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.

Use YouTube with Confidence

So, there's a video on YouTube you want to show your class. But, you're worried about the comments below it, or the users' other videos that show up alongside or the videos that show up at the end. Or, may be you can't rely on your internet connection. And, if you put the video into your planning will it still be there in future years

Here are two pieces of software we use to help with all of the above:

Firstly, clea.nr is an excellent way of de-cluttering YouTube. It removes everything except the video, thus solving some of the above issues. They say: 

"That's it. We remove clutter."

Also find them online @cleanerinternet and facebook.com.

Image credit: uk.real.com

Secondly, we use RealPlayer Downloader. It's available from www.real.com and works on both Windows and Mac. What Real Player Downloader does is it allows you to download any video from YouTube (and many other websites) as a .flv file. If you are a SMART Notebook user this .flv file can be dropped into a Notebook page. From the Real website you'll also get RealPlayer Converter which will allow you to convert the file to a .m4v to place in a Keynote or on an iOS device, or convert to .wmv to place in PowerPoint. In addition to now being able to place the video directly into a presentation you'll also be avoiding all those comments and adverts, but best of all you now have a copy of the video (hopefully it has CC sharing rights) for future use.

We hope you'll be able to make use of these.

#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.

Personalise Your URLs

This post is a quick follow up to "QR Codes and TinyURL in Education".

When directing children to a web address (URL) it can be useful to provide them with a TinyURL or QR Code as outlined in the previous post.

When using TinyURL an address like this is created http://tinyurl.com/7rrnpbz. Thus sending the user here http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/living_things/teeth_eating/read6.shtml without having to type in the whole URL.

We have recently realised that on tinyurl.com there is a 'custom alias' option to create personal (possibly more memorable) TinyURLs.

Image credit: tinyurl.com

URLs like these can be used:

tinyurl.com/moonmaths

tinyurl.com/frenchnumbers


Or, you can set up a system for your URLs:

tinyurl.com/cjs5sci5 - [School initials | Year Group | Subject | Half term number]

So, srink those URLs and make them a little more personal!

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.