Teacher Professional Leave 2013 New teaching and learning opportunities 

On Tuesday we were informed that Fyans Park had been awarded the Network Neighbourhood  IT innovation award for 2013.

The Geelong Advertiser visited yesterday to interview us in regards to our award and how we use technology and 21st Century learning opportunities to engage our students in all curriculum areas.

As part of my TPL and participation in the TL21C course, I have expanded upon my knowledge of blogs and the benefits of them in teaching and learning. I have gained a lot of professional knowledge by reading blogs of educators all around the world and I was determined to start my own blog.

Together both Grade 1 classes have established a Grade 1 Class Blog.

We plan to use the blog to strengthen communication between home and school and to give the students an authentic avenue to publish their learning.

Already after a week of being up and running, the response from parents has been great and I am really looking forward to our blog journey and learning throughout the remainder of the year.

Term 3 saw 3/4N and 3/4O introduced to the CAFE and Daily 5 Literacy program. 

The grade 3/4 children have their own book box that has a selection of ‘good fit’ books in it that they can access easily during the Literacy block. As soon as the children had their book box organised they were eager to read and it was a struggle to get them to put them books down and go out to recess. I established a rule that they could have no more than 5 books in their book box and there was to be only one book in their box by a particular author- e.g. Only one Roald Dahl book in their book box at a time. This allows the students to be exposed to a variety of authors, genres and writing styles. 

The benefit of the CAFE and Daily 5 program is that it can be adapted to suit the needs of the individual teacher or class that is implementing it. The following are ways that 3/4N and 3/4O have implemented the program to suit our learning needs:

– Occurs only in the reading block hour

– Renamed it to CAFE and the Weekly 5 (During the week students have a checklist of the 5 activities and the required amount of time we would like them to complete each of the 5 activities, e.g. read to self occurs 5 times a week, word work is once a week etc. 

– There are three 15 minute sessions per day and a timer will go off in between each task to tell the students to move on to the next activity

-Children can select their own activity to work on depending on the tasks that need to be completed from their laminated check list. 

One week in to Term 4 and I feel that the program is working successful in my classroom and I am seeing improvement in the reading abilities of the children, this is evident in the results that I have gained from completing the PROBE reading test.

Lucinda 

I was exposed to and had to used QR codes at a conference I attended in Term 3 and thought it would be a great tool to use in the classroom. At our recent Grade 1/2 IBL Expo, a QR code was displayed around the room to allow parents to easily access a Today’s Meet backchannel (provided they had a QR reader).

In the classroom I am going to be using QR codes in Literacy to save time when students are trying to access specific websites on the ipad.

The website that I use and find very easy to generate QR codes is: QR Code Generator

IWBNet ‘Tenth National Interactive Teaching and Learning Conference’

Teachers can access You Tube clips that are appropriate for education by going to the following sites:

http://www.youtube.com/education

http://www.youtube.com/user/teachers

http://www.youtube.com/schools

Also the National Geographic website is a great resource in general but also fantastic for finding images to use as a stimulus for writing. Under the photography tab they display a photography a day. Refer to the link: http://www.nationalgeographic.com

IWBNet ‘Tenth National Interactive Teaching and Learning Conference’

At this session I was able to learn about:

‘Drop everything and write’ where children are provided with a stimuli (if they required inspiration) or could write about anything of their choice without the fear of the following (spelling, form conventions and genre) and simply write down their ideas. 

Ban “Weekend writing” from the weekly writing planner!

The importance of poetry and the benefit of allowing children to publish their writing online.

Refer to the following link for detailed information and resources to capture the hearts of reluctant writers.

http://teacherscollaborate.wordpress.com

Did you know that you can take a picture of something (building, object etc) and a list of related websites appear? I didn’t know that until today when attending the 10th Interactive Teaching and Learning Conference at St Hilda’s College on the Gold Coast 🙂

After visiting Meredith Primary School, we were inspired to use Stop Motion animation with our students. Here is an example that we have made to show our students before they complete a collaborative Lego Bonaza Challenge involving Grade 1 and Grade 3/4 students working together in mixed grade teams.

Stop Motion Example

Augmented reality is when an app can bring a still picture to life in a 3D way. Augmented Reality technology is combingin real world images, videos, sounds etc. with computer generated information and /or imagery.

Here are some Apps that Nathan Jones from Carey Grammar shared with us at the recent ICTEV: IT takes a village conference.

Nathan mentioned that the Augmented reality apps that he shared with us can be used as  a stimulus to create narratives, comics, exposition writing and instructional writing.

1. String 

Free App but need to print PDF sheets out from String website.

2. AR Flashcards- Animal alphabet

Free App. Print out alphabet flashcards

3. HeartCam

Free App. Print PDF from HeartCam website

4. Aurasma

An App that can integrate print media to digital content. Set students off to create triggers and embed videos or images that relate to that particular trigger.