Of Olympics and Learning

Last week the children started learning about the Olympics. One forgets that last time the Olympics were on many of them were only four years old so there isn't much that they remember about that event. The fact that it took place in Beijing in a very different time zone meant that they didn't get to see much of it on TV. It's a whole new world for them. I have set up a project wiki linked to the Global Classroom. It's been exciting to see how many people have visited our site. The grade 3's are beginning to discover what the Games is all about and they've enjoyed watching videos on gymnastics so far. We've also had to gain a rudimentary understanding of time zones and international travel. I'm sure that once the Olympic Games happen they will be excited to watch the events and be quite knowledgeable about such a global event.

Word Clouds for Spelling Practice

The children are preparing for a spelling bee competition next month. The grade 3's have thirty words to learn. This week they used a new way to practice their spellings with ABCya word clouds. Here is a slide show of 3P's work. Please note the programme drops all the capital letters - it's not the children's fault.

Spelling bee word clouds

View more presentations from Brenda Hallowes.

Unfortunately some of the classes didn't get to do the word clouds because of all the public holidays. Perhaps we can try and catch up next week. Enjoy!

Global Project

Today one of our Grade 3 classes is participating in the Global Lunch Table project. This involves joining the wiki and uploading a presentation which shows what children in our school typically bring for lunch. We took some photos and used Microsoft Photo Story to build a slide show. Here is our example.

Giving our children opportunities to produce items for a global audience is a great 21st Century activity.