living in your garden?!

That went well but we had some teething troubles re the software - my fault I think - so the lesson didn't quite go to plan. If you use textease database ct do you find it easy to save? Is there a setting I need to sort out or something? Any help would be very welcome...

This afternoon we carried on with databases, this time we did one - in class not ICT suite - about Pudsey Bear that we will input next week...The world DOES need to know what he does for the rest of the year!

Then a mountain of things to give out and then it's the weekend!... Hoorah :-)

Thursday Things..

2009-11-19T17:48:00.010Z

Ah well, another day and another post but isn't that what new toys do? Inspire us to keep using them?!

So today in Lit we started our work on how to find a plot for our stories. If you read a previous post by me you'll know I am a bit of a Pie Corbett fan! I have a wonderful book by him called 'How to Teach Fiction Writing at KS2,' and am using his ideas to help me to teach how to write a plot. I love the way he steals things - we steal words and phrases ALL the time. We steal from authors whose books we are reading, we steal from each other and we steal from anyone who might visit...So stealing a plot formula came quite naturally to us all!

In his book Pie talks about how most well-known stories follow a formula - The Wishing story, The Warning Story, The Red Riding Hood kind of plot, The Finding something story..etc etc So I have followed his ideas and made them my own to suit my class.

We started off by studying the plot of Little RRH altogether on the carpet. We worked out the setting, the main character and a couple of special details about her before we headed into 'plot' land. I used an online version of the story and we discussed it afterwards...ie what happens first, 2nd etc

They then went away and had to sequence the story - 11 strips of paper each (x 33 children..) in piles on tables. They all had to go on a walk round the room to pick up all 11 strips and they did very well! Most managed to sequence all of it, some got a couple of bits muddled but I think that they all got the hang of the idea that good stories follow a logical sequence and it's not 'a bit of this and then a bit of that'...

In the last 10 mins of the end of the lesson I introduced the idea of stealing a plot. We looked at the Little RRH formula and quickly made up a new story that followed that pattern.

'Hanley was a small cheerful boy aged 9 who was asked to deliver some very special papers to a house in the woods in a tiny village in France! He was a bit stuck as to how he would get to France when along came a friendly guy called 'Joe' who just happened to have a rocket that was ready to launch and was actually going to France!
Unbeknown to them a nearby rattlesnake heard their conversation and plotted to blow up the rocket because he knew what was special about the papers that Hanley had been asked to deliver....They were made out of GOLD PAPER and were the only ones like this in the whole wide world. The rattlesnake WANTED them! They were also guarded by 5 special jewels...anyone who tried to to open the case in which the papers were held was put under a spell by the jewels...only the rightful owner could take them without being put under a spell. The rattlesnake thought that as snakes weren't human he could steal the papers and not be put under a spell.....

Obviously I have embellished it a bit but the bones of it all came entirely from them. Then it was lunchtime and we'd run out of time!...We ended it on a cliffhanger! They were all very engaged and full of ideas for the Hanley story. We made it up aurally bit by bit - always following the formula on the IWB. I shall do another session on aural storytelling to a different formula tomorrow!...cant' wait!

Wednesday Things...

2009-11-18T17:57:00.004Z

We now have GREAT story characters in Year 3 - lots of great ideas and effort - well done them! I started by going over the characters from yesterday - used the visualiser - and talked about if characters were believable or not...in relation to the setting of the woods. I had prepared a ppt and made up a few names. We quickly brainstormed the names to try to work out what a character with this name might be like....I agreed that they could steal a name idea from me if they wanted to.

Most had already agreed that their first character might not really fit into the woods!..Success!! I had made a different kind of character profile sheet and this worked much better for them so a learn for me re this class.

We started to learn how to use the grid method for multiplication and again, lots of effort and more practice will improve things. We had one of those disjointed reading sessions where everybody seems to knock on your door and need something....and then we had a science afternoon where they planned - in pairs - an investigation into how they could test the strength of various magnets...

Yesterdays ICT session about making a PPT Advent calendar for KS1 went down well. I'd prepared a folder of Xmas like photos, some animated (animated snow was particularly popular..) and targeted a few children to learn a new ppt skill. They really enjoyed being taught, and then being teachers to pass on their new skill of layers within ppt.

Tomorrow is more grid method, plots, circle time and preparing troll info for databases on Friday!

Familiar Settings & The Fox and the Child

2009-11-17T18:26:00.006Z

In year 3 at the moment we're doing familiar settings in literacy and I'm using the filmed site above for the first time.

What a wonderful film the Fox and the Child is! For us at the moment it fits with autumn and a familiar setting of the woods - we're also surrounded by them.

The multi-sensory writing they did last week was wonderful, I played the sounds clip from the website and we were off! I played the clip, no writing - all sight barred, ie board off and blackout on the computer screen, we all just listened the first time, then I played it again and they used whiteboards to write down what they thought was happening from what they were hearing. After that they got to watch the clip and were amazed at some things they saw and how they related to what they thought they had heard. They had more input on multi-sensory writing before writing 1/2 paragraphs that described a woodland setting.

This week we've started on characters and I used the film again - what a beautifully expressive face the child has on that film! ....we did much other input on characters - how names have an impact and how stories don't need too much detail about characters, only a couple of special ones. I then went off on my ppa and left them to their character profiles...came back to lots of lovely profiles about their friends or fashion models with make up and boyfriends!...Ho hum, back to the drawing board tomorrow!

2009-11-17T16:25:00.004Z

Made this today to embed in the Year 3 page of our VLE - the idea being to help both parents and children!

Using a Wii with Year 3

2009-11-15T17:55:00.005Z

This is something that I am very interested in doing. Quite a while ago as I was just starting out as a teacher, my HT said something that went a bit like this; This is a different generation of children who don't learn in the way that we did.....so...that's kind of my philosophy! Just because the Wii/computer games don't grab me hugely it doesn't mean to say that they don't grab my class or that they could indeed inspire my class! This means I try things and buy things in order to make their learning as 'current' as it can be.

I am into ICT in a big way, but like anything, I'm into some parts of it more than others. Having bought a Wii to use in class after being inspired by you all out there, I find that it's not particularly my thing which is maybe why I am having some reservations about using in class - despite wanting to.

So far the set up I have isn't great, I plug it into the projector and a socket at the back of the class - wires, health and safety etc. With 33 children in my class and a smallish room we are a bit crowded - reservation number 1.

Reservation number 2 - because I have 33 children and 1 Wii, how do I keep them all engaged and doing something whilst a few use it on the IWB? To me the whole idea behind using the Wii is that that's the basis for the activity...maybe a carousel of activities?

My plan is to use African Safari or Endless Ocean to link to the databases unit they are currently doing in ICT...I'm thinking African Safari because they are Y3 and the Latin names of the fish might be a bit tough.

I love the enthusiasm people use when they talk about how they have used a Wii in their class to inspire all kinds of learning, I'd like that!

If you have any ideas/comments about this then I would LOVE to hear them!...Thank you!

Musical Art plan..

2009-11-14T09:17:00.000Z

This is a link to a forum in which I have already uploaded all the resources - except the music - for this project.

http://primaryresourcecentre.myfreeforum.org/about6808.html

2009-11-14T09:10:00.000Z

This is the poetry my class wrote for this project.

We wrote 2 poems to music, the 3rd one - it starts 'When I caught my words in the wind' was inspired by writing Pie's poem out on a till roll in 3 different colours, cutting it up and waving it in the wind outside. The children then caught the words as their eyes saw them and then wrote them down on their whiteboards. These 'caught' words then generated new poetry!

Amazing Musical Art & Poetry Project!

2009-11-14T08:21:00.001Z

Last summer we had a one day Art inspection for Ofsted which co-incided with our local Art festival. I'd already decided to do an art project around this week and so made it a bit more whizzy for Ofsted....like we do!

I based it on the works of Kandinsky as he had a medical condition - synaesthesia - which meant that he saw colours as music and heard music as colours. I also wanted my class to develop their musical listening and understand that music can have layers and textures - just as art can.

Having spent many, many years my life as a professional musician I maybe had a head start on some as to the music I chose in order to help the children be successful in this project. The children had had prior learning on Kandinsky and his abstract shapes, sketching techniques and musical listening.

I started by choosing 2 pieces of music that have 2 parts - each one very different. The first being Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Paart (violin + piano) and the second was Pizzica Ucci
by Christina Pluhar (voice & percussion - great video of her and her band with early instruments on utube) from an album called Tarantella.

I was lucky enough to have a professional artist/designer - Amanda McMillan working with me and she came up with the idea of using till rolls to sketch on. In the first session we played the music (it's very peaceful) and modelled what we'd do before asking a couple of children to sketch to this music on the IWB - not great for fine sketching but good enough for them to be able to explain their drawings and how the music had inspired them to draw what they did.

This first session was AMAZING! Amanda and I both had tears in our eyes as we listened to the music and watched a child sketching to it on the IWB. The whole class (Year 3) then sketched on the till rolls with sketching pencils whilst listening to Spiegel im Spiegel.

The feedback was stunning, all children could explain the techniques they'd drawn and how the music had inspired them to draw what they did - 2 parts in the music translated in their art as two contrasting sections. They were given a selection of sketching pencils and some changed them mid way through as this was 'what the music told me to do!'

I then went home all inspired and fired up and emailed the children's author Pie Corbett (I felt very lucky to have a link with him on a couple of previous projects) about the whole thing. He then heard our first piece of music and wondered if I could then get them to write poetry to the same music they had sketched to. So we did! Pie was kind enough to write us a poem to the same music and we used this as a starting point and the poetry they wrote was stunning! ( See google doc of their work when I get around to embedding it!)

We then went on to record each child speaking their poems using an Easispeak microphone. Each child had a choice if they wanted to have background music or not - most did.

We did this project daily and the next piece of music has a wildy different feel. It's a very ancient piece and feels 'mad!' Again we modelled and a couple of children volunteered to sketch on the IWB before the whole class went away to sketch (again using a till roll). The energy the music gave the children was incredible - mad pointillism, the whipping along of the till rolls, the frantic sketching - again all could explain how the music had made them sketch as they did.

We then wrote poetry to this music - 'writing with energy' one child called it.

The next day we sketched to live music - me and their guitar teacher (they had Wider Ops guitar) - one child explained her that her drawing had sections like the music did. She'd recognised that the piece we'd played had 3 contrasting sections.

We gradually brought in the use of colour, taught about blends and tones and how you could 'fuse' colours to make other colours. At this point I started to use the music of Nitin Sawhney as he fuses different musical styles - I used East/West as my theme. I showed videos from utube of him and Anoushka Shankar (sitar) and his band playing at the Electric Proms. There's one incredible bit where he plays exactly the same as she does on the sitar - so we talked about how the guitar and the sitar are a bit similar but from different cultures. Also showed the difference between the tabla and the drums.

We then worked up to the final day - Ofsted! In the final lesson the children were taught how to use watercolour pencils and how to think like artists by using other mediums - toothbrushes, twigs, sponges, bits of pineapple skin (spiky bits) to create shapes and colours in their final work. We had also moved away from till rolls at this point and in the final lesson the children were given a choice of shape and colour of paper.

It was a truly wonderful project that was thoroughly enjoyed by all and before very long I'll upload as many of my resources for this as I can.

Using Google Maps Photos for 2D & 3D Shapes

2009-11-14T06:59:00.000Z

This week we were learning about 2D and 3D shapes. Inspired by the maths maps series by Tom Barrett http://edte.ch/blog/ I used the photos part of google maps in one of our ICT lessons.
My class absolutely loved this activity and have seen shapes in everything they have looked at since! Many told me that they went home that evening and showed their parents which is a pretty good indication of how well it went down!

Blog Day 1

2009-11-14T06:56:00.000Z

I'm quite excited - despite it being way too early to be on the laptop on a Saturday morning - as I have finally got around to starting a blog!