Count von Count Place Value

Yesterday, I found a new Twitter account that could be useful in maths lessons...

One thousand three hundred thirteen!

— Count von Count (@CountVonCount) May 14, 2017

Each day, or a couple of times a day, the count Tweets a number. Stick it on your board in your classroom:

 - can the children write it in numbers;

- what are its factors? Is it prime?;

- what's half of it? Double it;

- and so on...

One thousand two hundred fifty eight!

— Count von Count (@CountVonCount) April 16, 2017

Twitter for Parts of Speech

Find a Tweet or two (with no swearing or major punctuation/grammar errors*) and ask the children to identify the parts of speech contained in it. They'll be short texts as they've got to be within 140 characters.

  In this example, I found a Tweet with the word 'stamp' in it:

Have this random stamp on my arm and I don't know where how or when I got it

— Colin Bergin (@colinbergin360) 18 March 2017

Here's another...

Ethan was bouncing a basketball around smiling softly to himself "This is fun." He looks up throwing the ball in the hoop

— Ethan (@Cute_KidE) 30 January 2017

* It's a challenge!  

You could even write your own, or get the children to. 

The Story Behind the Tweet

Not all our ideas are our own. Here's another we found on Twitter:

@alanpeat @waitrose real story, but so many ways you could use this #constrainedwriting pic.twitter.com/OItoy8Z0Xn

— nina (@ninalouise213) 30 May 2016

Nina posted the above Tweet and we immediately loved the idea. It's taken a few weeks to find the opportunity to try it out, but now we have and it worked quite well. It certainly engaged a group of Year Fives who just about know how Twitter works and certainly hear about and see Tweets in various media they see.

Here's what we did:

Firstly, I considered looking for an intriguing Tweet (which I may do in the future), but I didn't and instead created my own, fictional Tweet, using lemmetweetthatforyou:

I read the class the original example from Waitrose in Nina's Tweet and then showed them the fictional Tweet. I informed them that it was fictional and I even went to the bother of checking that the @Mentions don't currently exist on the site. 

Challenge 1: explain what the Tweet's about. Challenge 2: write in a similar style to Waitrose. Challenge 3: explain it in exactly 140 words. 

We completed our writing in the Count Words & Characters app and then posted the finished stories to a Padlet wall. 

We've written in the past about other forms of restrained writing: Two Sentence Stories, Stories in a Tweet, 100WC and others...

BATTT with Cupcakes

At TeachMeet BETT in 2013, we saw Ben and Stephen present their 'Bring a Teacher to Twitter' (BATTT) initiative. It struck a chord with us, we'd been using Twitter for about two years and had already been trying to convince our colleagues of its usefulness.

So, we went back into school and shared their message and blogged about it too. We tried holding meetings after school and during lunchtimes, but we didn't have many attendees.

This year we tried something different: cupcakes! Mrs. A. (Dan's wife) kindly made the cakes pictured. We again emailed everyone to let them know about our Twitter Meeting. This time we were inundated with attendees. Everyone ate cake, everyone signed up for a Twitter account and everyone learned about its usefulness. We shared 'must follows', how it's useful and more...

Want people to listen to you? Give them cake!

Rolls and Flips: Probability All Done

Covering probability or data handling in maths and using lesson time to generate data? Well, it's already been done for you:

@RollADay are rolling a dice each day. The data can be found here: rolladay.com

Image credit: @RollADay

@FlipADay are flipping a coin each day. The data can be found here: tadfry.com/flipaday

Image credit: @FlipADay

Follow the accounts. Use the data. Maybe even share with the accounts what's been produced using the flips and rolls.

Both of these are operated by Tad Fry. Other useful online tools can be found on his site.

School Facebook Account

In the past, we've written lots about our use of Twitter. These four posts about school Twitter accounts are some of our most viewed: 1, 2, 3 and 4. As a result of these posts, we've often been asked for advice about Facebook accounts for schools. Until now, we've not written about school Facebook accounts as we had no experience of them. However, now that we do, we can let you know what we've been up to...

Image credit: facebook.com

First of all, we'd highly recommend contacting Chris Talbot,as what he doesn't know about running a school Facebook account isn't worth knowing. 

In the past, both our school and members of staff have had negative experiences of Facebook, so it took some persuading and careful thinking to get the page set up. First choice was whether to use a private Group or a public Page. We went for the page, for the same reason our Twitter account isn't locked: it's a public page for us to share news about our school. The vast majority of what's written in those four posts about Twitter accounts is also applicable to Facebook. Write about upcoming events, share news and engage with the local community. Remember, if someone's 'Liked' the page, anything shared through the page gets sent right into their timeline for them to read. 

In school, some members of staff and the office team have permission to posts to our social media pages from computers they have access to. Some understand Twitter better; others prefer Facebook. So, we set up the account so that something posted to either network will be automatically duplicated on the other. Whilst out of school, we make use of a school phone. From a local supermarket, we purchased a smart phone on pay-as-you-go for about £30 that we can Tweet and Facebook from whilst off-site. As outlined in previous posts, this avoids staff using up their own data allowance, but more importantly means staff can't accidentally post to the wrong social media account (i.e. posting something intended for their own on the school one). 

One main concern was monitoring the page and in particular 'comments'. Within the Page settings there's the option to 'block' comments containing certain words. We've blocked the 100 most common English words and names of teachers, local area and other key words. These comments still exist, so we can see them, but they're not public. In the future, this may change, but at the moment it's our way of monitoring what's on the page. 

Worried about what people may say about the school on Facebook? They'll say it anyway! Given them an official page to do it on and at least you'll see it and have the ability to reply. In addition, every now and again (if you have a unique school name) get the office staff to search Twitter and Facebook for your school's name - you'll be amazed (good and not-so-good!) 

Update (March 2016): See 'Facebook for School communication' too. 

So there you go, if you've not got one, go get one. If you're using one form of social media, you may as well use them all!

@PrimaryIdeas http://t.co/pINQQaPDWo an article about my Facebook page.

— Chris Talbot (@toots2106) July 25, 2015

@PrimaryIdeas post here about school Facebook page may also be of interest https://t.co/S9i52urEoY (now added link to @PrimaryIdeas post)

— Malcolm Wilson (@claganach) July 24, 2015

Stories in a Tweet

We wrote earlier this year about two sentence stories. We're still getting some good writing from that and were intrigued by this Tweet we recently came across:

Today I went to gan's. She was ill. I brought buns. On arrival I saw a wolf. He pounced. Dad came in and cut the wolf in two, finding gran.

— James (@Jimmy81doog) November 8, 2014

Of course! Write a story in 140 characters. Having previously written about Tweets in the classroom, we were impressed with this idea. So we gave it a go, and here's what some Year Five children came up with:

#LRRH140 Girl in woods. Meets wolf. Wolf runs to house. Wold eats gran. Pretends to be gran. Eats girl. Woodcutter comes. Kills wolf. Happy.

— Liam (@ThisIsLiamM) November 11, 2014

#LRRH140 I saw my grandchild. She was coming, but so was Wolfie. I hid in the cupboard. Luckily, my grandchild came in and saved me.

— Liam (@ThisIsLiamM) November 11, 2014

#LRRH140 Gran’s ill. I have to go to see her. I met wolf on the way. We chatted: I told him where gran lives. He went, ate her and then me.

— Liam (@ThisIsLiamM) November 11, 2014

Our Tweet sheet is available on Dropbox to download. Feel free to share more ideas below.

Also, anyone for homophone jokes in a Tweet?

"Why was the sky so plain? We were near the airport." Sophie, Year Five.
— Liam (@ThisIsLiamM) November 17, 2014

School Twitter Account (Part 4)

Our fourth post about school Twitter accounts. Click to view: Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3. 

Image credit: www.twitter.com

This time, it's 'locked' versus 'unlocked'. The opinions here could apply to school accounts as well as personal/professional accounts. When we joined Twitter, we applied the lock to our accounts. Being familiar with other social networks, we wanted to ensure our safety was secure. However, in order to make the most of the social network, we soon removed the lock. If you need the lock, then keep it. But...

Removing the lock allows contributing to discussions via hashtags, users to follow Tweets without having to join Twitter and for easier communication between users. If an account is sharing no personal information, nothing sensitive and nothing 'you wouldn't want the world to see', then there's no reason for it to be protected. We'd like to think this applied to all school and teacher accounts. It's also worth remembering that a Tweet from a locked account can still be shared by copying the text and any 'trusted' follower of a locked account could, in theory, copy and share photos or other information. Use an unlocked account and don't share anything that you wouldn't want anyone to see or read. If you've got the lock applied, consider breaking free.

Home Learning (a different view)… #E2BN14 / #TMBedford

Presentation about variety of tasks for children to complete at home.

Click Here

Things We Wouldn't Know Without Twitter*

*or at least as easily as we have.

This post is probably a follow up to A Year on Twitter. It is certainly something for anyone hoping to Bring a Teacher to Twitter to share. Below are things we've discovered on Twitter over the past three years and now use in our Key Stage Two classrooms: 

Apps, apps and more apps - (@AppyMail, @ebd35, @TheiMums, #appFriday) 
There are many users sharing app ideas, particularly highlighting price drops (some of them even use Android). Most of the apps we use have come from Twitter suggestions. #ThanksAll 

Geography & History Encyclopedia - (@simonhaughton) 
An easy to use, straight forward, online encyclopedia for children to use. #ThanksSimon

Google Forms for Home Learning - (@raff31) 
Take a look at Peter's example or one we used for inspiration and explanation. Children complete online. Offers an assessment opportunity. Download responses as spreadsheet file. #ThanksPeter

Padlet - (@SwayGrantham) 
Using Padlet within a lesson to record childrens' work and thinking. #ThanksSway

Paint Chart Vocabulary - (@shornymorgan) 
Using paint charts to aid children's vocabulary development. #ThanksShorny 

Potatoes (for free) - (@potatoes4school)  
Get free potatoes to grow with your class! #ThanksGYOP

QR Codes in Reading Journals - (@tombrush1982) 
We don't have positive postcards - so we adapted a little. When children's work is published online, a QR Code and accompanying TinyURL is stuck into their reading journal for parents to see. #ThanksTom

QR Codes Embedded in Pictures - (@ICTEvangelist) 
Combine a picture and a QR Code. Here's our example. #ThanksMark

QuietTube - (@Ideas_Factory) 

Show YouTube videos without all the video recommendations and comments. http://tinyurl.com/p8ndabz #ThanksJulian

VGA switch - (@JoeDale) 
In assembly we often have two or more laptops on the go. The swapping was, well, less than seamless. Now it's smooth, crisp and highly professional. We got one for about a fiver online. #ThanksJoe

3x3 Home Learning Grid - (@tomhenzley) 
Look at the blog post. We've enjoyed using them, so have the children and it's something a bit different. #ThanksTim

7puzzleblog - (@7Puzzle) 
Daily maths puzzle to get your children thinking (and more). #ThanksPaul

So, there you go. Have a look at those. Did you already know about them? There's more too. This is just what came to mind. As a disclaimer: We're not saying the above were the originators of each idea or claim to have invented them - that's who we saw Tweet it first (they informed us about it).

Digging Deeper

It's a quick one...

You see a Tweet about an app and you go and download it. You see an interesting blog post and go to read it. Do you ever click on the button for more apps by that developer or look at the blogger's other posts? 

While we're at it, when did you last go and look at someone's Twitter feed? Yes, look at your own streem of those you follow, but when you see something good, go see what else they've recently had to say.

Go on, dig a little deeper!

Apps for Your Classroom #6 - #BlappSnapp Puzzling

Our sixth post about apps. This time we're writing as part of @Ideas_Factory's Blapp Snapp. 

We have some apps we've used for developing thinking, perseverance and problem solving skills. They don't fit into any particular subject or key stage and these are probably just a few in an ocean of puzzle apps, but they're the ones we've used.

First of all, Flow. Available for both iOS and Android. The game requires the user to link coloured dots together whilst filling the squares on the screen. The game begins with easier levels and gets progressively more challenging. It can be quite addictive. I first saw it being played on a train by a three year old and have seen adults of all ages enjoy it. A search of either the iTunes Store or Google Play Store for 'flow' will also reveal a long list of similar apps that include bridges, numbers and various other takes on the original.

BlockPath is similar to Flow in that the screen needs to be filled. This time, you get a starting point and and end point. Join the two. Simple, right? The game begins with easier levels and gets progressively more challenging. 

Connect the Dots is again similar to the others. Join red dots to blue dots with horizontal and vertical lines. How hard can that be? 

Ending is again available on both Android and iOS. The object on screen needs to be moved step by step towards a goal. As the object moves there are 'enemy' objects that move towards yours and try to stop you escaping. There's one way out. Can you find it?

Next, Glow Puzzle. The user needs to draw lines again. This time, following a path and again not crossing lines over. Starts easier and becomes more challenging as levels are completed.

Our most recent addition is Dots, available for Android and iOS. Similar to many other games in that similar coloured dots need to be next to each other to clear them off the screen. In this app more points can be gained by selecting more dots at once (or see what happens when a rectangle is drawn). This app has a multi player mode for a competitive edge. 

Mega Dead Pixel makes you think. It's simple to use - tap the screen to move from side to side. Grow bigger and bigger to collect more pixels. Only available on iOS. 

Space is Key involves jumping a block over and through different obstacles. It keeps going. No time to stop and think. It's harder than it sounds and addictive! Just turn the sound off! Jumpy Block is also similar to this.

Use them during a registration session, brain break mid lesson, at lunch or break, as a challenge / reward. Just a little something to get brains (both adult and child) working. It might not improve the child's maths or revolutionise their ability to use a full stop - their brains will get a work out though.

UPDATE April 2015: We'll continue to add similar apps here.

Why Bother?

Why bother? Why bother to blog, to Tweet, to Pin?

We are teachers, we enjoy seeing others learn, daily. It's what we do, it's what we enjoy. So, helping others to learn, people doing the same job, is just as rewarding. Hearing back from others about the ideas we've shared here and how they've been used is rewarding. It reaffirms the belief that we're doing the right thing. We share a Google Doc and visitors come - awesome. We post a Tweet and one person, just one, ReTweets it - excellent. Someone comments on a blog post, "Really like this" - fantastic. 

We're busy; books to mark, lessons to plan, clubs to run, meetings to attend, whilst also seeing family, friends and generally living.

We don't earn money from this.

We share ideas here. We read blog posts elsewhere. We're allowing others to learn from us, just like we're befitting from the blogs written by others. If we do something outstanding* in our classroom and tell no one, 30 children benefit. If we write about it here, there's the possibility that the whole world could benefit. That's an amazing thought.

At the time of writing, just under 100,000 visits to this blog have been registered in its first 26 months of existence. We have hundreds of Pins on Pinterest, Likes on Facebook and Circles on Google+. Videos on YouTube.

So, should you join Twitter? Yes. Use Facebook professionally? If you want. Look at Pinterest? At least take a look. Start a blog? It's daunting, read some others, give it a go.

As already said:

We are teachers, we enjoy seeing others learn, daily. It's what we do, it's what we enjoy. So, helping others to learn, people doing the same job, is just as rewarding.

*Technical vocabulary for 'good' or 'engaging'.

TeachTweet - Bring a School to Twitter

Here is our presentation for #TeachTweet:  

Google Docs - Forms

Google Docs is something we are still experimenting with in our classrooms. However, we have both made a start on using their exceedingly simple 'forms' document to gather data in the classroom. It is useful both for larger data gathering projects and for shorter ones.

In Year Five, the maths class have been given the problem of finding the most common names. This is a great problem as there is a lot of historical data to look back at as well as making use of easily accessible current data by looking at class lists. In order to extend this, we created a simple form on the Google Docs. This asked the year someone was born and what their name is. The link was sent out through our VLE and Twitter accounts to ask people to respond. You will be amazed at how quickly real information comes in. Google Docs then converts that into a handy spreadsheet for you which can be downloaded as an excel document or used collaboratively. Not only is data handling being covered but there is also a real life context to the use of spreadsheets for ICT.

In Year Six, we used the same form creation tool in an OMS. The class were asked what question they would like to ask. We then looked at what information we needed to gather to actually answer that question. The class decided that they wanted to know about favourite supermarkets so we decided we wanted to know about age, whether or not you are in charge of buying the shopping and which was the most common supermarket you used. This led to an excellent discussion about the use of open and closed questions to get responses and how we might find out why someone chose a particular shop. In the lesson, as a class, the form was completed and submitted. By the end of the lesson there were already some responses so the class could see the survey in action.

The surveys are still live so please feel free to join in (Year Five here and Year Six here). Later on in the week we will post about how the data gathering went and what we used it for.

Image credit: Screenshots from Google.com

School Twitter Account (Part 3)

For this third post we want to look at some examples:

Did you read Part 1 and Part 2? 

 Image credit: twitter.com

Below are some examples of school's Twitter feeds. Have a look at what they're Tweeting about:

@ClevedonSchool

@CrosshallJunior

@Elmvaleprimary
 
@GaywoodPrimary

@Green_Lane_PA

@LittleAngelsSch

@nenaghcbsp

@PDCSPrimary

@RoselsndsInfants

@StBonifaces

@TheEWSchool 

@Toner_Tweets

@waimairischool 

If you have or know of a school Twitter account that would be good to look at please add it to the comments below. 

Read 'Part 4'.

School Twitter Account (Part 2)

For this second post we want to look at the 'how to do it' part of tweeting from your school.

Did you ready Part 1?

 

Image credit: twitter.com

Once you've got your school Twitter account set up you'll be ready to start.

You may like to start with some Tweets about every day goings on in your school. Maybe something a child has said, or an award that's been given out, comment on some good learning that's taken place and send out reminders about letters, upcoming trips and events. The main thing initially is to show your parents and local community that the feed is going to be useful and informative for them to follow.

These Tweets can be sent from the web, or you may like to set certain teacher or the school office up with an application like TweetDeck for them to send Tweets from. 

Next, you may like to go on to tweeting while on school visits or residential visits. This is something we've recently started and something that parents have really enjoyed following. While 'out and about' we've found it useful to send tweets by text messgae. We picked up an old phone easily and got a free SIM card to use from o2. So, this was free to initially set up and will just require the phone being topped up in the future. The advantage of tweeting by text messgae is that the phone can be passed from adult to adult, it does not require logging into apps, no one is having to use their personal phone or mobile device and the cost is being covered by the school. [UPDATE MARCH 2015 - This is unfortunately no longer an option.]

Finally for this post, start developing your own hasgtags. For example #STMWales, #CJSQuestions or #SWCCFayre. Our idea is school initials and then event name. This will allow your followers to follow and even respond to a certain event. You could also use hashtags for your local town or county to advertise your school or event.

So, there's two posts and we'll add more shortly...

Part three now available.

School Twitter Account (Part 1)

Does your school have its own Twitter account? If yes this series of coming blog posts may give you some extra ideas for making use of it. If no we hope these posts will convince you of how you could make use of one.

Image credit: twitter.com

This is part one and there will be more to come...

Firstly, as you're reading this I guess you have your own personal Twitter account. Have you suggested to your school that you could make use of one? Here are some reasons for getting one:

- Giving your school an official voice on the social network.

- Sending news about the school straight into parents, grandparents, local companies and the local communities Twitter streams. If they're using Twitter they will find it hard to avoid your information!

- Using hashtags (city or town, county etc.) to advertise summer fayers, charity events and other goings on.

- Update families about school trips.

- Receive feedback from followers.

- Sharing children's quotes.

- Asking question that arise during lessons.

- Share children's successes, blog posts, photos etc.

- Create a timeline of the school's ongoing activities.

So, there's part one. More to come shortly on how the above can be achieved easily...

Part 2 now available.

#EduBookmarks

We've realised we have hundreds of brilliant websites stored on our computers as bookmarks or favourites. They're great on our computer for us to use, but no one else can see them!

So, we've decided to use #edubookmarks hashtag on Twitter to start sharing them. We hope some other educators might start posting to it too.

Lifelong Learning Part 1

One of the greatest assets that the best teachers have is that they are lifelong learners. The fact that you are reading this means that you are probably already one of these people. 

Until recently, I thought I was. Whenever I visited schools, for whatever reason, I would sneakily wander into other classrooms and look at displays. When I met teachers I would see what ideas I could pinch and I always went to training eager to learn. However, a couple of years ago I was lucky enough to take part in some training with the National College. Some of the training was fair, some was fairly self-evident and some was inspirational. More than anything else, though, the courses I went on showed me how closed-minded I was about certain things. 

I am a strong believer in the importance of education and come from a family of teachers. Therefore, I have some fairly vigorous beliefs about private schools, home schooling and the role of private enterprise in schools. I am not going to bore anyone about those. During my training with the National College I was surprised to discover that those beliefs had actually caused me to close my mind to some of the benefits that different industries can bring to education. 

One area I immediately looked at was pupil voice. Our children and parents are not clients or customers. However, that does not mean we cannot ask them what their learning is like and how we can help them learn better. Other industries can show us effective methods of gathering that information. We now use surveys (www.surveymonkey.com), focus groups and forums on our VLE to ask about improvements we can make. Of course we cannot follow up all of them but at least we know what they want and can try to make some improvements. 

Then I started looking around at examples of excellence in industry and how we can learn from them. So far, I have not wangled a trip to Pixar but, after reading a fascinating article about them in Wired, I read the fantastic book: Innovate the Pixar Way. Now, I have absolutely no idea whether or not the authors have links to Pixar or made it up as they went along but the book has some great ideas about getting the best out of colleagues. Then I looked at motivation by looking at NLP. Loads more fascinating ideas.

I started thinking about what else I was interested in at school. Not surprisingly technology came to the fore. With my colleague @thisisliamm, we set off on our Twitter adventure. Learning from people in education from around the world as well as people from other industries like @GeekDadGamer. I want to bring more gaming into the classroom so, to keep up to date, I started reading magazines such as Edge and Wired. Through Twitter, I discovered the amazing world of TED talks and delved into ideas far beyond that of education. 

It is a big wide world out there and I for one was too close-minded. Too quick to say, without even realising, 'that would not work in a school'. Thanks to the National College, I was able to widen my view and talk to occupational psychologists about focus groups and read about the importance of  failing in order to improve. The downside of this is I now have thousands more sources to look at. Recently I went to Disneyland: Paris and was stunned at the customer service there. As soon as I got back, off to the internet for my next read, Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service. Even if I only get one idea about improving learning it will be worth it.