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).

Windows for Displays - #TMHerts #TMUK

On Thursday 6th February, we presented at the Herts TeachMeet as part of the National TeachMeet Day:

We saw a Tweet where someone had put a QR Code (linking to online work) on children's positive post cards that had been sent home. We decided, as a result, to put QR Code in our children's reading journals when their work was published online. One day there was a spare code. We stuck this to the window. That then developed...

Presentation here

For Your Classroom - #TMBedford

On Monday 3rd February, we presented at a TeachMeet in Bedford:

Image Credit: teachmeet.pbworks.com

14 ideas for your classroom...

Countdown Inspired Literacy Game

Last week, I was working with a group in literacy. Our focus was sentence structure and making our sentences more interesting. Whilst working on whiteboards I come up with the following...

I asked each of the six children for a word or type of punctuation:

"James give me a verb" - jumping

"Oliver, an adjective" - pink

"Sarah a piece of punctuation please" - exclamation mark

"Luke give me a noun" - football

"George, another punctuation" - brackets

"David an adverb please" - quickly

So, I wrote down: 'jumping, pink, !, football, ( ) and quickly' and told the children to write a sentence including all of those.

Some did it easier than others, some found it very tricky and sometimes the sentences were bizarre. They could add anything they wanted to the sentence, but it had to make sense and include everything from the prompt.

Quickly, Adam (who did not like heights) climbed the large daunting tree to retrieve the pink football!

It's like asking for letters or numbers in Countdown. In time, a set of cards with words and punctuation may even be made... 

Here there's a Scratch project to support this game

Apps for Your Primary Classroom Mark 7

Our 7th post about apps we've made use of in our primary classroom. Again, links are to the iTunes store as we have iPod and iPad devices at our disposal. Many or similar also available on the Google Play Store.

Image credit: www.apple.com

GENERAL

iStop Motion for iPad

HISTORY
Diomedia Calendar

LITERACY 

Odd Ones Out Pack 1

Shakespeare Pro

MATHS 

Fraction Calculator Plus Free 

Math Duel

OoO Calc: Order of Operations Calculator 

Thinking Blocks

MUSIC

TuneTrace

SCIENCE

Build A Bird  

3D Frog Skeleton

We'd welcome your additions. Add them as comments below and to our previous posts about apps.

Not all Displays are for Children (Part 2)

The Part 1 of this blog post came almost two years ago now. In December, we finally got around to putting something in place we'd been meaning to 'get around to' for a while. We wanted to place a display on the outside of our classroom for, other classes, parents, grandparents and general passers by to see (and interact with). We posted the picture below to our Twitter account.

The picture and idea was well received so we have decided to write about it in more than 140 characters.

The purpose of the display? Advertise what the class have been doing. Generate website / blog traffic. Show off a bit.

The first thing added was a word cloud. Each member of the class was asked for a sentence to describe their year so far. They only wrote positives. :-)

Next, some QR codes were added. These link to the class website (containing examples of work, recounts of events and photographs) as well as Padlet walls and other examples of children's online work. The QR Code provides a quick link for anyone with a mobile device and should the QR Code not work for any reason, each has a TinyURL below as a back up or alternative.

Our most recent addition is some augmented reality. Using Aurasma, we created a link to a slideshow of photos from a recent school trip. This is probably the 'show off bit'. 

When parents and other family members come into the classroom they look at displays, ask to see children's work and enjoy seeing what's being done. Now they can do it from outside and (if QR Codes are used) realise they can also do this from home.

We've since presented about this as part of a TeachMeet.

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!