Classroom+9

=Room 12, Raumati Beach School, Kapiti Coast= Year 5 students - 30 of them! Teacher: Jo Fothergill

Term 3
I've been absent from this wiki but not from the classroom! I've been a little busy with my eFellowship work as well as attending an educamp in Dunedin & report writing along with my NZEI work! For my eFellowship work I've been investigating how ICTs can help writers find their voice - this week I got to interview children from three different classes about their experiences with ICTs - lots of fun. I've gained 3 extra computers that were sitting being unused - this has been very helpful for our online work.

Silent Reading Time
A chance conversation with someone in Dunedin has led me to change my SSR time slightly - each session has a group of 5 rotated on to computers reading blog posts and commenting on them - this has given my students a wider exposure to blogs from all around NZ.

Google Docs
We are now using GDocs as an online draft writing book - this enables me and peer editors to be able to read and comment on work & for the owner to fix and then post to their blog. Most of the class much prefer to use GDocs to their draft writing books. They use GDraw for their SODA work and GPresentations for showing off their work.

I'm an absolute fan of the presentation tool - it allows us to embed the start of the presentation into the class wiki and then it updates as things are added to it - here are some of our mini-posters we've been working on.

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Term 4 will see us working together with our NE buddy class and a visiting teacher for a 2-day project - something we're really excited about.

Term 2
I've had a great start to the term. The kids are all fired up and keen to be at school. They have a literacy/numeracy independent tasks contract to work on during the week (Monday-Thursday) with time available on Friday to finish if needed. This last week, for the first time, everyone who was at school for the week has managed to finish, edit and blog their writing. I think they're learning time management!!
 * Weeks 1 & 2**

We've been doing lots of ERO preparation so I'll be a little quiet for the next couple of weeks. I'm not expecting an in depth visit to my classroom but you never know. After ERO has been and gone I've got a treat arriving - our tech guy is the local dealer for softxpand systems and wants me to trial the latest version for windows 7 - so that will mean another 3-4 computers (brand new) for a term or two.

Term 2 preparation
I've been doing the usual teacher thing and working on my classroom getting things set up for Term 2. I took some photos today (Tues 26th) and put them into a slide show.

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Term 1 round up
I had a great visit with Sharon at the end of Week 10 - it was good to meet up with her and her friend and to toss lots of ideas around. I got a fresh appreciation of all that I **DO** have and the support and encouragement as well. We had parent interviews in Week 10 as well and I saw 85% of my parents - maybe because of how we work in our class. Had lots of interesting conversations about independent learning and taking risks. All positive.


 * Week 11** was totally fantastic. I set up an independent research project for the week - it was adapted from one I found online several years ago (@ Primary Resources) - instead of killing trees the kids did most of the work in their topic books except for their own made up island (which I left as a 3-pages workbook so we can put them up on display). I also got my early finishers to create a poster about one of the islands. This was a totally brilliant idea - instead of the usual trudgery of week 11 I had kids excited to be at school and excited about their work - I could almost use the word **joyous** at the work they were doing. The grins and excitement as they shared discoveries with each other was fantastic to watch. And all I did was direct! I felt a bit like the conductor of an orchestra.

//**Plans for next term** include turning Friday into Project Day (as well as Performing Arts day) where the kids can choose their own research project (I've given them total free reign on this from cooking, knitting, cross-stitch, historical, space, gardening, to whatever - you name it they're allowed to propose it and I'll work with them to adapt as needed. One boy has asked if he can do his on the 'History of NZ Warfare' - this from an under-performing student!) and work on it over the term.//

Skype & Week 9
I really enjoyed the skype conference call. I'd been feeling really frustrated that some kids in the class really weren't settling down to do rotation tasks and someone's idea (Maureen? Cheryl?) about working with a small group was brilliant. Last week I gave a special mission to 4 students (one dropped out by day 3) to plan their own tasks - the 3 who stuck at it were fantastic. I gave them some quite difficult challenges (their maths took them the week to figure out) but they really shone.

I was away sick yesterday and had a CRT day today so have done a modified plan for the rest of the week - and possible extending into next week. I'm having 3 20-minute rotation activities during literacy time and going to get everyone to plan what they do & when they do. I'll do this till the end of the term and see how it all goes.

My 3 stars shone again yesterday when they went down to a Year 1/2 classroom to work with kids teaching them how to use the kidblog site. They've been booked for the next two mondays as well.

Week 5
A much better week - we used voicethread as part of our literacy rotation - very pleased everyone got through and most were quite at ease with the programme. This coming week will have 3 digital tasks as part of literacy (BBC typing, Spelling City, Blogging) which means careful allocation of equipment - however I bought an iPad last week so a blogger will be able to use it for that task.

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I've identified what computer can do what task (2 linux computers don't run flash so no voicethread or spelling city on them) and given them all a name (HP1, HP2, Spacey (linux laptop that belonged to my daughter), iBook, MacBook, iPad, D1, D2, D3 (stand alone desktops) & xtenda 1-4) and put up notes above them stating name, login, and 'things they can do'. Hopefully that will be helpful for my kids.

Week 4
What a week! A number of teachers at school (myself included) with missing/unaccounted for relatives - it makes it hard going in and keeping things 'normal'. I've had some major behaviour problems to deal with this week which is very frustrating and time consuming.

Planning Revamped!
I'm turning things around this week. On my plan I have made topic the main focus for the first part of the day. Our topic studies will incorporate a lot of writing and reading so will schedule "literacy" differently using a **S**elf **G**uided **A**ctivity time. I've also included a read/comment on blog task this week too.

Week 3
My planning for this week got totally screwed up because of testing and swimming trials and CRT. I did introduce backbone activities on Monday and they worked well - but I wanted them to get 3 days of doing them this week. I'll start again next Monday (isn't this typical of teaching?). Actually I'm turning my planning on it's head so watch this space.

Planning
My planning is often on one BIG google doc that I share by publishing as a web page (Week 2, Term 1) - I also embed on a page in my personal wiki so my team leader can have easy access to the plan. This is done in a google doc - I set up a term template with duties etc on it then create enough copies for the term. I'm still doing our required testing & whole class teaching although I have introduced a literacy backbone in this week's planning.

Week 2
My reflection for this week on my planning doc: //It seems to be taking a long time to get the kids used to the routines - even with careful monitoring some kids aren't coping well. I haven't introduced the computers yet - will aim for introducing three things next week - individual blogs, dance mat typing and basic fact activities.//

These kids are very different to last years lot - mainly in management terms - last year I had kids blogging on the first day - this year it will be Week 3.

My tent (quiet space) is a hit - it's out in the learning street and kids from other classes walk by talking about it quite enviously - interestingly one of our other teachers (who is in my beautiful spacious classroom from last year) has a decorated bath in her classroom for kids to read in - also very popular and talked about.

Next week I'm going to have 'loose' activity groups for the four days I'm in the classroom and rotate around literacy and numeracy activities - I need to see how they work together and what specific skills I need to explicitly teach them regarding self-management and group work.

Week 1
Of course I had to start the year without my flash new Promethean IWB - am somewhat under-impressed by the company supposed to install it especially as it now seems that I will have to do something on Friday morning out of the classroom while it's being installed.


 * Kids have an independent work contract to complete by Friday afternoon - this will give me a base to work from regarding work habits; I watched one young chap totally ignore 3 others at his table and complete 1/3 of his contract while they barely started theirs - well done to him.
 * I think most of my kids will be totally comfortable with the way the classroom is run by the end of the term - my one totally new kid was very happy at the end of the day which is a good sign.

The IWB was installed this morning (Friday) and I was using it within 30 mins of installation being completed. I took some photos during installation - put them onto a page and after a bit of discussion the kids wrote about it.

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About Me
I've been wandering down the eLearning path for the last couple of years. What I want to achieve this year is to become more coherent in what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

Equipment
Officially I have 4 xpanda box computers (one box & 4 screens). To that I've mixed in 3 old (ex windows 98) machines that I rescued from being dumped, 2 running XP and 1 running Linux; 1 very old laptop that belonged to my daughter running linux; 2 old HP laptops running XP that were donated to me last year by a parent; and 2 ex-tela laptops that I bought myself - my iBook and my Macbook. I'm **supposed** to be getting a Promethean board - it's still in it's box in the office and I hope it will be installed before the kids arrive on Wednesday! I also have my own camera, self-contained microphone and small video camera (like a flip) that I use and let my kids use in the classroom.

media type="custom" key="8203610" This is how I may start the year out. I have 18 desks & 6 with computers on them; I have 31 students - they won't have an assigned desk and won't all work at a computer or desk. The two coffee tables give kids a chance to work around them & I have 9 square metre boards that they can use while sitting on cushions/floor/bean bags to work.

Links
Class wiki Literacy wiki Maths wiki Class Blog

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