The+Gardens+2009

= Walk the Talk Day One = Today was the first day of my 'Walk the talk'. I am teaching in a Year 5/6 class for 2 weeks (first 4 days of each week). This is a Decile 10 school, with very capable children. It was a totally mac school until the recent purchase of some linux netbooks. The class of 28 children has 3 E-Macs and 1 teacher laptop. I have taken another iMac, a Windows computer and 4 Windows laptops and and a netbook. I was able to get them all onto the internet which is great as most of my planned programme is Internet based. The most exciting thing for the students was the LCD TV and the Wii. They all thought they were going to be jumping around playing tennis and bowls, but that rumour was quickly dispelled as I showed them how it can access the internet wirelessly and I had some maths games bookmarked. It was also noted that I had iPods, iTouch, and a PSP. Once I set up the computers and the mimio, the children started filtering in, the first child was a bit of a character and very interested and capable with all things digital. He has become my main man and by the end of the day, he was teaching others how to use the mimio, access the internet sites on the Wii, save files to memory sticks and any other troubleshooting problems that arose. His job is to now train another person, and then it will snowball from there.

I showed the children my planning and told them how they could access it from my computer. My 'main man's' job is to get it set up in the morning from now. I set the routines of 1. Before School 3 different people per day have to click on the Morning Routines, one to look at the Weather, one to pick a news headline and one to find out what happened this day in History. I showed them how to Screen Clip the item they want to share to a new page in the mimio Notebook. We needed to discuss how you need to read what you are going to screen clip so that you understand it enough to read and talk about with the class.Will be interesting tomorrow to see how the kids cope with it. 2. I showed them their spelling words which will be on the screen for them tomorrow, and set the routine of Bells ring - come in - start Handwriting card - move on to Spelling activity (on screen) - practice Keyboarding which will be on the Wii. More about this tomorrow!

This school streams their maths classes, so I lost most of the kids to other classrooms and had to train up a new lot. These are very able top stream students and seemed quite taken aback when I told them they were going to be teaching themselves, managing their own learning and booking me when they needed help! I gave them a pretest I had created on perimeter, area and volume. We then marked it and they had to write down on their Student Assessment Tracking sheet what areas of the test they needed to work on more. I showed them all the activities that were going to available in books, worksheets, computers, internet, Wii, PSP and iPod Touch. Tomorrow is when they have to come in, choose their activity or learning opportunities. I have told them I will be running a Perimeter Workshop which is their choice to attend...shall be interesting! More tomorrow!

The Literacy part of the day was Explanation Writing where we looked at the PowerPoint. media type="custom" key="24970790" align="left" This will be broken up and different parts concentrated on over the next few days. Children were very excited about the drafting and publishing possibilities. More about that later!

Ran out of time quickly for reading but was mostly about what the routines will be, and that students could choose from a wide range of Reading Options when they were not doing Guided Reading with me or related reading activity. More on this later.

The afternoon session was introducing them to the Class Wiki and especially the Wiki Promise which we made with Glogster.



We made a start on our Research Unit. The children have been looking at Communication so I wanted to see what they had learned previously so they worked on an Inspiration diagram 'Fact Recall'. Tomorrow we are going to look at how to create a research question and find keywords.


 * Walk the Talk Day Two **

The first half of the day was beset with internet problems but between the IT teacher and the technician at the school everything was running smoothly for the second half. It is difficult to run a programme that is heavily internet based when the internet is not working well, so that was a good lesson for me. If you want your students to work on computers during this time then have a back up plan in place.

In maths the children are working on perimeter, area and volume. Luckily in their Assessment sheets they have plenty of other activities they can be doing when the internet falls down, but I will need to put some more non-internet computer activities in a folder for them. I have plenty of numeracy ones that I have written for their level so I will have those on standby.

I ran the perimeter Workshop today, or I should say the kids did! They took over the mimio pen and worked through the notebook pages. They didn't really need me, once they knew how to work it out! Which left me able to wander around and see what the other students were up to.

The expectations I have for the children is for them to become self managing with their learning. They have to work out what they need to know and plan when they are going to complete their tasks.

Here is the example of the perimeter tasks and area tasks.

They have internet sites, some of which can be accessed with the Wii, PSP and iTouch. So far we have used the Wii with great success. The school has an LCD screen on wheels, which I have grabbed everyday, one of my students sets it up which takes about 2 minutes. He goes straight to the internet, and then to our favourites and then to the [|class Delicious site] that the classroom teacher Julia, had set up previously. I have organised it into some Curriculum areas and group folders with more to be added soon.

The students can easily access all of the websites their teacher and I want them to access. We have set up all the home pages on the computers to go to this site as well. It is also a great site to send children to for homework (which I did tonight!). Purchasing a Wii for around $400 is a cheap option for creating another access point for internet. Some schools have taken it further such as BBI in Auckland and are using the Wii as an interactive whiteboard. The Wii in the class is a popular option, children are using it for learning games and will be using it for searching the internet. Today Julia and I observed 'one character' multi tasking, he was listening to an audiobook on the ipod and playing a reading game on the Wii, but more on that later!

I soon realised that the children need a lot of help in 'becoming self managing'...particularly the boys! They go for the fun options first while most of the girls, were doing the activities that would improve their understandings of the concepts. There is going to have to be more direction for these students. They also needed to be reminded that they have to sign off their tasks as they do them. Am I expecting a lot? Yes, but they will get there with perserverance on my part.

Writing and Reading time was whirlwind, children are having to come to grips with the routines and also the self managing of what tasks to do. I will go into this in more depth in later posts.

In the afternoon we carried on with more Inspiration activities leading up to their Research topic. These students have grasped the technical skills of Inspiration incredibly quickly, you show them once and they are away. We just need to work on the content some more!


 * Walk the talk Day Three **

The children are settling into their routines well. The early morning task went well with the timetabled students screen clipping the news headline, weather and this day in history. It was great to see other children helping the students if they were not sure of what they were doing. We used the screen clippings later in the morning as the children who had collected them reported back to the class. We used the News Headline to highlight what keywords are, as this is a focus of our Research Unit.

Maths went well with more of the children starting to get the hang of organising themselves. There are still some children that need to be directed back to their assessment sheets. A few more internet problems happened but it all was going well by morning tea. Writing time went smoothly with students going straight to their tasks once we had the teaching point of the day, which was conjunctions. We looked at [|conjunction game] altogether. I used the mimio pad and that was passed around as students took turns at answering the questions 'with a little help from their friends'.

Everyday I like to show an example of excellent publishing, whether it is something that a child has done or a piece I have put together. Today I demonstrated how you can turn an Inspiration framework into a published piece of writing.

Here is the Explanation framework, this is a piece I use for modelling. I showed the class how you use the 'Transfer' button to transfer the writing into Word.

It appears with the Framework as a graphic and the text only also appears so that they can edit their work. It was really that 'just in time' learning as they learned how to highlight text, turn bullets off and use the decrease indent button to align the text to the right of the page.

Next I presented a finished exemplar reiterating my expectations of a high quality finish to their publishing. I was very pleased with some of the work that was done after this teaching session!.

The Reading programme went very well with all children on task and doing a variety of activities from adding to their Chapter Title Assignment, Listening to Audiobooks via iPod, cloze activities using the mimio...or just reading! Students decided on their Research Question today after a lot of drawing out of the previous knowledge they had attained, but more on that another day!

Day started off well with children completing their before school 'Morning Task', selecting News headlines, This day in History and weather. All 3 children reported back to the class using the mimio to screen clip and then the pens to highlight important points.
 * Walk the Talk Day Four **

We had an interesting afternoon working on our research skills. I took the class through the following slideshow and we tried out some of the activities. Interestingly enough, they had never heard of Christopher Columbus but they were able to discern from the information provided on the 2 different websites which was the real information and which was false! media type="custom" key="24971200"


 * Walk the talk Day Five **

I haven't seen the children since Thursday last week (ran a course for teachers on the Friday!) I was interested to see if they could remember the routines, I was pleasantly surprised, everything ran as if I hadn't been away. This reinforces what I always say to teachers... if you have strong routines, high expectations, and well organised management (and a quiet voice) all students will respond well. It doesn't matter if they are decile one or ten, they still respond in the same way. I did this same 'teaching experience' in a [|decile one class]a couple of years ago, and a couple of teachers that have visited so far have seen me 'in action' in both schools, using the same management techniques and children reacting in the same way.

Most of the students are using the mimio well and are quite capable of calibrating it. Surprisingly enough we do not have to calibrate that often (maybe 3 times a day) even though the projector sits on a table in the middle of the room. Students have become very adept at it.

Everyday for writing I demonstrate a different way of publishing. Today I modelled [|Comic Life] for Publishing. Children have used it before so several of them worked at it confidently. Some are working on [|Photo Story 3] (free for Windows), publishing on their wikipage or typing it up in Word or Pages with Borders, titles and their Superhero graphics. Some have published using the Publish button in [|Inspiration]. One child has made a Podcast 'with a little help from his friends', all of which we will add to his wikispace. I only have 3 more days left so I'm going to show them my 'Comic Slideshow' idea in PowerPoint and upload to Slideshare and how to create an iMovie in 3'easy' steps!

Update on Research topic: I think they get what I mean about creating Research questions and keywords. We will be searching for information tomorrow!


 * Walk the Talk Day Six **

Another great day with some excellent students. Maths is an interesting challenge as the students are streamed throughout the school so you have students coming from year 4 to 6. This is a particularly good bunch, very articulate and clued up! So I have a large group of students moving into the classroom every morning. They understand the routines well (even when I change them at the last minute). The whole idea of the maths organisation was for the students to be 'self managing', which they are but only with the things they really want to do, so I have had to inject a little more teacher direction. Now when they come in they have to do the 'Class Activity'. Once that is completed, students come up and use the mimio pen to write the answers, explaining as they go how they got that answer. The rest of the class has to agree with the answer, if not there is more discussion. Anybody who gets any of the answers wrong have to stay for the 'Workshop'. The students run the workshop that I have prepared. media type="custom" key="24971220"

I'm listening as I work with other students and jump in when I need to.

If I see that a child understands then I send them off to [|complete their other tasks].

In this example the child is using the 'Wii' to access games that have been saved to the 'Wii's' Favourites list.

There is the [|class Delicious pag][|e] that their classroom teacher has set up and I have added to it. The students know that they can go into this to access the websites I think that have the appropriate games and quizzes for them.

Some of the students have started on their [|Google Sketch up] and [|Lego Digital Design] assessment tasks where they have to design a technological classroom annotated with measurements showing perimeter, area and volume.

More on Research Topic I will post later on the research topic as there is so much to cover but here are some photos of students at the searching for information using keywords stage! This group were thrilled as they found the answer to their question as to 'Why the Internet was invented?' These two worked well together using the iPhone! Some kids like to work on their own, this one is using the iTouch and listening to music at the same time!

These two used the wireless internet feature on the Wii to find their information.


 * Walk the Talk Day Seven **
 * [[image:http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/Sdv8rt_9WYI/AAAAAAAABTQ/o2LgQAtFvOk/s320/volume.png width="460" height="373" align="left" link="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/Sdv8rt_9WYI/AAAAAAAABTQ/o2LgQAtFvOk/s1600-h/volume.png"]] || [[image:http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/Sdwosjn0jMI/AAAAAAAABTg/onPEenKL8RA/s320/Copy+of+006.JPG width="460" height="367" link="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fAJ1_x5EGq8/Sdwosjn0jMI/AAAAAAAABTg/onPEenKL8RA/s1600-h/Copy+of+006.JPG"]] ||

Volume session went well with most children doing well on the Class Activity. Some had to stay back for the Volume workshop and they worked well in a peer teaching session.

Teachers that were visiting were impressed with how 'on task' the children were, and how engaged in their learning.

Later I got the 'Year 4' expert in Digital Lego to demonstrate to other students (and teachers in the room) how to use some shortcuts and tricks to create models using the projector and laptop.

Everyday I show a new example of how to publish in an interesting way. Today was 'Journal Page' which is where you have several pictures covering one page and text is placed on top. I will have some student examples of those tomorrow. Here is a Comic Slideshow example created by one student and one created in Comic Life!