ICT integration on a "Food" theme.

I found this presentation delivered two years ago and realise how much we continue to grow with ICT

Debbie And Edwina Final Present

View more presentations from Shelly Park Primary School.

National Standards

  

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10623823

The debate continues.  It is unfortunate that professionals with a wealth of experience in the field are not part of this decision making process.  Self review needs to include all those involved in setting up the standards to begin with.  Testing and alignment is paramount to the success of any venture.  Interesting to read that finances are to be poured into encouraging parents to accept and get behind the standards.  Having trialled these, I know I am not alone with the huge number of questions I have. 

Christmas Ideas

This site has a lot of great ideas for Christmas fun, ornaments, activities and worksheets.
http://www.cool-kids-craft-ideas.com/christmas-kids-crafts.html

Click on any of the buttons to take you to a range of activities including Craft around the World.

Sen teacher

This site has a range of activities for use with students with special needs.  I have personally used a range of the printable activities for general use with Junior School classes.  There are worksheets and printable resources for Maths and Literacy and links to free downloads  for visuals.  Worth a look if you haven't used it before. 

Many of the printables can be laminated and used on repeated occasions in the classrooms.  I have used the Shopping cards using dollar amounts, laminated and had the children fill in the change you would get.

Worth exploring.

http://www.senteacher.org/

National Standards

This year, we embarked on the task of implementing National Standards, no easy job at the beginning of this year when there were minimal guidelines to support this endeavour.  Revising the formats of the reports themselves to include room for reporting in "plain English" in the three main areas we have succeeded in part to deliver but at what cost.  Staff have found it laborious to record in writing, what could be shown, explained and spoken to, an arduous task indeed. 
Unpacking the Standards which is argued are to a large extent untested was in itself a time consuming task and this will undoubtedly vary from school to school across the country. Despite the difficulties we faced, however, there are positives to be taken from and worked with for the future.  Strong professional dialogue has occurred throughout the year and areas of need in Professional Development has been outlined.  The importance of quality teacher practice with on-going formative assessment can be addressed by all.  In terms of the actual Standards themselves, we can stand up and say that having tried and delivered in the mode set down by the Government that this can be done in a far more effective way than this.  In the Junior School, recognising children's skills and abilities in relation to their actual age at signposts allows an element of fairness to individuals when reporting progress.  As a result of the work undertaken this year, the toll has been great, confusion, time constraints, time allotment to report writing, difficulty unpacking what is working to and at at a range of prescribed levels - BUT  seeds have been planted and these are now ready to sprout and continue their growth as we ask ourselves... "what are our next learning steps?"  and as students, ourselves involved in this learning process, we have pretty good ideas of our own!

Typing Skills

A free resource for on-line typing skills for children.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/

This has little activities for learning their way round the keyboard
and using the correct fingers.  Just a fun way of practising fingering and fine motor skills round the key board either at home or school.

Focuses on groups of letters in close proximity and has a range of different levels of skill.

Its free.

Visit to Red Beach School

It certainly was an interesting visit to Red Beach School.  Impressive to say the least and exciting to think that everything they do is firmly embedded.  This would be the ideal situation for most schools.  Their model has been personalised to suit the needs of their community and reflects many of the new innovations for schools today.  Their individual approach is explained as a journey and much reflection occurs on the learning.  Much was learned by having the opportunity to speak to the children at various levels and it was a privilege to see so much quality teaching practice in every classroom.  It certainly left me with much to think about and share.

Read all about it!

http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp
This site allows you to create a fake Newspaper article and heading.  Lots of fun for report writing for the children.  It cannot be direct linked but the image can be downloaded and saved as a picture and then placed in your blog.  I had a little play and came up with this.

Learning chocolate for NESB learners

I found this site with activities for matching pronunciation and pictures and other activities. It does have an US accent but never-the-less could have good uses for independent work or working at home. http://www.learningchocolate.com/

Free e-book 20 WEBTOOLS Applied to Teaching

From Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers.

Open publication - Free publishing - More webtools

Creating On-line games with www.what2learn.com

I created this game on What 2 Learn for the children in my class. It was easy to create and embed. There are several options to choose from and I think it will be a hit with my class. It's free, just sign up and create different versions of games following the easy steps. Once completed submit, play to check it thoroughly and select the embed code on the right hand side in 3 size options and copy and paste to your class blog. Easy, children could even create their own.

Play this game on the what2learn site

Google Docs

Having recently been introduced to the use of Google docs for on-line collaborative surveys and questionaires by Kathy P. and seeing the great benefit for class and school use in the future. I decided to become more familiar with the tool and prepare to use this independently with my class in the future. I found this to be very helpful.


Google for Teachers -

Leaf shaped Autumn Words with Tagxedo

http://www.tagxedo.com/art/997baab1bf11468c

We are focusing on vocabulary and this would be a great way and easy for the children to accomplish a great visual image in a shape form using Tagxedo.
Run the mouse over the words to see them become interactive and move. Fun!

Having Fun with Glogster

The children in my class are going to have lots of fun creating these in groups. Each child can add something to it for a graffiti about water and even add their own sound effects. Looking forward it.

On-line graphing for kids

Have just trialled using http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/index.asp which has an easy to use on-line graphing tool.  The graph can be saved in a variety of formats and imported to easily to blogs etc.  For this example I have used small packets of m and m's or similar sweets to discuss fractions and statistics with a year 3 and 4 class. 

Mosaic Making

This mosaic of myself was made using  ideas from Adrian Bruce toolbox.  Using On-line Mosaic creator
I was able to create this mage of myself.  A good lead in to art when looking at Mosaics or Collage.
Easy to use, complete, save and then upload.

Simple Water Cartoon using Toondoo.com

By debbier | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

Toondoo certainly has possibilities for the children creating a cartoon strip. Lots of characters to choose from and backgrounds. The embed code is also available for placement in blog. I created this simple cartoon to show the children and hook them in to the "Water Cycle"

Digital Popart using Web 2.0 tools

This was easy to use and children could take images of a theme or particular focus of study.
Then create popart for display.  I uploaded this picture of my son in his race gear
and plan to share it with Room 10 this week.  Using bighugelabs.com via Web 2.0 and Education
Thanks to J.S. for providing such a range of things to trial.

Using Comix

http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/?comix_id=9475649C250386

I created a series of 4 slides depicting myself with my class delivering just how the cartoon strip might be used in the classroom. Excellent for implementing direct speech. What is said is in the bubbles. Students can then progress to using speech marks for dialogue within a narrative. IT was fun using comix, easy to use but unfortunately you can't upload directly from the site. Children can print out their own copy and printscreen option.
So many things to explore and trial - thanks to all those who continue to inspire us on a daily basis. Your contributions to your professional blogs helps so many of us to follow in your footsteps.

Picture Teller

http://cookit.e2bn.org/pictureteller/player/player.swf?xml_name=debbiernz%20Best of Friends
I really enjoyed using this tool and found it quite easy and even managed to attach the sound easily. Will definitely try with my class as another option to Photostory

ABC ya

http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm Thanks to Victoria, I once again have experimented with a new site before letting my class explore it. Fantastic and simple to use. Word cloud is simple and easy to use especially for a quick brainstorm or response to a reading activity. There is also a very good animations component. Children can visit here and practice creating a bouncing ball sequence. A very good introduction for the children as they can see first hand how it works.

Tagxedo

Thanks to Victoria I have played with Tagxedo. http://www.tagxedo.com
It really was fantastic and easy to use. I tried it very briefly and definitely see the benefits of using it. Similar to wordle but I think even easier.