Start Your Literacy Lesson With a Word Cloud

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Firstly, if you’ve not yet heard of or made word clouds before visit one of the websites below to start making them:

ABCya 

Tagxedo

WordItOut

Wordle 

We have recently been looking for ways to engage our Key Stage Two learners in improving their understanding of different word types. One way we’ve found to do this has been through the use of word clouds. At the beginning of some literacy lessons we have displayed a word cloud and then set the children the task of listing different types of words that they can find in the word cloud.

The example below contains nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. The children listed words they thought were examples of each. This lead to a discussion about why words were or were not a certain word type and also lead to discussing words like ‘sprout’, ‘stamp’ and ‘smoking’ that can at different times be classified as more than one of these.

This could also be carried out using time connectives, conjunctions, alternatives for said or contractions missing apostrophes that need adding and so on…

The word clouds are easily created by coping a list of words into the website. Below are examples of the four ideas listed previously:

Again, please feel free to add to this post by commenting below.

www.3x3links.com

"3x3Links is a minimalist, shareable internet start page"

Image credit: www.3x3links.com

3x3links enables teachers to provide their children with a page that links to a number of webpages for either general use or as part of a particular topic.

Firstly, we have created our own 3x3links page to share the locations 'Primary Ideas' exists online:  

www.3x3links.com/pi.

A 3x3links page could be set up to allow children quick and easy access to sites used throughout a school. For example:  

www.3x3links.com/crosshalljunior 

www.3x3links.com/year5.

The final use we've found for 3x3links is to group useful sites when studying a particular topic:  

www.3x3links.com/space 

www.3x3links.com/tudors.

In addition to these, a personal 3x3links page could be set up as your homepage to allow you quick access to your most used websites. For example:

www.3x3links.com/boo.

These links can be used as a URL or even as a QR Code. They could be provided on school or year group websites as links for the children to follow, could be put on displays in the classroom or can be handed out on paper or displayed on a projection during a lesson.

These are just some uses we've come across and made use of. We'd love to hear from you if you have other uses we don't yet know about.

QR Codes and TinyURL in Education

We started using QR Codes in our classrooms in the summer of 2011. We began investigating how we could make use of them and found a large amount of information online about the potential for QR Codes being used in the education environment. Some of these can be found here:

Interesting Ways to Use QR Codes in the Classroom 

QR Codes in the Classroom 

QR Code Classroom Implementation Guide 

In addition to these websites there is also much more that can be found on YouTube, in blogs and by searching for 'QR Codes Classroom'.

Initially, we only made use of QR Codes and made them using Kaywa. This was good as it allowed easier access to a URL through either an application on a mobile device or a desktop QR Code reader. This worked in most cases, but we found that sometimes children struggled to manipulate the QR Code for the reader to pick it up easily and that children and parents didn’t always have access to a QR Code reader at home. 

We then, after seeing them used on Twitter, started to look at the use of URL shortening services. We have found www.tinyurl.com to be the most child friendly. Some others (www.bit.ly and www.awe.sm for example) are case sensitive, where as TinyURL is not case sensitive. So, we now provide links to websites as both QR Codes and as TinyURLs.

As a result of using TinyURL we also discovered that if the TinyURL is used to create the QR Code rather than the original URL it makes the QR Code much simpler and therefore easier to read. The two QR Codes below link to the same webpage, but one is much simpler than the other:

So, when creating your QR Codes to link to a URL pop the URL into a shortening service and use that URL to create your QR Code.

Finally, we initially used Kaywa to create our QR Codes in black and white, but have recently discovered www.unitag.fr which allows you to do this:

We hope that adds a little more to the QR Code discussion and is of use to you.

6 Circle Time Games

We recently answered a tweet asking for circle time games. Below is the response we gave. These are just 6 out of many ideas for games to use in circle time. You may have used some of these and hopefully some of them are new. Please feel free to comment below to add any other ideas you have of your own. An internet search will also provide a plethora of ideas!

Idea 1: The Parrot Parade

Give each child a colour: red, blue, green, red. Then read out a made up story about children making a parrot made of those colours to go on a float at a carnival. The story describes the making of the parrot and then the parading of it. Describing all its colours at every opportunity. When the children hear their colour they stand up, turn around and sit back down. They enjoy it especially if their colours come up a lot consecutively!

Idea 2: Lifeboats

The children all start sat down and then have to stand up one at a time with out communicating with each other. The aim is to get all standing up, but if two stand up at once they all sit back down.

Image credit: Andy Stephenson - www.geograph.org.uk/photo/980798

Idea 3: Pass the Squeeze

Start of end the session with pass the squeeze. A handshake with a squeeze.

Idea 4: Hello

Person A says hello to person B, person B then replies hello, person A then says tell person C, person B then says hello to person C, person C says hello, person B says tell person D... and so on... (A nice way to start can also be used at the end with good-bye).

Idea 5: Fizz Buzz

When the person starts, they start by saying 1. The next person must then say the next number, and so on. People take their turn by saying the next number in sequence. If the number is divisible by 5, the person doesn't say the number, instead, they say "Fizz!". Similarly, if the number is divisible by 7, they must say "Buzz!". These fizzes and buzzes combine together - for example, instead of 35, I would say "Fizz, buzz!", because is divisible by 5, and is divisible by 7.

This example of using multiples of 5 and 7 could be changed to other numbers.

Idea 6: Pass the Hoop

All hold hands; pass a plastic hoop through everyone around the circle.

Kung Fu Maths II

Part one of this blog gives ideas for using physical hand movements to replace mathematical symbols and how this can be used for introducing mathematical vocabulary. In this blog entry, we will look at how else this strategy might be used. 

Image credit: www.echinacities.com/Beijing/city-guide/Weird-Eats-Beijings-Strangest-Theme-Restaurants

For example, in pairs, children can test each others mathematical knowledge and then link this to inverse operations.

• Child A comes up with a calculation (4x12=);
• Child B then says the answer and creates the inverse operation with their own symbols(48/12=);
• Child A then says the answer(4). 

This game both gets children to practise speed of their mental answers and allows the teacher to check the understanding of inverse operation. In the classroom, this can often get competitive and chldren like making the maths quicker and quicker.

Another option for advanced users is to introduce the bracket (one arm pointing up and one down) into the mix and move into groups using a combination of symbols and whiteboards with numbers on. Teachers can instroduce equations with brackets in different places to show how they impact on the equation.

As a strategy, Kung Fu Maths gives teachers the opportunity to introduce practical elements to the maths currciulum.Getting children out of their seats doing physical movements which reinforces concepts for many children and, as importantly, is fun.

Class Timer

Christmas is here. And so is the associated mess of Christmas decoration and card making. Glitter embedded so deep into the carpet that it will still be shining in July, glue on seats and tiny, tiny pieces of cut up card in every nook and cranny.

However, we have a ‘willing’ volunteer force to help with the mess. The children made it so they can sort it. An excellent tool for helping with this can be found at www.classtools.net in the form of their Countdown timer. The default setting is a timer for 30 seconds and the music from Countdown. For those ingrained messes though I recommend the 5 minute, Indiana Jones music.

Image credit: Russel Tarr - www.classtools.net

 
The children love the mixture of recognisable music and visual stimulus and it certainly gets them going on the jobs that need doing. There is even sedate, calm classical for use in normal lesson time.

My favourite? Hawaii 5-O at 57 seconds.

Participation is Key

A key aspect of the usefulness of technology in the classroom is how it can motivate children in their learning. As the proverb goes: You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. Getting children engaged in lessons is a key skill for teachers in today’s classroom.

Many homes are full of technology and children will happily make use of this for sustained periods. Video games, computers and mobile handsets are used by children to socialise, share and educate each other. Schools need to be making use of these tools in order to encourage participation.

When we made ringtones in our classes, we offered children the opportunity to bring their phones into school in order to make it real. We use ‘Brain Training’ games on the PSP to encourage mental maths skills and we use iPods to deliver teaching through video and podcasts.

However, technology cannot be the sole tool for encouraging participation. Dylan Wiliam recently exhibited some key strategies in his BBC programme, ‘The Classroom Experiment’. In a range of secondary classrooms, he showed how tools such as coloured cups, whiteboards and lollipop sticks could encourage those children who felt disengaged by school to participate in lessons through discouraging the use of ‘hands up’.

At our school, we looked in detail at the use of these techniques. We are always looking at better ways of engaging our children in order to maximise the quality of the learning. Firstly, cups. Some of us dreaded the prospect of crinkly, noisy, distracting cups so we made discs out of laminated card. Green means - I know what is happening. Orange means - slow down I am unsure of what is going on. Red means – Stop, I don’t know what is going on. To keep the use of these in the children’s minds we have a picture of the three discs on most pages of our lesson presentations. Most of the time the children have the discs on green and, when needed, they are able to move it to red to ask questions.

Every class has lollipops with children’s names on. Whenever we need to ask children to participate in lessons, we pull out a stick. Sometimes, we catch the children who know the answer, other times we catch children who are unsure. This gives us a far better picture of how well a lesson is going as well as ensuring children know that they need to keep up with the lesson as their name might get pulled out. For those of you who love a gadget, Smart Notebook and www.classtools.net both offer funky alternatives in the form of random name pickers and a fruit machine Flash tool.

These techniques have equipped us to better engage children in lessons. Discs and lollipop sticks mean that we can get immediate and valuable feedback about how lessons are going, leading to lessons which are much more effective for children.