After an interesting week or so on Jury Duty I’m back – rearing to go after an enforced “time-out”.
My last week at school saw me using our new laptops in my room. After a frazzled first session – sorting internet cords, and placement of the laptops within the room – we made a great start at our individual maths focus contracts. The students felt responsible for getting on with their work and seemed very motivated to work on their own to complete the maths topics they needed to work on.
The setting up of the laptops got quicker over the week and the students came up with exciting ways to take advantage of the laptops when they were set up. We had a great session with the kids working in threes using Google Earth to locate places referred to in the “Behind the News” current affairs program we watch each week.
My use of the iWB was probably not as exciting as I had hoped – a few techno problems, but they will be sorted soon I hope and I will continue on (and on and on!)
My focus for this coming week will be:
- Laptops – in the room as much as possible – set up and ready for the kids to work on.
- Writing Focus – narrative using an internet game again to support and motivate students and improve their writing. This time I will start with the planning of the game narrative: does it fit the planning model we are using? How does it differ? How are the different parts of the narrative linked to each other?
Hmmm, lots to work on here!
- Look at using the DSLites for daily? thrice weekly? basic maths practise. I’m sure this will really motivate the class to improve their basic operations skills, and by recording their scores we can collate and graph results. This will link in to the Data section of our Mathematics curriculum, and “interpreting graphs” is an area my students need to work on.
The DSLites are set up to use in the Library at lunchtimes so I will have to make sure we use them first thing in the morning and then reset them up ready for lunch 🙂
Heaps to look forward to……. BIO! (bring it on! 😀 )