Carol Burnes on Poetry and Stories

What we can learn from poetry and story from EDtalks on Vimeo.
This brings back pleasant memories of the great times down at ICOT2013 at the beginning of the year. I went to Carol's breakout and was so impressed with her ability to be totally involved in the story or poem she was telling. Her voice and actions added so much to the message!

Reflection - end of term 1

I'm finding Twitter useful for finding people who have interesting websites!
I am following lots of people...
I have started a wikipage but have not found a use for it so it's just sitting in cyberspace.
I'm pleased with the learning my class have been doing on StudyLadder and also using microsoft word. They insert word art and clipart. They are starting to draw in Word and can change colours, line widths, rotate shapes and increase or decrease the size of the object without distorting the picture. They are very good at logging on and off and they know how to shut down correctly. The children like using the IWB for their learning. They love that we can quickly shut the curtains, turn off the lights and watch a quick youtube clip or National Geographic video to support their learning. They are all learning what the interwrite programme can do. My favourite action is using the duplicate tool and the children think it's magic that the shape or word keeps producing more and more and more!
I have recently taken a photo of each page in an old shared reader and downloaded them onto interwrite. I use the highlighter to highlight spoken words then the children identify the character who said it and create a speech bubble with the words in it. It worked for some kids who didn't understand speech. You can use it really effectively for expression, phrasing and intonation. I had highlighter lines going up at the end of questions etc to teach them how it should sound. They thought it was a lot of fun trying to follow my highlighted? highlit? directions! The list of ideas is endless...

Written Language Reflection

My first thought,when talking to the year 2 team leader was how similar our rubrics were!  However, they have more sheets to record the next steps for children, incl. barriers to learning. Pukete seem to be moving in a different direction to us with how much is necessary for reporting and they are moving away from checklists etc.
Interesting observations

• no portfolio, learning log or reporting to parents with anything other than the books that the children work in every day.  ( This is authentic children's learning as opposed to a "piece of writing" that is considered okay to be put in the learning log.)
• we found it difficult to make comparisons with how well we are going because we were grading against the standard.  We then need to look at the child's age for years 1,2 and 3!
• I really enjoyed the dialogue around how we are teaching, the presentation of children's work, the type of books we are using and use of technology for publishing written language.

( I am still really impressed with the TAP continuum and marking template for recount and poetic writing.  It is thorough and easy follow  http://www.tamaki.net.nz/index.php?family=6,36,411) Have a look and let me know what you think!!

Reflection Week 5

I am still having problems.
Tomorrow's another day!!

Reflection

Nobody has made comments or written on my wall!!??
I could be writing this in a book.