App Love

I was doing my usual Saturday morning wander through blog posts, twitter and pinterest and checked in on what Greg Carroll has been sharing.  One of his posts grabbed my attention as it's something that's been on the back of my mind for a while...how easy could it be to create an app?  It seems that my own children and students in class love apps and the possibilities they open up.  As a parent and teacher I mostly enjoy the learning opportunities these afford them.  Anyway, back to the blog post I'm referring to: Teachers Making Apps - Really.  The video below sums it all up really.

Having watched this video, scanned the QR code (that took me to ibuildapp) and checked out the ibuild app page I am even more intrigued and thinking through the possibilities of this for teaching and learning with 5 year olds.  I wonder how this would work with students in relation to a class page or learning beyond the classroom?  They mostly just link to online content like youtube, prezi's etc.  If making one for a unit however it does take a week for apple to approve an app.

Here's another handy link - The Ultimate Teachers Guide to Creating Educational Apps

Bit scary that even a 10 year old could do it...

Hmm, now what to do with this information...

Ultranet Class Pages

Why have a class page?

 Check out THIS LINK it sums up for me many of the purposes of a class page. 

• Audience
• Reflection
• Internet Safety
• Digital Tools
• Global Community
• Our Global World
• Parental Involvement

Check out this Wiki page too.  This is the ideal, a place for students to interact, publish and for ongoing learning.  The concept of it being like an open day all year long is perhaps how we should see our class pages - a window into the learning experiences going on in our classes.

Currently my Year One class page is:

• a place for information for parents including word lists etc
• a place for students to click on learning activities or YouTube clips relevant to their group's current learning goals
• a place to share our reflections or something we have learned (students narrate their ideas and I type them in during a reflection time in class)

Essentially it is a portal into further learning opportunities for students and families.

Some things to think about...

What is the purpose of your class page?

Why keep it updated?

What do you need to put on it to create it into what you and your class decide it should be?

Our school uses Ultranet for our class pages.  It can seem a little daunting for a teacher to be faced with what they see when they log in but never fear, help is at hand!  In the form of 'help'.  If you scroll right down to the bottom of your class page and look to the bottom right, you will see an image of a lifesaver ring, click on the help and you will get answers to most of the questions or tasks you want to do on your Class Page.  THIS LINK is a good one to book mark as it gives you access to the general usage support articles.

Don't forget the resource you have at your finger tips of other class pages both within your own school and teachers nationally and internationally!

Smiles,
Lara

Joining the Dots

Just before term break students in my class were doing connect the dot activities in maths to practise ordering numbers to 20 and to 50.  They had to think about the next number after.  Some found this tricky, some found it less so.  In relation to this conference, connecting the dots was about mathematical literacy and how many school leavers (a million or so) don't have the required mathematical literacy to participate fully in society.  This is approximately 50% of the NZ workforce.  They are not numerate enough.  Gillian Thomas, NZ Maths shared the different directions that had developed in the teaching of mathematics.  To connect the dots, primary teachers need to build the foundations of mathematics literacy that can be built on or connected to as students move through primary, secondary, tertiary and the work force.

Some points to consider from this

• when doing 'independent activities' are your students talking about maths?
• We go to school to live a productive and active life, how then as teachers do we head students on the maths journey.
• if we are just skimming the understanding, kids drop off.  We need to make sure our groundwork is strong and then the other things can be learned reasonably easily.  Maths is about connections.
• check out ALIM, PACT (coming soon - supporting teachers to form an OTJ in a way that facilitates consistency and allows for progress to be tracked - will break maths into 8 key ideas) and E-Ako.

As well as listening to this keynote, I attended three other workshops - Integrating iPads into your Maths Programme, Home School Math Madness Month & How to use your Interactive Whiteboard effectively during math lessons.

Integrating iPads into your maths Programme
Jazz Rolton - New River Primary

You can find Jazz's presentation on her blog HERE.

Maths Madness Month
Narelle Collie, Heddon Bush School

Narelle shared with us how her school set up a home school partnership with maths evenings - presenting maths around games concepts to develop positive learning experiences to parents and caregivers.  Free games packs were given each night.

Much of the workshops were developed from the 2008 Home-School Partnership: Numeracy book.  You can download this book HERE.

Using your Interactive Whiteboard during maths lessons
Simon Clarke, Kaikorai Primary

A couple of key points

• develop a way to encourage staff to share Activboard presentations
• try to make it interactive for the students not for the teacher
• with a culture of sharing we need to be able to critique too
• lock objects so they don't move - put it on a background layer
• if you are sharing flipcharts, put notes in about it
• know where the maths tools are and how to add more
• when planning in teams, each team member to look in different places to share what they found e.g. someone go to Youtube, someone Promethean etc.

It was a cold day at the Symposium, I was reluctant to take my jacket off in the hall but the classrooms where the workshops were held were nice and cosy.

QR Codes

Fun.  Why hadn't I hooked into these before?  Was chatting on FB with a librarian friend in a Uni library about what they use their iPads for, QR codes was one of the uses linked with training students on how to use the library and forresearch purposes.  This got me playing with QR codes.  They seem like heaps of fun and I'm thinking that my Year 1 students would find scanning a QR code heaps easier to get to a YouTube video or learning task following a guided reading session for example than typing in all the details or going through the process of logging into our class page and following the links there.

I wonder how many of their parents have smart phones that could scan these codes for home learning support?

I've found some helpful ideas.
10 Ways to use QR codes in your classroom
nuts and bolts
QR codes in the classroom
QR Codes in Education Prezi

And if the links weren't interesting enough...love the simplicity of navigation for the student in the YouTube video above!

4d

For dyslexia

For all

I had the privilege of attending a 4d workshop today at Millbrook where Neil MacKay was presenting strategies and ideas for supporting the learning of students who have dyslexia. There is a possablity that these strategies will support my son with his learning difficulties, we will see, but my husband was excited at the prospect of having some different ideas for getting him into his spelling words and reading when I spoke with him at lunch time. The lunch out afterwards at Waitiri Creek was lovely too with the other teachers I attended the workshop with.

The workshop was essentially for parents & teachers - 3 parents and 1 teacher per school - and Neil focussed on things parents can do at home with students who have dyslexia and in a sense for any child!

A couple of things that in Neil's opinion should be banned:

• HOMEWORK
• the words: "You're doing it wrong"
• telling a 'body smart' child to sit still L& learn
• telling a child repeatedly that they got their spelling words wrong - speak with the parent and stop breaking the child's heart repeatedly!

During the workshop we explored ourselves as learners and completed an activity by Eva Hoffman that highlights the areas of interest or enjoyment that we have with the most coloured in bits being the kind of intelligence we have. A free survey was identified at Accelerated Learning to help us identify the intelligence we most use/focus on.

What I enjoyed most is that I could see how many of the strategies could be used in both my junior classroom and with my son at home - and even my daughters!

Strategies

To develop comprehension - work smart rather than hard

use different colours to highlight the who, what, where, when, why in pieces of text/information

Use these to draw a picture of the story

Then ask questions about the text that children can answer.

TCP-QR - this is copyright to Neil MacKay

Paired Reading

Allow students choice in what they want to read then read with them - this means both of you reading at the same time - out loud. The stronger or adult reader reads over gaps the student has and slow down to allow them to catch up. Don't teach or practise the words that trip students up but just read for a purpose even if it is fun! If the student can't keep up when you read slowly the text is too hard. Find something else.

Spelling Challenge

5 words a week max

look at the word

feel the syllables - hand under chin, say word slowly to work out/feel the syllables

Clap the syllables

make the word (in the workshop we used scrabble tiles), jumble it, how many beats? make it, split it in two where the syllables area - split where there are doubles or two syllables - over annunciate the words - need to be able to hear the rhythm & the splits.

say the word

jumble the word

make the word

say the letters - touch each one as you say it

write it.

Writing

Thought dump - great shared writing experience - give opening sentence/idea and group give ideas to one person who writes them on post its and stick on paper - one word or picture per post it.

Choose your best 5 ideas

centre of a page - draw a small picture of your space ship and write...as we came through the clouds we could see... - stick post its on new page draw lines to connect ideas - then go in and add similes and adjectives - only two per idea.

Micromanage this process.

Move on to a second paragraph and work through same process micromanaging it - when we landed...in a group context.

For paragraph 3 allow students independence to go on and write own story.

Literacy Bags

Love this concept. Both as a parent and a teacher. Essentially a child takes home a 'pack' for a week or maybe a fortnight. Packs are put together based on a theme or interest of the child's and include some books at their reading level, books an adult or older sibling could read with them, perhaps a board or card game and some activities that relate to the topic. Reading Rockets have these as part of their 'family literacy' section and is a great way to develop the home and school partnerships.

Here's what they say:

he Family Literacy Bags engage teachers, parents, and kids. This innovative school-to-family project can:

• Strengthen the family-school partnership
• Help parents to become more aware of the class curriculum
• Allow all parents — regardless of culture, circumstance, education level, or English language proficiency — to feel that they are involved directly in their child’s learning
• Provide parents with a structure and model for reading with their kids
• Establish a regular family reading routine
• Make reading fun and interactive, igniting an enthusiasm for literacy
• Build an awareness of the breadth of books available for children
• Show parents how to connect what you read in books to what is happening in the world around
• Stimulate conversations around reading
• Encourage home-to-school communication

Here's a link to some of the packs they Reading Rockets has put together: Adventures in Reading

Some other links:

Ideas for putting together and making literacy bags

Book bags for sale - some great ideas too though if you want to make your own.

Chat about 'take home bags' - ideas from other teachers

Take home literacy bags

Encouraging family involvement - article and further links to other articles about these bags.

If you give a mouse a cookie - resources to make a literacy bag.

I can see these being used as not just literacy but also including some numeracy, science, social studies, E-learning and music for example. The idea of books as a springboard into learning in other 'disciplines' can be utilised with these packs. It's the setting up of enough for the students in a class that would take time - and some spare for if they are forgotten on return date and to ensure there is something to 'entice' each student to want to take a bag to share with their families. Books would need to be purchased as well as the consumable resources like pens, stickers, craft materials etc that go with these. Zip-loc bags would be good for storing the various components and perhaps a local business would consider donating canvas or calico totes to house these? Or maybe they just go home in children's school bags or a book bag could be purchased for each pack?