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.

New challenges

I’ve had a good start to the year in the computer lab. It’s also been exciting as I have been creating a new curriculum for the integration of computers in our school. The grade threes have been working on their project on bullying, grade twos are doing activities on All about Me, computer hardware and Our School.


This year the grade ones seem to be even less sophisticated compared to previous years. The few that have access to computers at home stand out and are very competent but the majority of the children are just learning to use a mouse for the first time. I'm sure that by the end of this term they will be doing well as if they were born with a mouse in their hands.
From now until the end of the term I will not be in the computer lab. I am swopping classes with a colleague who has health issues. I will be taking a grade three class until a new teacher can be appointed for next term. My colleague will be supervising learners in the computer lab and we will be using educational games for this period. There are some great sites like starfall.com and multiplication.com which the children love. We now have a faster, uncapped internet connection which allows us to do this.
I am hoping to get my grade three class blogging. If I do I’ll post a link from this blog. Watch this space….

Getting along.

This is a great little video to use as a discussion starter. I hope to use it with my classes next year.

Bridge from Ting on Vimeo.

It could be used to discuss the choices we make in our behaviour. Brute force versus co-operation. During the first term we will be doing a project on bullying and I'm thinking of using this video as a discussion starter.

Here is another little fun activity from Larry Ferlazzo's blog. If you haven't followed Larry on Twitter or read his blog do it today. Thank you Larry for all your inspiring links.

So what is happening in our child-free school?

We seem to have been at school without the learners forever - although it's only been one week. We all agree on one thing - we couldn't have accomplished the volume of preparation without this week. The teachers have typed up schedules and lessons and edited and re-typed.... We're all becoming very comfortable with using computers for admin tasks.

I have been interested to watch groups of teachers getting together to collaborate on their planning, share ideas and tasks, make a big noise while they do it and obviously have fun. It's a bit like a reflection of the way learners interact when working together in groups. It's stimulating, busy and sometimes deafening. At the same time a lot is being achieved and we are getting to grips with our new curriculum and how to implement it.

I don't have a "partner" teacher and do all my own preparation in consultation with the teachers and the topics they are covering in the class. Next year I will be writing my own curriculum as I go along as we can no longer afford to use a "canned" curriculum. More and more parents are not paying school fees and this is putting a strain on the school budget for the extras such as computers and extra equipment. I am enjoying the process of making up my lessons so far but envy the grade teachers who work in groups and produce a collaborative effort. Teamwork is a 21st Century learning goal and one that we should be encouraging amongst our learners.

So here's to the end of the 2011 academic year. We have two more days to go to wind up our activities and then it's a four week break before we return to school for a new year, new classes and lots of changes promised by our principal of only 3 months. Bring it on..... after a rest of course!

And so ends another year in the lab...

Last Friday our learners completed their last day at school. The teachers are staying on until 13 December to get up to date with all the planning for our new curriculum starting in January. It's all talk about CAPS statements and term plans and class lists.... There is an air of excitement as the teachers plan for a great year ahead.

There's something very soothing about working in a school without students. Can't think what it might be .... Hmm perhaps it's no bells, or noise.... I must say, I always fancied working in such a school. One gets so much more administration work done and one doesn't have to stop what one is doing to re-focus the boy who is intent on distracting one's marvellously prepared lesson. Ah, but by the end of the week we will be missing the little dears.

One of my major tasks at this time of year is stock-taking in the library. Our library runs on an honour system with the teachers checking out books for their classroom and returning them when they are finished. No loan periods, no librarian to check up. What is really amazing is the very small number of missing books at the end of each year. I take comfort in the fact that most of the books that were missing last year have turned up back on the shelves this year so why stress? What's missing today will be back this time next year.

My other big task is to do a thorough clean up in the computer lab and run some maintenance on the computers before shutting down until next year. This year I'm not able to start the big clean up because the teachers are working in the computer lab, using technology for their admin tasks. What a joy - it means our school is moving to the next level in technology integration. I take comfort that the work will get done sometime before we close for the year.

The new year will bring new adventures, new challenges as always. We are discontinuing our present ICT curriculum this year and I will be formulating my own lessons in future. It means more work, more time, no "canned" lessons with templates already done for me - but I'm up for it and I'm looking forward to exploring and growing. I have plans to focus on literacy by using blogs, Edmodo and wikis. I plan to do more global projects and try out new and innovative Web2.0 tools. I am a lifelong learner and I look forward to a year of learning with my students.