Class Podcasts – check them out

Posted onSeptember 26, 2009 
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Posted onSeptember 15, 2009 
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Why I Teach…

Posted onAugust 21, 2009 
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I’ve been off school this week due to highly unfortunate accident involving running, mud, downhills and horizontal rain left me with a fairly smashed up wrist. Not fun, not pretty but c’est la vie!!

Anyway, I received letters from some of the kids in my class and this piece of poetic writing struck me with how much I mean to the kids and what they mean to me….

“I have a flower in my brain and you give it water to grow.
You are not here to give me water.
So you need to come back and give me the water to grow.

Love from Megan”

Brought tears to my eyes and as you can imagine more determined to get back to them as soon as possible. As a teacher I strive to have kids that are eager to learn and happy to be at school – this week has shown me I have achieved that.

Just something I tried…

Posted onAugust 9, 2009 
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Was directed to http://www.ideastoinspire.co.uk from Twitter and found out about www.Prezi.com. As I was about to put together a presentation for my class tomorrow I thought I would try this.
It’s very basic but fairly happy with the result – next time (feedforward) would be to have a less chaotic path, but then again I like chaos!!
Struggled to upload any images, kept telling me check my internet connection – I was online at the time!!! So will try away from school and any possible firewalls stopping me.

from prezi.com

World famous in NZ

Posted onAugust 6, 2009 
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Being a new school, with new technologies and a forward thinking vision, we have been under the spotlight. We appeared in the July issue of New Zealand’s “PC World” and that resulted in TVNZ (the state broadcaster) coming to do a piece about us for a current affairs show. There is the link to the piece HERE

It’s interesting. My phone began beeping the second the piece had aired and it was all positive, which is fantastic. The only slight disappointment I have is that focused quite a lot on the technology side of our school and not our vision for learning – not much I can do about that but still needed to be said. Would love feedback on the clip!!

Wordle Cloud For This Blog

Posted onOctober 9, 2008 
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New Spelling site discovery

Posted onAugust 11, 2008 
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I was introduced to this site by one of our senior teachers.

Spellingcity.com is a site where you put in your spelling list and it then goes on to play a range of games (hang mouse – really cute, crosswords, wordfinds etc) to aid in the learning of the words.  After learning your list you can then be tested (reads the words out in a sentence if you like).  A certificate and report card can then be printed out.

If you join the site you can save your lists and then come back to them later or add them into the current games….lots of fun and really engaging.

Have fun and a play!!

Some fun new sites

Posted onJuly 30, 2008 
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I really love Interface.  I eagerly wait for it to arrive and then walk myself to the far corner of the staffroom with a cup of tea and read it from cover to cover.  Every issue has been full of exciting new sites, lesson plans and something for me to either try, discover or learn about.

This issue was no different.  One of the sites that was mentioned was www.tutpup.com.  This is a site where kids can sign up – they choose a colour, an animal and a number (I ended up being pinkcat379) – and then play maths or spelling games against kids from across the globe.  Think mathletics but free and less formal – no lessons or results to print out, just a hall of fame for your class as well as how many games each child has won.

I had a go.  I had a class have a go.  I got addicted.  The kids got addicted.  45 mins later, we reluctantly had to part ways.  I have to admit that I snuck online a bit later in the day to continue to play (is there something slightly wrong in wanting to bet some kids on the other side of the globe??).   Anyway, we are going to continue to use this as a math tool and a spelling tool.  Great for a writing and maths tumble.

We are also looking at using mathletics next year.  Having seen how the kids reacted to tutpup.com bodes well for mathletics.  It would be interesting to see how many of the kids have gone home and gone onto tutpup.com and continued to play and challenge the world!!

Try it, I promise you will get addicted!!!

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Ulearn 08

Posted onJuly 27, 2008 
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So excited.  So terrified!!! I received an email this morning saying that I had been accepted as a presenter at Ulearn08.  I still can’t actually believe that they liked my submission.  Now it this means putting together an hour and half about online collaborative learning communities and the tools that we use to make these effective.  Still fizzing so will keep this short…will keep up dated with how it’s all going.

Robyn

Children, Writing and Engagement

Posted onMay 21, 2008 
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As part of my integrating ICT into literacy programmes throughout our school, I have been surveying kids beforehand to gauge who they feel that they write for (their audience).  The intention then is to get the classes motivated and engaged with an audience through a means such as blogging. 

Yesterday I received the most insightful answer as to why a 7 year old child doesn’t like writing.  Here is the answer “because it’s a waist[sic] of time if you do it at school because know one [sic] will read it.  I only like writing at home because I show people”.

If a 7 year old can verbalise this and feels this way about writing, what are we doing as teachers to recitfy the situation so that kids know that they aren’t writing just for the teacher.  I am hoping that there are kids out there that write because they are passionate, write because of a desire, write because they want to know not just because Mrs So and So said I had to write.

When I think back to when I was in the classroom, I have to admit that a lot of the writing I got my kids to do was because I said so.  There was very little “authentic” writing, and as a teacher I felt I had to teach towards portfolios and assessments.  I want to change this about my practise. 

Earlier this year, as part of a class’ Inquiry Based Learning, the kids needed to write to the council, write newsletters, write a script in order to convey a message or ask for assistance.  The quality of the writing that was produced was very high.  The class teacher was even “blown away” by the level of writing that the kids were producing.  When I asked the kids if and why they were enjoying the writing, the majority said it was because it was a real problem they were trying to solve so it was a real letter (etc) that was going to be read by someone.  

As teachers we need to provide a context that is authentic and has an audience in order for our kids to engage and attain in writing.  What do you think???

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