KimP’s Blog

Have A Look At What We’ve Been Up To

The AllStars have been searching through “Oceans of Info”, following a variety of interests, and have now reported their findings.

Their task last term was to “Create Something Extraordinary” about oceans.

First they puzzled and wondered about things that interested them.

Next they spent time reading, researching and learning about their topic.

Then they negotiated a rubric to support them in “creating something extraordinary” using web2.0 tools to present their learning.

After that they experimented with a web2.0 tool they hadn’t used before.

And…..

Finally they got down to creating.

You can see most of the presentations as they come up over at the 08AllStars site. 

Oceans of Info 1 a voki and a Toondoo

Oceans of Info 2 a pirate voki

Oceans of Info 3  “Mermaid News” video

Oceans of Info 4 Vokis by a marine biologist and a pirate

Oceans of Info 5 a Voki about the sinking of the HMAS Sydney

Oceans of Info 6 a video about whaling 

Vokis, videos, puppets and comics are some of the ways the students chose to share their information creatively.

I am truly proud and amazed at the wonderful ways that the kids told their stories. I think that the AllStars are ALL stars!

 Image: ‘ooooo!‘
www.flickr.com/photos/50502690@N00/431856206

Dolphin Island Delight

I was feeling very guilty … I was letting my Year 4’s down … I had planned a series of activities to “do” with the Year 4’s (ages 8-9) that tied in with the Dolphin Island game, but I hadn’t had time to do more than explain some of the ideas of what we could do.

 When I finally called them all together to get “started” I had no takers - they were all otherwise engaged!

 Four students were bunkered down on the pillows totally absorbed in playing the game. Someone called “TIME” and the games were passed on to the next player, the groupings moved around and the next lot of kids were soon quickly drawn into the game as well.

 A little group were huddled around the DOCs (Dear Old Computers or Dead, Old Computers depending on the current state of operability!) reading and typing from their writing notebooks information about dolphins onto the class wiki.

 One little person was flicking through non-fiction texts looking for creatures that were in the game. Winson was looking up more facts about orcas on the internet - and pushing his and my current knowledge about the relationship between dolphins and orcas.

 I didn’t want to interrupt so left them till later.

 However…… later on ….

•  some Year 4’s were looking for images of sea creatures from the game on Flikr to use in an art design project,
• others were involved in the design work,
• another pair were playing the game,
• Deon was writing out his narrative that would accompany the Voki he was going to make about orcas,
• Justin was searching through Flikr creative commons to find new pictures that he could legally use to illustrate the information reports he had written for the wiki about a number of marine animals.

 I’m afraid that my Year 4’s are just too busy

• Organising
• Directing
• Negotiating
• Sharing
• Supporting
• Investigating
• Hypothesising
• Researching
• Contributing
• Planning
• Writing
• Reading
• Experimenting, and
• LEARNING

to “do” my activities.

 Isn’t it great

SETTING GOALS

I have always got my class to set goals at the beginning of each term or semester. I think that this is one small way that my students can learn to grow as effective and more independent learners. I think that setting  goals for the term or semester can help my students organise themselves and “learn to learn”.

Goal setting is important

• to focus
• to get involved
• to “own” learning
• to build confidence
• to motivate
• to set what needs to be done
• as a path to learning

Some times and classes are more successful than others -

• is it the particular students, their understanding, their commitment?
• is it the structures or scaffolds that help the students to set goals and targets?
• is it the follow through/reminding / checking / follow up that SUPPORTS students and keep them focussed?

Students gain much from articulating their goals and their targets to reach their goals, and in my experience they need to

write it down

mark it off

check it

compare

look for “personal bests”

celebrate reaching targets

think about the goal

affirm themselves

Student goal setting needs to be open, students need to be accountable, they need to be able “see” and “say” their goals and targets.

You’ll find some useful proformas to adapt and use this semester, and a SMART site  might help.

Now, in the spirit of keeping on, we will track where  we want to go this semester ….

Image: ‘P1000737.JPG‘
www.flickr.com/photos/61724844@N00/683155329

DSLites & Dolphin Island

My class is studying oceans and conservation at the moment and all are involved in projects on an area of interest related to this overall topic.

I had been waiting for an opportunity to try using the school DSLites with my class. I had come across the game “Dolphin Island” and knew that the time had arrived

The 9 Year 3 & 4 students are the target group as they still need/enjoy a little more structure than the rest of the group. As well as playing the game and learning about conservation, there are a number of other off computer activities that this group will be undertaking as well.

The students are researching a sea creature and adding the info to our class wiki, identifying conservation issues and trying to work out solutions, measuring sea creatures, investigating mathematical problems based on the game, and participating in art/craft activites!

What fun! 

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Oh, I See!

 Dean Shareski recently posted about blogs that succeed, and listed five simple ways he’s discovered to help students and teachers blog successfully:

Blogging is mostly about reading

• Provide as much time to read blogs as write
• When writing make sure you are responding to something you’ve read, seen or heard

To make a friend you have to be a friend

• If you want people to read and respond to your work, you will need to read and respond to theirs
• We have 2 ears and 1 mouth!

It’s personal

• Write about what you know
• Don’t lose the concept of conversation - it must flow from personal meaning
• Write stories that others can relate to and contribute to

Hyperlink

• Validity of blogs without links?

Get graphical

• Words are only one way to express ideas
• Embed video, audio and images
• Communicate beyond just words

I’ve been struggling a bit lately with finding the impetus to write, and I think its because I’ve over planned the whole “story” too much.

I’ve also been doing lots and lots of reading but not responding in any way - just thinking “Yeah, I agree with that!” and moving on to the next post.

Maybe I need to explore graphical ways of communicating - try out some new applications so I can use them/show them in class as well.

I shared Dean’s suggestions with my class and they had a lively discussion about the ideas raised - we’ve all agreed to get down and serious about improving our blogging this term, just you wait and see if we don’t  

The Why To of Web2.0

How the Web Transforms Everything

An exciting day spent listening to some of Australia’s premier edubloggers:

• Judy O’Connell
• Westley Field

plus the blog guru himself - Will Richardson!

A great opportunity for our school group to hear and see first hand how the web is transforming learning and teaching, and to consider why we must embrace and work with web2.0 to keep learning in schools relevant - for our students and for ourselves.

Co-create

Share

Empower

Transform

Question

Networks

Deep understandings

Change

Improve

……….. just a few things on our “to do” list when we are back at school…………

Here is a mind-map I jotted out at the event, a way of sorting the information/thoughts/opinions from the esteemed presenters

Haluz - playing with words!

  I noticed many times during our work with Haluz that the kids were re-working paragraphs or sentences to get better effects. They would start off with an OK paragraph, sentence or idea, and then have another try, often changing the word order around.Sometimes they would try out various emotions and the associated vocab or language that went with the emotion. Over the years I’ve been constantly frustrated by my students inability or unwillingness to work on their writing - to improve the meaning, even to edit their work. Yet I have noticed that many students seem to enjoy working at making their sentence or paragraphs interesting, clear and entertaining.

This playing about with words and language - either to experiment with the power of the words, or to try out different effects of words - is really positive and encouraging. 80%of my class speak another language at home, and have rarely had the time or the confidence at school to experiment and play with English.

In our hurry and intent to “teach” non-English speaking students as much English as possible, we haven’t allowed time to use language for “play” purposes. I noticed my students were excited to try out different ways of writing the orientation, or about a character, or about an event they had experienced in the game. Was it the control over their writing? over their ideas? over the language? that was most exciting? Or was it the confidence of being in charge of English and being in charge of their story? What do you think?

Haluz - Creating A Colourful Character!

  In this session we looked at the various characters in the game.We discussed (as we moved through the game, often retracing our steps, or jumping ahead to see/watch/view the particular character we were talking about)

• the lack of main or “big” characters in Haluz
• what each character added to the game
• the personality characteristics that each character had/showed
• how we knew what the character was like - and what made us think that way
  • background music
  • way the character moved
  • what the character did
• what the character might have been feeling/ hearing/thinking at different points in the game
  • and how this influenced the characters movements
  • how the words we used to describe  changed according to how the character was feeling/acting

During this session we couldn’t help but act out different ways of moving, of reacting, and of thinking whilst we were “in character”.

The kids then had some time to work on writing about one of the characters. I think they made some great attempts at actually “being” the character …… what do you think?

“Sendrick the snake had never heard music before, so he hastily pulled himself out of his basket when the strange music began playing”  Sarah.

“Zaffa the hungry snake ferociously swallowed the cute furry mouse like a racing car going at great speed” Moustapha.

“Watching the mouse as carefully as a shark spying on it’s prey, Valisa, the suspicious snake waited for the mouse to peek out of the tiny hole” Momtahina.

“George excitedly popped out from his basket when he heard the beautiful music”  Steven.

“I stomped outside to see what was going on. Even though a vulture-like predator had my satellite dish I couldn’t help but smile. I was about to embark on a miraculous quest …” Timothy.

“Peeping out of the ancient box, one eye after the other, I rise carefully with caution, to the roof of the slimy lizard’s mouth. Jerking upwards towards the lizard’s dirty, disgusting tongue, I shake my head sideways and bump into the lizard’s throat, giving him a constantly sore throat” Naomi.

“Carelessly, I sprang out of the straw basket swaying to the music, not thinking of what I was doing. Only one thought was on my mind, “sway to the music” for I had not heard the marvellous music that I was swaying to right now for what felt like a hundred years”  Natalie

Haluz and Narrative Writing Part 1

 In May, Australia is undertaking, for the first time, national (as opposed to states-based) literacy and numeracy testing for students in Years 3, 5, 7 & 9. In the follow-up information received after last year’s state based testing (the NSW Basic Skills Test) my school identified a variety of areas we needed to focus on this year to improve our school results.

In the Literacy - Writing area our Areas for Focus were identified as:

• Text Processes: Effective orientation
• Text Processes: Effective resolution
• Topical language
• Figurative language
• Paragraphs
• Sentence structure
• Punctuation

The genre of Narrative is the only text type required this year, so my time has been spent working on my students’ narrative writing.

Last year I explored the use of the on-line “point and click” game Samorost with my class, and used it to work with my students on their writing skills. The results were inspiring and very exciting - you can read about what we got up to here ….

I was keen to use a computer game again to explore writing, and to motivate, engage and involve my students in writing narratives. However, I didn’t want to/ couldn’t just repeat what I’d done last year (two thirds of my class this year were in my class last year) as I was interested in a number of areas:

• to explore what other areas of writing lend themselves to using a game
• to investigate if more structured, text-based writing skills could be learnt/taught/practised using a game

Fortunately I came across another post from Ewan , who threw out a link to Haluz - a “point and click” game in the same genre as Samorost - which has meant that I can explore some more with my students  ……  and teach writing as well   :) 

You gotta love that don’t you?

Mind Map Magic

I am so excited about being able to embed things like this into my class blog, that I had to blog about it here too

How cool is this?

Last week we tried out a mind mapping tool called mind42.com to organise our thinking about Natural Disasters.

We had just been introduced to Natural Disasters through some wonderful hands on science activities from the CSIRO and we thought that we would like to investigate further.

This is what we came up with - have a look at the map above - you can move themap, make the text bigger/smaller, open and close the nodes. WOW

AllStars - leave a comment about the area you would like to investigate.