Friday, November 26, 2010

Best of the Web

Report writing??????

In the midst of testing, report writing and national standards meetings (no I am not spelling that with a capital letter!) I found this little satirical view of school meetings today quite a hoot!

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

My latest books have just been published. Magic Mac for the Classroom and the two School Journal reading comprehension books have just been delivered and will be out for sale to schools in NZ, Australia and the UK now. Emma (student in my class) took this photo for our school newsletter!

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Apple bus tour

Students from our class demonstrated their skills in i-movie, Keynote, Garageband and Comic Life to the visitors on the Apple bus tour recently!

Digital Numeracy diaries

Students have been creating digital numeracy diaries to show their understanding of maths strategies. When they have finished making their diary presentations (in Keynote) they present them and talk about the strategies with the class.

Green screening using the alpha tool in Keynote

We have been learning about biodiversity as it is our PYP topic in term three. We visited the zoo and made a collection of images "close up with the animals" using the alpha tool and green screen background. The students made some interesting images!
Sherwood Primary at The Zoo Slideshow: Angie Simmons’s trip to Auckland, New Zealand was created by TripAdvisor. See another Auckland slideshow. Create a free slideshow with music from your travel photos.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Cheesemaking weekend

We learned how to make cheese at Claire's Coast Walks Lodge in Whangarei Heads. We made Feta, Haloumi and fresh herb cheeses. The walk was fun but cold and we didn't get far!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Blogging in the classroom

I have set up blogs for all the children in the classroom now. I set it all up with an account in my name so the settings are all controlled by me and the sites are safe. The children each have their own blog and have made some interesting banners and learned all about creating code to make their blogs reflect their individuality. They are using these blogs for personal recount stories each Monday. So each Monday we have blogging day!

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Twitter for the classroom

I am trying out the new twitter for the classroom, it sounds quite interesting. I have set up accounts for all the students under my account and we are going to use it for communicating and sharing ideas. I showed the class on Tuesday and they are all keen.
Watch this space and I will tell you how it works out!

Sunday, April 25, 2010

New books about to be published!

Over the holidays I managed to finish the two books I started in the previous holiday. Magic of the Mac for the Classroom is one of the books. I wrote this specifically for teachers who are encountering Mac computers for the first time and need to find out more tips and tricks for using a Mac. I have also explained how to use the I-Life and I-Works programmes and provided ideas for use in the classroom.
The other book is a reading comprehension book with questions and activities for 2009 part one and two journals. I have included inference, evaluative, re-organistation and retelling questions and the activities have some e-learning suggestions as well as practical activities which are based on current best practice thinking skills. I am working on the part three and four books so there will be a set of two for 2009 and in the future will create a set for 2008 and 2010. I use these myself in the classroom and have found them very useful.

Term one over!

The first term was so busy I have not had a chance to keep up with this blog. I felt that there was so much testing it didn't leave much time for actual teaching!

I have enjoyed teaching in the digital classroom with so many of the latest I-Macs. The students have all completed a Keynote about their PYP inquiry topic, used Numbers and Pages for creating graphs and tables as our strand for maths, created a wiki web site for their next PYP inquiry topic, used Pages for publishing poems and stories and this term each student has a journal for personal recounts. The students also created movies acting out a role play to show a learner profile. We used our flip video camera to film and i-movie for editing.
I have made good use of the resources I created last year such as the literacy safari, the resources web sites and netvibes pages. I create a web site resource for each inquiry so that students can be directed to their central idea, lines of inquiry and key questions and have web resources to follow the inquiry.
Here is our class web site!

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Back to School!

Well it's back to school and I am at my new school, Sherwood Primary School in Browns Bay. This is the first time since 2004 that I have had my own class so I am looking forward to working with children again. I have been really busy setting up my room and planning for the term.
As my class is a digital class this site will be very useful!