Curriculum Project Workshop

Thanks to Christina Ward, National Facilitator for the Curriculum Project who shared with us the developments arising out of the recent Curriculum Stocktake. As a group we discussed the Curriculum journey so far, our thoughts on key competencies and values. The revised curriculum is in draft form and we had the opportunity to feed in our ideas - choice of and meaning behind the language used in the documents was a factor for discussion. Christina describes the curriculum as being 'co-constructed' so have your chance to join in this co-construction by visiting CP online and participating in discussion and feedback. Christina's presentation can be downloaded from Interact.

St Josephs

Visited the Art Gallery with Room 4 and took lots of pictures. You can see these here. Room 4 emailed Toko School to talk about their art work. These pictures could be a useful language starter for students who had visited the gallery. Classes could email other schools and give them feedback on their art work :-) Michael’s reading groups are hard at work on their All Blacks Legends project for the Lions Collaborative unit. Some help needed here with things like referencing websites and extracting relevant key points. Helped them also do the whizzy presentation things like animations and transitions – hopefully to be used in moderation. The Seniors are preparing their debate “Computers in Society” so have been able to point them in the direction of some research – great to get email from them as they work through some of the issues. Kids are more than welcome to email me with their questions – I love hearing from them. Brought the Junior reading resource to St Josephs junior classrooms, again starting with a modelled session and then made the resource available on the classroom computers. Junior teachers have received their laptops here – no mucking around with Carol on the job!!! Had a short laptop intro session with them after school. For those just starting out we could provide more support with short focused skills sessions on a regular basis. Will organise to meet this group again next term once they have had time to have a little play with their new toys and see what ‘training’ they need. Maybe more of our junior teachers in the cluster will have their laptops by then??

Bard Wired Baby!

Congratulations Kim & Miles on the safe arrival of baby Gus!

Stratford Primary

Come on Kim – one week over and we’re counting the days!...
Have three days to spend with the Junior Syndicate this week. The focus is Reading with a smattering of Cybersafety along the way. There are 5 Junior classes at SPS now – big jump from the 3 classes last year. I am doing some modelled teaching sessions in all the classes. Guided reading using a variety of online learning resources using my laptop and the big screen TV. I know how difficult it is for teachers to organise this. Dragging out the huge big screen TV, finding a multiboard, a power point in the right place (maybe an extension cord), running a network extension cord across the class so you get internet access and then trying to tune in the TV to your laptop. AAAaaaahhhh!!!! No wonder it just doesn’t happen – what a mission. It would be good to see AV units with network access (maybe an interactive whiteboard) permanently set up and ready to go in all classrooms – then with some PD and practise things could really start moving along. Anything to make it easier for teachers would definitely help ICT integration in the classroom. Each session I followed the Junior Cybersafety learning resource (developed at EPS and available on Interact) We talked about the number one safety rule for very little kids – never go alone into Cyberspace, always go with an adult. We browsed a number of sites (using www.littleclickers.com as a starting point) then particularly looked at reading sites. I am putting together a web page resource that teachers can use so kids can click straight to these sites and other digital reading resources straight from the school intranet or classroom desktop. Will post this to Interact when its tried & tested.

Claymation @ Makahu

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58377953@N00/19570729/
Originally uploaded by rache65.

Great to come into a classroom and sit by a roaring fire. We sat their and rolled and softened plasticine for the days big activity – Claymation. Lots of fun – Eden, Shonid & I worked with small groups on a practise run before the whole school moves on to making an epic Pirates Claymation. Each group came up with a very simple story line, found some props (plastic farm animals are good), made very simple sets with coloured paper and moulded and modelled plasticine objects. So important to use a tripod to keep the camera still as you take heaps of shots with small movements between each shot. We used MovieMaker 2 to put it all together. (Go into Advanced Options to set the frame rate to the minimum possible as MovieMaker defaults to 5 seconds a frame which is way too slow). Check out Eden’s kids’ work Snake Eyes on the kids work section of Interact. It does take a bit of time but it’s a great group activity as there is something for everyone in the group to do & noone sits back and watches. Yet another shiny new Principals’ Laptop @ Makahu. Eden is onto it & has already got Digital Learning Objects out & being used in the classroom with his extension reading kids. Thanks Makahu kids for a fun day.

Toko School

Toko kids taught me how to play dice games this morning. Watched some of them trialling some Maths drill software – can’t remember the name of it. (Richard?) Quite expensive at around $500 for a site licence. Some of it seemed quite easy for the kids, though maybe with the full licence there are more levels of challenge? Quite straight forward problems similar as those in a text book but instant marking & recording of kids progress. Feedback from kids was it was way better than book work – I guess that’s a positive. If you are looking at choosing software best to compare a range before investing in any one title. Don’t overlook the activities available free of charge on the Internet – just a matter of finding appropriate ones. And of course if you’re a creative Flasher with a bit of time – you can make them yourself! :-) Kids were quite proud to show off their Flash movies – lots of planes, trucks, cars all crashing, shooting & action… They have created their own lunchtime Flash club – cool! Saw the photos & video from Prep day – worked with some of Cathy’s girls. (Great to work with girls – they are so often marginalised when it comes to doing ‘computer stuff’) Some of them edited the video of the Prep day concert and some of them put together the still photos into PhotoStory. They plan to present it to the school at next weeks assembly. Rooms 3 & 5 are gearing up for the ‘Lions Game’ lots of activity here – emails to Johnny & classroom displays going up. Good to see.

Huiakama

Huiakama
Originally uploaded by rache65.

Kids at Huiakama are right into Ripper Rugby – it is happening all over the Eastern Schools – great to see! We checked out the Lions Game here today as well and the kids registered to join in. Zoe showed us her dance moves as she goes out with 80 other Taranaki girls in lead up to the real Lions Game on Wednesday night. Go Zoe!!
Clare got to show off her shiny new laptop and we registered for ULearn breakouts and ordered the Digital Learning Objects CD from TKI. The girls learnt how to use PhotoStory based on the idea of a big book the junior school is making told the story of the Huiakama trampoline. PhotoStory is pretty cool & soooo easy to use. You can download it from the Microsoft site, though you also need Media Player 10 to go with it. Check out their work on the new Kids Work folder on Interact.