#Snowlesson
Jan 6th
Today our school was closed due to the weather, so I decided better put my money where my mouth is and create an online lesson for the children whilst they were off. I decided to take the opportunity to try and make the lesson as ‘live’ as possible.
I know I started the wrong way round in looking at things (I should have started with what the children needed to learn rather than what tech shall I use) but come on, it’s not every day you get a snow day! I decided not to use the inbuilt chat in our learning platform, Studywiz, as I wanted to be able to try and use some of the same teaching strategies that I use on a day to day basis to see if they will transfer online. In particular, modelling the writing process through shared writing. I therefore needed a tool that would allow drawing and writing to be seen and used at the same time as audio and chat. For this purpose I decided to give Twiddla its first ever ‘work out’. Currently, you can register for educational use on the site and get a pro account for free, details at the bottom of this page.
So, I embedded a Twiddla meeting into a Studywiz discussion activity so that after all the fancy real time stuff they would be able to create their descriptive writing and post it onto the discussion. The lesson had to be very generic as I was opening it to anyone from year 1 to 6. I therefore planned to start by get them to share some descriptive language about an image then move on to discussing an existing text, shared write the start of a new one before they created their own.
So, how did it go? I’m going to keep it brief as you can click here for a replay of the lesson (starts at about 350) and there is an image of the #snowlesson twitter hash tag I used to keep track of my thoughts at the bottom of the page.
The collaboration they carried out in the chat was great, and i’m sure adding to the image and annotating at the same time was motivating for them. As for the shared writing, I had issues with audio (i.e. I couldn’t get it working!) so I could only use the chat. It was therefore pretty difficult to get the shared write going – I had to give up in the end as some other users could still see the image which was obscuring their view of the writing. However, if their had been no technical hitches then I think the shared write would have worked really really well with audio. It almost makes more sense than in a standard class setting. With all pupils able to comment and discuss in the chat the writing process that was illustrating, whilst it was occurring, it would certainly make it more overt. Finally, it is worth mentioning that this method also encourages Talk for Writing and AFL through deep questioning and peer reviews.
Here is a couple of amalgamated screen shots of the lesson mid flow – mixed with the first few replies in the discussion:
Here is a snapshot of the #snowlesson twitter hash tag. Alternatively, Click here for the latest.
Macbeth Micro Theme
Dec 19th
Following on from our Armada Tudor theme, for the 3 weeks preceding Christmas we switched our attention to Macbeth. Our Literacy focus was Year 4 Plays with lots of speaking & listening, performance and development of adverbs (through stage directions).
The main resource that was used to support the unit was the outstanding Classic Comics ‘quick text’ version which I originally discovered from Olliebray. This was extended for higher achieving pupils by using the plain text version. Quite simply the boys went WILD for it. Especially when we used a digital copy on the interactive whiteboard. I’m not even generalising – every single one of them were gagging for Shakespeare, what a great resource!
I chose Macbeth as our play in particular as, in addition to the gore and murder, it had the extremely strong female lead of Lady Macbeth. The girls (now I am generalising) enjoyed her manipulative characteristics. I obviously wasn’t pushing this ’skill’ however it certainly grounded the bravado of the boys when they realised that Lady Macbeth was the real brains behind the operation.
The main ICT involvement was at the start of the theme, using Voicethread (for the first time) to support Talk for Writing-y retellings of the story. This gave the children the context and depth of understanding to develop their own parallel versions of Macbeth as well as turning the comic into a play and create some 1st person stories (pushing the higher achievers by focusing on a different character to Macbeth).
A couple of days before the Christmas break we had a ‘Tudor Celebration Day’ with children dressed as Tudors or Macbeth characters. They performed some of their retellings and their versions of the play (helped by @chrisleach78 who kindly sent me an appropriate version for the children’s age which we then adapted for our use). We ended our day with a feast including blancmange and butter beer. Without the beer. Or butter.
I would love to have spent longer on the theme as it had a lot of potential and the children and parents had a lot of enthusiasm for it. I was a little apprehensive before tackling Shakespeare with eight year olds as I wasn’t sure if it would be accessible but the comic really made it work and brought the whole world to life.
CiTouch
Nov 14th
CiTouch – Curriculum Ideas for IPod Touch.
The intention of this project is to act as a central, collaborative resource of ideas for the use of the IPod Touch in the classroom. Feel free to embed the CiTouch spreadsheet or the contribute form anywhere you choose.
Click here to view the CiTouch spreadsheet of ideas
If you would like to contribute an idea, please complete the short form below or click here
Font Capture
Sep 19th
Font capture allows you to download a straightforwrd template which you fill in with someones handwriting. Then you simply scan in the template, upload it and it will automatically create a font for you.
I used this recently to create a font for each member of my class. It is being used as a motivator to improve handwriting as we will go through the same process at the end of the year, hopefully to show them their improvement in a new an innovative way!
The screenshot shows an example. One improvement I would make next time is to get them to use a black fine liner or biro rather than a whiteboard pen to go over their initial pencil marks to stop the ‘chunkiness’.
Edmodo
Sep 12th
Think twitter could be useful but concerned about safety/security? Then Edmodo is for you – it’s a free educational version of Twitter basically – as a teacher you can add student accounts without an email address. Possible uses – pupil peer support, general discussion and file sharing etc.
Sumopaint
Jul 2nd
Sumopaint is a free online paint package similar in style to Photoshop Elements or another high level painting and image manipulation package. It’s completely online. A great free tool for KS2 to use.
Prezi
Jun 19th
If you persist for about 30 minutes to an hour to learn the completely revolutionary way Prezi works, you will have discovered a fantastic way for children to create presentations in KS2 and also teachers if you can’t stand the sight of another powerpoint!
The way Prezi works is you have the choice of putting images, text and video on the ‘canvas’ – which can be as big or small as you want. You then link between these elements and Prezi will woosh around however big your canvas is from one to another. You can make it link elements in order or keep it open for people to explore. Where Prezi really works is when a pupil has to start thinking about how to make the animations as interesting as possible, coming up with creative methods very easily… e.g. making something tiny and then link it to something massive and watch the super slick speedy zoom.
Prezi allows for a lot of flexibility, enthusiasm and creativity. Any KS2 pupil could handle the interface. Well worth a look!
