blog backgrounds/templates

Yeah!!!! I have finally figured out how to change my class blog template through HTML in template design.  Sometimes I am a very slow learner.  Maybe it is due to school holidays and I can think without that feeling of what must I do next in our day of a teacher's work is never done.
I have found a spaceship background, changed the font colours and font itself.  Would have changed the coloum widths but it wouldn't let me.
I was on a website called snazzyspace.  It had some cool backgrounds but lots of pop ups and adds which are not suitable to show kids if they were to help choose. I found the background I used at http://jellypages.com/.  It has ads which need to be checked but does not seem to have  pop ups.  I have searched several times for backgrounds and got very frustrated with pretty pretty scrapbooking backgrounds, too adult, girly, and junior school backgrounds.  It is very difficult to find backgrounds that appeal to 10 and 11 year olds.  I did find Homer Simpson in the snazzyspace with large donuts but it was a 2 column template. There was also a flashing robot one but hundreds of robots flashing was distracting from the posts.  Humm...... purpose of blog.

Notice Elmo and Big Bird and the dinosaurs.  My students would probably like the Futurama Robot. Anyway, you get my point???

SOLO Taxonomy PD on planning an Inquiry Unit

Yesterday we had an excellent day at work on planning our next inquiry unit on Leisure and Labour and how it contributes to our society using Solo Taxonomy and constructive alignment. Constructive alignment comes from John Briggs who devised Solo Taxonomy, and is about divising direct teaching and learning activities that directly address the learning outcomes.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_alignmentWikipedia Also I like the concept of how the teacher has to provide a specified goal for the learner.  
Therefore, our planning has direct acts of teaching which relate back to the outcomes  we decided we wanted for our students, along with using the Solo maps, our students learn to use Solo Taxonomy as a way of supporting how to inquire using our inquiry model.
We still have some work to do to finalise the plan.  I find it exciting that we have rigor in our planning and how using Solo Taxonomy to help us plan gives us high expectations for the learning outcomes for our students. 

Solo Taxomony - pd at staff meeting

Looking again for a clip to show at staff meeting.
I like this one, as it demonstrates the learning of teachers at different levels of experience with learning to use Solo Taxonomy. I hope that some of my colleagues will feel they have similar experiences.

Smile Box

One of the staff found this website. It is really cool for slide shows to show off your photos. http://www.smilebox.com/school-slideshows.html



Fun With Maths

On Friday I decided to use a you tube clip for maths maintenance with my streamd maths class. My students loved it, when I got my usual students back, the ones who stay with me for maths wanted to share. We were sharing when our buddy readers arrived and we shared with them also. I got them to stand up in their school houses and asked Private Mike etc to give the answer. They loved it.


I should have gone shopping for a similiar hat at the weekend. I was thinking we could remake the clip with my students.

Solo Taxonomy

Here is another video for our PD and sharing session next week. I thought I would think ahead and embed the videos I wanted in my blog to find them more easily.
I really like how this teacher talks about how Solo Taxonomy has helped her be clearer as a teacher and when she talks about being a friend this fits in with our beginning of the year activities. I also hope it inspires my colleagues with our journey that we have begun with SOLO Taxonomy.

Engage Me

I was looking for a clip to start a pd session at school.  I found this on You Tube.  I think it is great as something to make teachers think.