Parents' Resource Folder

In school, we use loads of resources to support learning. How often have parents spoken about not understanding something or needing more support? 

Well, get everything you've created and that's copyright free, that could be of use to children and their families for learning at home and stick it all in a Google Drive folder. Make the folder public and send home the link as a QR Code and TinyURL. As the year goes on, add to it...

Parent Comments on Home Learning

A few years ago, we started setting some home learning activities that didn't require a written outcome (baking, estimating, reciting a poem and so on). As part of this, we asked for a parental comment - to confirm the learning had taken place.

However, many of the responses, from parents, became so useful that we now include this on all home learning activities. There are many 'good' and 'all done', but also positives, negatives and many 'child needs more help withs'. All of which are vital to find out. 

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.

Here's What It's Like Around Here

On Monday of this week, a Tweet was posted:

Ahead of meeting new class, I got my current class to write to my next one. Simply stunning outcomes!
— Liam (@ThisIsLiamM) June 30, 2014

At the time of writing, that Tweet has 14 ReTweets (even one from Brian Moses) and 19 Favorites. That's a lot for Liam: he's convinced most of his Tweets don't get read by anyone! Lots of interest out of the blue, and to something we though everyone would be doing. Wrong!

It's my 8th year of teaching and this is something I've done every year. Two weeks before 'Transfer Day', I give the children a home learning task to write a letter to a pupil in my next class. Here's how that was worded: 

The results were very impressive. Here are some extracts:

"Finally, you do lots of literacy and maths, but the teachers make it fun!"

"The Isle of Wight is really worth all of the five hours it takes to get there."

"The more time you spend in this year group, the more you will love it!"

"If you get my teacher, you're lucky: he's awesome!"

"The homework's not difficult if you listen in class."

There's a trip to the National Space Centre (not Space, in Leicester) and it's fun."

Your new class get to hear from those who have just experienced a year in your year group, classroom and presence. They tell it how it has been. Good points, not so good points and, at times, pick out aspects of the teacher's personality. They're useful for the teacher to evaluate the year too. 

Most of all, it's impressive to see the time taken by many of them to produce something that shows real empathy with the child who is going to be reading the letter:

Earlier this week, @thisisliamm Tweeted about current class writing letters to next class. Here’s a picture of some: pic.twitter.com/PbrGbOHWZ4
— PrimaryIdeas (@PrimaryIdeas) July 2, 2014

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

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

Click Here

Google Docs - More Forms...

This is a follow up post to 'Google Docs - Forms' that we recently wrote.

We've been using Google Forms again for collecting information to help our class. This time, we have used it to aid our literacy teaching. With a writing lesson approaching we decided we wanted to help our children extend their vocabulary. So, we posted the question below on Google Forms:

We're looking for some help! Next week, we're writing Robin Hood stories set in a castle. Sometimes we find it difficult to think of adjectives and adverbs to use in our writing. If you can list some below it would really help us. Write as many as you can, even if it's just one!

The form can be found here.
 

Image credit: Screenshot from Google.com

We collected the words and shared them with our class to aid their writing. We shared the form with our followers on Twitter, through the school's websites and also emailed it to the children to ask their families to help. We had positive feedback from people who filled in the form saying they liked the challenge of coming up with words they thought would be useful and would extend our children's vocabulary. The results can be found here.

We also put the words into a word cloud:

The Angles Roller Coaster

We believe that to give learning purpose and ignite interest it's important to link learning to real life situations. We have demonstrated this in some of our previous blog posts.

For this post we are looking at a real life situation for measuring and drawing angles in maths. We decided upon roller coasters as a good subject to base our lesson on. Roller coasters, after all, are all about angles!

Firstly, reading the angle of rises and falls on roller coasters involved looking at pictures of roller coasters. Then, drawing on lines to show the angle to be measured and then measuring this angle. We discussed what angles made the best roller coasters and why different angles were used. Below is an example of this:

Next, came drawing angles. Using the knowledge gathered from the 'reading angles' lesson the children had a go at drawing their own roller coasters. They then peer assessed which roller coasters they liked the look of, which they did not and why:

 

Give it a go. See what stomach churning rides your class can come up with...

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'.

Who Dares Wins

On Thursday, I was thinking of something new to do with my literacy class. Then, all those hours of watching Saturday night television came in useful!

I decided I'd add a game of 'Who Dares Wins' into my lesson.

Image credit: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008g90y

We had been studying dramatic conventions. So, I based my game of Who Dares Wins on 'How many features of a playscript can you name?'

It could be done with prime numbers, factors of XX, European countries, verbs, parts of a plant, Kings & Queens and so on...

Oh, now if you don't sit in on a Saturday evening watching The National Lottery, here's how it works:

You introduce a topic, in the case of my idea it was 'How many features of a playscript can you name?' Then the children work in pairs or two teams to decided how many they can name. One person or team would say how many they can name. Then, the other person or team will say how many they can name. This carries on backwards and forwards (A: 'We can name 2', B: 'We can name 4', A: 'We can name 7') until one person or team can not beat the amount the other say they can name. They then ask the other person or team to name the amount they said they could name. If they name the amount they said they could then they win. If they can't then the others win.

It worked really well in my literacy class and I'm now looking forward to using it in other curriculum areas. It showed easily who had a better grasp of the features and who required some more support.

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.

Fed up with Spelling Tests?

We need to learn how to spell. It's essential if we're to communicate using written text. 

To find out if someone can spell a word a spelling test can be used. However, this does not need to be always done through the means of 'adult reads word, child writes word and then a score out of ten is produced'.

Image credit: www.flickr.com/photos/aries1980/4122434587

Yes, still use the 'traditional' spelling test sometimes, but how's about trying some of these too:

Anagrams: Provide the children anagrams of the words for them to then unscramble.

Crosswords: Give the children clues to a word's meaning or sentences with gaps.

Sentences: Write out some sentences. Some using the word correctly, others where the word's used incorrectly. Good for homophones and apostrophes.

Text: Provide a text with the words spelled incorrectly within in. Children correct the words.

Wordsearches: Put the words into a wordsearch for the children to find.

These often provide support, interest and engagement in the learning of spelling rules, patterns or key words for a particular topic. Using these also provides the opportunity to assess the children's understanding of a word's meaning.

Manga High maths games

We were first saw Manga High at BETT a few years ago. Looking down over the balcony I could see an enormous manga style figure and wanted to know more. After the requisite sales pitch, we were impressed with what looked like fun games that could be accessed and, at the time, some of them were free.

Returning to school, we duly incorporated some of those games into our maths work.  A particular favourite was estimating by chucking penguins out across an ice flow. The children enjoyed this both because it was visually stimulating and challenging.

Image credit: www.mangahigh.com 

The challenge is one of the great things about Manga High. It seems to be primarily designed for secondary and therefore is usable as a genuine challenge for more able children. We have used these activities as a basis for homework for our more able mathematicians in Year Five and there are even more options available for maths groups in Year Six.

Recently, and rather amazingly, Manga High is now free to use when you register as a school and get some customisable options to work on. Whilst we have not made major use of it in class yet and certainly not explored the options that are available when you register, it is a great resource for teachers to direct parents towards for mathematically challenging home learning tasks. Our children enjoy it because of the style of the website and because of the challenge it offers and invariably move on to some of the other tasks that are available to play.