Having a Y4/5/6 class is a great challenge as a teacher as I am constantly looking for open tasks that challenge all my students wherever they are.
Have been having a bit of a focus on maths lately and a few sites have been helpful but generally there is a HUGE lack of rich math tasks online. I found this really surprising! I am used to finding whatever I need/want online.
Anyway.... check these out.
http://nrich.maths.org
http://mathpickle.com/K-12/Videos.html
Am also adding
https://www.khanacademy.org - lots of how to videos that poppets understand better than me. Account easy to make, especially if you want to sign in with gmail or Facebook.
http://www.dragonboxapp.com
(I haven't used dragon box myself yet but highly recommended by some alternative educators I know. Will be setting up one of my year 6 boys with an account as he wants to learn algebra! The other year 6 boys is going to do Khan Academy.)
Advise all teachers to have a Khan account too! It's good for you!
Wednesday, 13 August 2014
Friday, 1 August 2014
Pepeha, Acknowledgement and Humbleness
I am humbled and valued today!
Our Maori language expert was in today.
He sat with me after his session to share with me that he was very impressed with the pronunciation, commitment and ability of our learners (including me!) in picking up this complex mihi he has provided us with!
A week or two ago he arrived to teach us a graphic way of remembering the components, only to find, we had already employed the exact strategy he wanted to show us - and to great success!
We have been utilising visual cues (from The Writing Book) in our writing and we had the idea to use them to remember each line of our mihi.
So we all have a coloured strip of paper with circled stick figure images that trigger us to remember the part we are up to.
We are ingenious apparently!
He also made a point of acknowledging my part in the improvements in attitude, behaviour and engagement of some of the more infamous members of our learning environment.
That is just the pep one needs every now and then!
#feelingblessed
Our Maori language expert was in today.
He sat with me after his session to share with me that he was very impressed with the pronunciation, commitment and ability of our learners (including me!) in picking up this complex mihi he has provided us with!
A week or two ago he arrived to teach us a graphic way of remembering the components, only to find, we had already employed the exact strategy he wanted to show us - and to great success!
We have been utilising visual cues (from The Writing Book) in our writing and we had the idea to use them to remember each line of our mihi.
So we all have a coloured strip of paper with circled stick figure images that trigger us to remember the part we are up to.
We are ingenious apparently!
He also made a point of acknowledging my part in the improvements in attitude, behaviour and engagement of some of the more infamous members of our learning environment.
That is just the pep one needs every now and then!
#feelingblessed
Thursday, 29 May 2014
Big Screens, Sharing and Padlet
Today our new 60 inch screen was up and running.
Mundane tasks took on a whole new meaning - teaching and learning moments all round. I didn't have to say one thing during roll call - they all knew who I was about to say because they could see!
The very first thing I noticed... lots of reading was happening (WOOT!).
We used the screen for a timer for maths rotations - worked better than I thought as the placement of the tv is not optimal for the whole room to see it.
The sharing has been rewarding - during music we used Garageband and people were saving to the student drive and getting down on time so they could share with Airplay. People showing how they did a certain thing, people asking "How'd you do that!". Perfection.
I was minimally concerned about their ability to jump onto the screen in any of our classrooms at anytime - we had a short talk about etiquette and it never became an issue - something to keep an eye on though. They also the ability to bump the current sharer off the big screen f they are on one of the silver laptops ( most of the laptops are older white ones which don't have the airplay function). I can manage this by being elective about who uses the silvers.
Later in the day I threw up a padlet with a topic related question - and they had a few mins to go away and throw an answer up then come back and share someone else's. They were mostly all occupied watching the big screen as more and more answers went up - most people put more than one contribution (YAH!).
Big disappointment at the end of the day (for me) - I had planned for them to use clipping magic.com to isolate themselves away from a background so they could then paste themselves onto an olden days image (to them write/blog about). I got it going and got them to have a turn with the group on the screen - then we went to save the image and suddenly my awesome free resource is a pay per use!
Grrrrrr - so looking for alternatives now (will mention this after I have checked it out...).
After school I popped around to the other classes for a "Big Screen Debrief" - attempted some problem solving and went back to my room to experiment with the interactive pen aspect of the tv... that is ongoing! I am interested in how we will introduce that to our younger poppets - drawing on school TVs and not TVs at home!
Maybe that is only something we think they will have trouble with.
So.. in short ---> reading up, engagement up, peer teaching up, teacher talk down, social yap down, complaining down.
WOOT!
P.S: More on using padlet in your rooms
Mundane tasks took on a whole new meaning - teaching and learning moments all round. I didn't have to say one thing during roll call - they all knew who I was about to say because they could see!
The very first thing I noticed... lots of reading was happening (WOOT!).
We used the screen for a timer for maths rotations - worked better than I thought as the placement of the tv is not optimal for the whole room to see it.
The sharing has been rewarding - during music we used Garageband and people were saving to the student drive and getting down on time so they could share with Airplay. People showing how they did a certain thing, people asking "How'd you do that!". Perfection.
I was minimally concerned about their ability to jump onto the screen in any of our classrooms at anytime - we had a short talk about etiquette and it never became an issue - something to keep an eye on though. They also the ability to bump the current sharer off the big screen f they are on one of the silver laptops ( most of the laptops are older white ones which don't have the airplay function). I can manage this by being elective about who uses the silvers.
Later in the day I threw up a padlet with a topic related question - and they had a few mins to go away and throw an answer up then come back and share someone else's. They were mostly all occupied watching the big screen as more and more answers went up - most people put more than one contribution (YAH!).
Big disappointment at the end of the day (for me) - I had planned for them to use clipping magic.com to isolate themselves away from a background so they could then paste themselves onto an olden days image (to them write/blog about). I got it going and got them to have a turn with the group on the screen - then we went to save the image and suddenly my awesome free resource is a pay per use!
Grrrrrr - so looking for alternatives now (will mention this after I have checked it out...).
After school I popped around to the other classes for a "Big Screen Debrief" - attempted some problem solving and went back to my room to experiment with the interactive pen aspect of the tv... that is ongoing! I am interested in how we will introduce that to our younger poppets - drawing on school TVs and not TVs at home!
Maybe that is only something we think they will have trouble with.
So.. in short ---> reading up, engagement up, peer teaching up, teacher talk down, social yap down, complaining down.
WOOT!
P.S: More on using padlet in your rooms
Monday, 26 May 2014
Saturday, 24 May 2014
Writing Prompts...
Found this on a Pintrest reconnaissance mission for useful teaching tidbits this evening (yes, it is Saturday, hmm!).
I shall print it up big and in colour and we shall do a large amount of language scaffolding about it and see what happens!
P.S. I made the photo a link to the site I got it from...this is also another one called IF that I will also use.
PPS: There will be an edit here when I have!
Tuesday, 20 May 2014
Math PD #2
Second part of Math PD today (it's amazing what exhausted teachers can do after the poppets go home!).
They really pack it into these courses but without fail you come away wanting a new piece of maths equipment that you now know how to use in a deeper way - this time - laminated 40 by 30 arrays.
We even did a reading - well a page of a reading.
Jenny Young-Loveridge and Judith Mills (Chapter 3) Multiplicative Thinking: Representing Multidigit Multiplication problems using arrays
Main thing from this page was that building student's conceptual understanding takes time and effort and that teaching an algorithm as a method for student's to fall back on is folly.
There is now research evidence to show that an emphasis on procedural knowledge and rules undermines conceptual understanding ( and hence the deeper application of knowledge to solve increasingly complex problems). My interpretation is that this also would apply to the rote learning of tables.
We again filled out the sheet naming the numeracy stages and their corresponding levels and definitions of content at each. This is ALWAYS enlightening and as much as I think I know I still struggle (although I did notice much improvement!). Many people still shocked to note that stages 1 - 4 are all level one.
Problem of the night
Annie has 9 boxes of apples. Each box holds 59 apples. How many apples are there altogether?
MY first strategy was multistage...
9 X 59 = 9 x 60 - 9
((60 x 10) - 60) - 9
600 - 60 - 9
540 - 9 = 531
By the end of the session I solved this with a drawn array...much more efficiently!
Here is my summing up to course doodle...
Friday, 16 May 2014
Sign Language Week (in review)
Our Sign Language guru was incredible and for a number of the poppets - 'inspiring'!
They were so attentive and responsive.
Was surprised to see SH visibly out of her comfort zone - she got used it to with about ten mins to go though :)
Cathy Gutshlag was our guru's name. She rocked!
It was in insight to see how much they participated and learnt in one hour long session.
They want her to come back!
Nile Class has a habit of making me proud when it really counts. They were polite and engaged.
More of these interactions please!
We learnt to introduce ourselves with a sign for my and name and then fingerspelling our names.
We learnt some animals and some colours and the importance of faces in sign - the sign for like and don't like are the same but the facial expression makes the difference. They all seemed to crisp this concept with little effort.
I have been incorporating sign into the week whenever I can - even if it meant introducing myself as a smelly fish!
(Drew taught us a new song about jellyfish which, quite co-incidentally) involved signs and exaggerated body movements!
Loved the silent hands sign language applause for Jason at assembly when he got a Special People's Award!
They were so attentive and responsive.
Was surprised to see SH visibly out of her comfort zone - she got used it to with about ten mins to go though :)
Cathy Gutshlag was our guru's name. She rocked!
It was in insight to see how much they participated and learnt in one hour long session.
They want her to come back!
Nile Class has a habit of making me proud when it really counts. They were polite and engaged.
More of these interactions please!
We learnt to introduce ourselves with a sign for my and name and then fingerspelling our names.
We learnt some animals and some colours and the importance of faces in sign - the sign for like and don't like are the same but the facial expression makes the difference. They all seemed to crisp this concept with little effort.
I have been incorporating sign into the week whenever I can - even if it meant introducing myself as a smelly fish!
(Drew taught us a new song about jellyfish which, quite co-incidentally) involved signs and exaggerated body movements!
Loved the silent hands sign language applause for Jason at assembly when he got a Special People's Award!
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