Today was our cluster share afternoon of what we were going to do this year. As always it is nervewracking to stand infront of many to share but it sort of gets easier. It is hard to explain as I know that is contradictory. Somehow you cope.
I enjoyed the explanation from Shelley Park School of their school goals for the year. It was clear and to the point and the viewing onscreen was generally easy to see.
Elizabeth, my AP gave a comprehension recount of her breakouts from Learning@School.It is good to see to see others sharing.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Integration of ICT
On Monday, Marie and I worked on our plan for integraing ICT in our classroom programmes so we can present at Ulearn with Belinda. Part of this will include some action research with our reluctant writer students who will be identified from our writing sample. Our general focus for integration will be literacy. We talked about maths but it can be difficult to get students from being consumers to creators. I found I liked this phrase, and I guess it is at the stage of my learning that I actually now understand what this means. Over this past two years, my students have mostly been consuming, ie accessing learning websites like digistore, NZ maths, WickED etc, with the occasional creating during inquiry topics.
I have started with a conscious effort to use my mimio as my whiteboard as the modelling book for whole class, one of my reading groups made a poster to save the environment from a guided reading story, we made group posters of our class treaty in publisher, and more recently, making postcards to publish our postcard from the planets stories from our Where are we in Space? inquiry topic. Next term, I need to ensure in my weekly plans that I have students creating during guided reading, and having my reluctant writers working on the 3 computers in class, taking turns at a variety of ways of writing to inspire them.
This will take time and effort but I think quite exciting to move me and mys students to a different level with ICT in classroom.
I have started with a conscious effort to use my mimio as my whiteboard as the modelling book for whole class, one of my reading groups made a poster to save the environment from a guided reading story, we made group posters of our class treaty in publisher, and more recently, making postcards to publish our postcard from the planets stories from our Where are we in Space? inquiry topic. Next term, I need to ensure in my weekly plans that I have students creating during guided reading, and having my reluctant writers working on the 3 computers in class, taking turns at a variety of ways of writing to inspire them.
This will take time and effort but I think quite exciting to move me and mys students to a different level with ICT in classroom.
Blinging My Class Blog
Recently I have been working on setting up my class blog by myself, and I have managed. I'm not much of a bling person in anything that I do, so to decide to do that is quite out of my comfort zone. I have recognised that my students do enjoy bling. It took me a while to find a wallpaper that I thought suited the age range of of 9-11 with my composite class. I had to refine search engines, and I looked at blogs like "Bling your blog" and the "cutest blog on the block"which I had used before. Finding widgets was also interesting.
These websites I found useful:
infoserv.media.com
widgia.com
Anyway, room21bds2010.blogspot.com is my class blog. I now need to get parents commenting so that it is purposeful for my students.
These websites I found useful:
infoserv.media.com
widgia.com
Anyway, room21bds2010.blogspot.com is my class blog. I now need to get parents commenting so that it is purposeful for my students.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Lead Teacher Day 9 March 2010
Today has been a good day. We heard from those who had been at Learning@School. This was followed by looking at Action Research - research to improve our teaching. Belinda would like each school to have an Action Research project at each school in the cluster. We tried to come up with ideas so that we could do this. Belinda had purchased for each school Action Research a developmental approach by Carol Cardno. On a quick glance this seems very readable. As I want to present at Ulearn I tried hard to add an action research portion to what I want to do but that was extremely hard. I am not sure if it is possible at this stage, so WATCH THIS SPACE.
I had a good look at the website of an Action Research project http://helenrennie-younger.wikispaces.com/elearning+fellowship. It was particularly great to see her work with junior students on inquiry and oral language. There is still some reluctance at my school expecially with inquiry and ICT in general, and to be able to show this website at a staff meeting will be fantastic - ie seeing what they can do. Some of the ideas will fit nicely with our inquiry topic we are just starting on "Where are we in Space?" I also thought I might be able to adapt them for my Year 5/6 class to use also so I can do some PD with the staff on the thinkers keys as that came up at the last staff meeting to fit in with our space inquiry.
I had a good look at the website of an Action Research project http://helenrennie-younger.wikispaces.com/elearning+fellowship. It was particularly great to see her work with junior students on inquiry and oral language. There is still some reluctance at my school expecially with inquiry and ICT in general, and to be able to show this website at a staff meeting will be fantastic - ie seeing what they can do. Some of the ideas will fit nicely with our inquiry topic we are just starting on "Where are we in Space?" I also thought I might be able to adapt them for my Year 5/6 class to use also so I can do some PD with the staff on the thinkers keys as that came up at the last staff meeting to fit in with our space inquiry.
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