toffeetalk

I have changed my page to

http://www.toffeetalk-marieh.blogspot.com/

I have started a new class blog and have become really keen.  The children are also keen and tell me they like to show their parents and friends at home.  One child has left a comment of her own after going onto the page from home.  I have grandparents from overseas also looking in on the site and leaving comments.  I had no trouble getting parent approval to have their children’s photos or work on the site.  We recently had our parent interviews, so I took the opportunity to have the page showing onto the whiteboard through the projector and I talked to the parents about what we were trying to do.  They were very quick to sign the permission form. I also have the page up each morning for any parent to see and the children to show what new things have been added. I have also been having fun trying out new gadgets and sites to make amazing slideshows.                                            Our new page  is www.room2bds.blogspot.com

What a great day this was.  I thoroughly enjoyed the workshops I attended and the Keynote speakers were excellent.  I have loads more to think about and to try out with my class.

I also had to take a workshop, and the one I chose to do was on basic animation.  It was a small group of 8 but they all seemed to have loads of fun and laughs as they made their little story come to life in their animation. I am hoping that they will all “give it a go” with their classes as well. I was pleased with how well this went even though my own computer was on its “last legs” and kept turning off.  Since that day the computer has finally died and I’m waiting now to see if it can be brought back to life with or without major surgery.

Tags: Cluster expo

A most enjoyable day with cool tools to have a go at.  I particularly liked the “Susie’s Links” and “Cool Tools for Schools”.  I can see some ideas and links here that I can use, and/or  recommend to others in my syndicate at school.

http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/      

http://suzieslinks.com/

Putting our responses on Wallwisher gave us the experience of using this tool.  It looked very impressive.

It looked like some of the scenarios we had to comment on, may have come from our school.  I think I have heard these comments before! 

Tags: Lead Teacher workshop, web2 tools

I was determined to have a go at animation with my class of 6 year olds. This was to be done with a digital camera,  a coreflute background and modelling clay and small toys.

These are the steps I went through

• I put the children into small groups of 3 children of mixed ability.
• The children chose the toys/or an item made from modelling clay they wanted to use.
• They used a planning sheet to plan their ”story.”
• After their plan  was checked by me they could start their animation using the digital camera.
• The camera was set up on a small tripod on a table
• A number of photos were taken by the children as they moved their toy slightly.
• The photos were played back quickly on the camera to look like “animation.”
• These photos were later loaded onto the computer to be played back using photo viewer.

The children all really enjoyed the process and there were some interesting results. I was lucky to have had another teacher in the class for the time we were doing the “animation.” This allowed a teacher to supervise the children working on their plan, and a teacher concentrating on the actual photo taking and movement of the toy that as being photographed. Now that the children have learnt the process I feel that some of them could now do this as an independent activity in an integrated programme.

Tags: Add new tag, animation

Well its up and running although there’s not a lot on it yet.  Last week Belinda J came in to talk to the children about blogging.  Very few of the children knew what she was talking about, but after her showing them a few class blog pages they began to think that we should have one for our class.  Belinda showed them a few of the wigits which got them all really keen.

I sent the children off to their tables with a large piece of paper and appointed a leader for the table to do the writing.  I asked them to write down all the things that they would like on their class blog page.  After about 10 minutes we came together again to make a list of what they wanted. 

During the lunchtime break Belinda and I set up the page and I later personalised it with a photo and a first introductory blog entry.  The children were really fascinated and have become keen to be the first one to have a story on the page. I took photos of them with their art, on Friday, and today made a slide show with   http://www.slide.com   If you want to have a look at our page in its early stages have a look at http://room2bds.edublogs.org/   With comments already starting, the children are becoming more and more excited about the blog

Tags: class blog

Somehow I have now learnt how to add things to our junior school page of the Botany downs school wikispace.  Not really having a clue what to do I went to the “How to” pages and watched the very informative video clips.  Then I got started, and to my joy it wasn’t as hard as I thought, and I soon had tables made with picture and hyperlinks through to websites for the children to use to practise maths, reading or topic items.  I think it doesn’t look too bad and the children in my class are really enjoying using the games.

Go to  http://botanydowns.wikispaces.com/Juniors   to see the game links I have made.

Tags: wikispace

I didn’t know whether I was silly to try but I thought WHY NOT???  We have been studying food as a school topic and I was looking for something to motivate the children.  We had been reading the story of The Twits by Roald Dahl  and the children were really taken by the wormy spaghetti.  We had also read The Meanies Pizza which had many revolting food elements in it.  I thought it would be fun to make movie advertisements for these food. 

As you can imagine the children were very excited about being able to make movies.  I spent a lot of time thinking out the steps that the children could follow so that they could have success at their venture. 

The children were grouped (in the groups I made) so that there was a range of abitities, and worked through the steps of brainstorming, making scripts, storyboarding and making props.  I was amazed at how well the children settled to their tasks, helping each other and discussing their progress.  I would suddenly hear a child say “We need a label on this tin,” and the group would go off to the computer, put on kidpix, make a label, print it off to the library colour printer then go to get it.  These things they had never done before!  They had fun (in a rather noisy way) practising their scripts, and pretending to film before we began the proper filming.

The filming went well, although some of the movies are a bit wobbly, but I guess that is a learning curve for them.  The “cameramen” took their jobs really seriously and the actors tried hard but at times need a bit of a prompt. 

I downloaded the movies onto “powerpoint” and the children worked in small groups with the teacher to help then make the title page and final ad page for their product.

The children loved their work and I feel gained a lot from the activity.  We sat and had a movie show amidst lots of laughter.

A few days ago we showed our work to the whole school and by the response of the rest of the school they too enjoyed the movies and it was a great success.

I feel I will use movie making again in the future as I enjoyed the experience nearly as much as the children. The set steps the children followed made the process easy for us all.

Tags: making movies

As part of the school’s professional development we are looking at different Inquiry learning models.  The group I was working in looked at the “Learning Journey, which was developed by Houghton Valley school  in Wellington. 

This model works on a 6 stage system, which is very similar to other models, but relates it to going on a journey with planning and steps along the way. For more information about these steps go to the website below.

http://www.tki.org.nz/r/integration/curriculum/resources/the_learning_journey/description_e.php

I feel that this is a very workable model which could be used throughout a school at all levels.

Tags: inquiry learning, Learning Journey

The PTA are at present raising funds to buy more Mimios and data projectors for our school. 

I have been lucky to have had a Mimio in my class for over a term, and am really enjoying using it with the children.  I was asked to demonstrate the Mimio at a PTA meeting as many of the PTA members had never seen one in operation. 

It was great that Lyndal agreed to come to the meeting as well so that we could show how a Mimio and data projector are used in both junior and senior classes.  The demonstration went really well and I think the PTA went away even more keen to continue their fund raising.

Tags: Mimio