Posterize your learning!

One of my favourite tools is Glogster. We are looking at 'Change' as an overall topic this year. To help Set the Scene, I had my students do brainstorms, first by adding their ideas with sticky notes to large pieces of paper with some of the crucial questions they had formulated. I then divided them into groups, and had them sort and clarify the answers, and choose their five favourite responses. Each group then had to work out a way to work as a team to get their posters on Glogster.

Here is the first completed poster:

Extreme Playground Makeover.

Botany Life Church is upgrading our playground. Have a Look!

SOLO taxonomy in practice.

At the beginning of the year the lovely and inspiring Pam Hook from Hooked-on-Thinking fame visited our school, and introduced SOLO taxonomy to us.

I'm always looking for new ways to prepare my students for the inquiry process, for reflecting in their ePortfolios. To me SOLO seemed just the ticket, but I wasn't sure that my Year 5's would actually understand it. As with many other learning areas, they have once again surprised me. Not only do they have a good understanding of the model - they could actually define it, and apply it to their thinking!

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I am so impressed by my students! The students in this video have a range of abilities, and some are normally very reticent to answer questions. Strangely enough, they loved talking to the video camera, and seem to find it less threatening than their 'dear old teacher'! What also surprised me is how quietly they sat while each got a chance to explain their thinking. Not one complained of boredom, or became disruptive. Obviously the idea that they could share their learning with the blogosphere was a great motivation for them. Also, there was no 'hands up', and each child got a chance to assess their definitions, write their reflections down, share them with a buddy, and then share them with the camera.

I'm looking forward to using this model over and over again, and can't wait to see how their new skills will reflect in their e-Portfolio reflections.

Crazy Professor Reading Game

I've loved Power Teaching since the day I stumbled upon it on Youtube. In Room 24 I have some rather rambunctious pupils, and Power Teaching is my saving grace. The kids love it, it keeps me sane, and the classroom management is a breeze.

This year I have a class with very low Reading comprehension skills, so I gave the 'Crazy Professor Reading Game' a go.

The results are not yet clear, but I certainly have students who are usually very reticent readers very excited about reading now!

Watch Room 24 enjoying the Crazy Professor Reading Game:

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For more info on Power Teaching, see my earlier post, or go to the website where there are heaps
of free downloads, resources and videos.

Collaborate...or not?

The thing I love most about ICT conferences, is the ability to share, create new context and collaborate. During a given session I will twitter to my friends about what I'm learning, share my notes on Google Docs, look up websites and paste links, and all the while participate effectively in the Breakout. As I'm a tactile learner, this is the way I process, think and reconstruct ideas.

Sitting in my second breakout at Learning@school, I found myself next to a colleague from a different school. In the spirit of 21st Century Learners we decided to collaborate and share our notes using Google Docs. The presenter had asked us all to move the furniture into a kind of horseshoe shape, which had me inadvertently shifted to the back of the room. He then proceeded to instruct us that he wanted 100% eye contact. A bit tricky now that I was sitting at the back of the room, with my back to him. 'Well', I thought, 'I better get myself organized quickly, before he starts'. He sidled over at this point and in a friendly manner asked whether there was anything wrong with my computer. I assured him that I was fine, just getting myself organized. Gee, was I surprised when he pounced on my colleague and I a few moments later. (We had been quietly setting up a shared Google Docs document to take our notes.) We were told that we were annoying him, and that he wanted 100% participation. I was last so chastised by my Principle in Standard 5.

Needless to say, I was a bit switched off for the rest of the (double) presentation.

Moral of the story: Choose when to collaborate!

What do you think? Should we have boundaries to our collaboration, and if so, what are the boundaries?

PS: If anyone wants to share my notes on Google Docs, let me know!

Class TV Channel made easy!

For a while now I've been researching a way to have a class TV channel, on which we can add video's, images and news items.

I've been on various workshops to schools like Point England and others that have their own TV channel. (You can find more on the NZ Learning Channel.) I've also learnt to use Mogulus, which I find quite hard to get my head around. At last I've found something which is easy, quick and most of all practical to use in class with Year 5 students: WorldTV!

Here's a look at how I'll be welcoming my class on the first day, using our brand-new class channel, SparkleTV:



It's still under construction, but it gives you an idea of what can be done! I'm still trying to figure out how to convert the Keynote that I used for the intro, in such a way that it retains the audio. If anyone knows how to do that, please let me know!

Teacher eTalk Widget now available!

Widgetbox is a gallery of interesting widgets that you can embed into your blog to add a bit of bling.

You can also use it to create a widget of your own blog! This is a great way to promote your blog, and for followers to keep up with your new posts.

Here's my new widget. You can get it by clicking on the 'Get Widget' button in my sidebar widget! All you have to do is grab the embed code, and embed it in the sidebar of your blog.

Let me know how it goes!

Use 'Power Teaching' to create Powerful Learners!

By the last term of school, teaching with high energy, and captivating student's attention, becomes quite a challenge... and so does student behaviour. This year I've stumbled upon a methodology which has changed our entire class energy and dinamics: Power Teaching.

I was looking through some You Tube videos on teaching Writing skills, which I wanted to show my students. One of the videos used a method called Power Teaching. The students mimic the gestures of the teacher, and in turn teach each other. Student engagement is high, critical thinking skills are stimulated and the fun factor is extreme. Even for the Classroom Teacher!

Last Monday, after showing my kids the video, they begged for us to try Power Teaching in class. Being a good 21st Century Teacher, I told them I would find out more about it, not thinking it would be so easy. To my surprise, I found the Teaching Power website , and the Power Teaching Home page with all the information you could possibly need. It even has downloadable posters, an instruction manual and some case studies written by teachers! I read late into the night....

By Tuesday, I had started introducing the '5 rules' to my class. They caught on quick as a whistle. By Wednesday, they started teaching each other. By Thursday it was part of our class management routine. By Friday one other teacher - in a new entrant class - had started to implement Power Teaching, and two regular relievers had written down the website URL!

At the end of every day we have a quick recap of the day, which we do in the format of '2 stars and a wish'. Every day this week, one of the 'stars' was: 'WE LOVE POWER TEACHING'. Their wish for next week: "We want to do more Power Teaching"!

I'll try to post a video of us trying it next week. In the meantime here's the video that originally captured my attention. Take a few minutes to watch it - you will be astounded!

• Now I'm just wondering: Are there any of you trying Power Teaching, and what are the pro's and con's?
• Also is anyone doing Power Teaching training in New Zealand? If so, please let me know!

Cultural Kaleidoscope

Our theme for this term is 'Celebrations' and today the entire school celebrated their own culture by coming to school in our traditional dress.

I used Vuvox to create this beautiful kaleidoscope to remember our day:




What beautiful people we have in our class!

Making a difference by donating Free Rice

Our school-wide focus this year is Making a Difference. One of the ways to do this is to make use of the site Free Rice, where you donate grains of rice with every click.


I've been wanting to write about this site for some time now, and many bloggers have mentioned it before me: Free Rice. Initially you could only play a vocabulary game, but now the site gives you different subjects to choose from like Grammar, German, Multiplications Tables, and more!


I've played the game with my class a couple of times, using the Interactive Whiteboard, to improve their vocabulary. They loved it, and I'm sure they're going to love practicing their tables this way too! It's an ideal whole class warm up before starting small groups. At the same time we are helping feed people who are less fortunate, and Making a Difference in a very real way!

To get a running total every time you play, you need to set your options like this. Every time you start, it will remember your total from the last time you played.



I decided to see how the 'German' questions were, and to my surprise, I'm not as rusty as I thought! I managed to donate 1340 grains of rice in about 10 minutes. According to Lance Wiggs, 1000 grains is equivalent to 26g of rice. A child's portion is about 50g of dry rice, so if my calculations are correct, every 2000 grains can feed a child!

Is there any class out there who would like to take up the challenge this term, and try and see who can donate the most grains of rice?