The Year Gone by!

This year has been a great year in my teaching career. I have achieved more personally and with my class. It started with e-portfolio and I feel good that the kids have had ownership and involvement this year. It has been a hard road getting 5 year olds to understand the concept, teach them reflection and typing skills when most of them did not even know the letters of the alphabet. Time has also been a big factor as there is always so much to do in the day. I have tried lots of new things this year that I felt apprehensive about in the past years. They have all been successful and I have seen the results. Parents have shown appreciation for things we have done in our class. The highlight was our class blog, although in the past few weeks I am having problem uploading to Blogger. Soon it is going to be the end of the year and I just can't wait for the hols... It's so sad that I have to send my amazing brainy bunch to another teacher next year.
I have applied to be a lead teacher next year. I am looking forward to it.

Some thoughts

Term 3 has been a very fruitful one with my class trying out new ict tools. Their oral language and sentence structure has improved and even my shy children want to read to the class. This is the last term of the year, yeh!!! Well I still have so much I want to try out with my little guys. Hopefully I will be able to do this. Another thing I need to practise is coaching skills to support my team so I will be able to really guide them to integrate e-learning tools into their programmes next year. I am so lucky to be in a supportive school, its what keeps me learning and trying new things and this benefits the children under my care.

Interface Magazine Blog Awards

My class blog has been chosen as one of the 5 finalists for the INTERFACE Awards 2009, 'Best Class Blog'. If you are in the education sector in NZ, please click here to vote for The Brainy Bunch, Room 3 at Elm Park School.

Feedback on class blog

I am so glad I set up a class blog. It has served
its purpose and I have got positive comments from my children and their parents.
Read on, remember you can watch this full screen.
We love our blog...

View more presentations from veronicaa.

Final Cluster day

Today once again we started by sharing an idea of how we use ict in our classrooms. I shared how my kids and I use voicethread to share our learning with parents. One of our members shared this website http://www.pricespy.co.nz/ that I thought was very useful when you want to buy equipment for schools. Then BJ shared ideas about using peer coaching. This means supporting each other to reflect on practice and identify ways to improve practise. I think peer coaching gets effective with practise, it was very hard to peer coach someone as we often tend to advise people and tell them what to do instead of encouraging them to come up with something!

I would like to explore the digital software so that I could use digital content with my students. A lot of this was new to me and I need some time to think about it.
Overall a very fruitful day!

The Big move!!!

Since I have a class blog now all kids' work will be displayed there. Kindly visit The Brainy Bunch and leave your comments for my 5/6 year olds. Sorry I had to move my slide shows due to technical problems.

My busy brainy bunch

The last 2 weeks have been really great, getting the kids excited about their blog. We have had lots of visitors and the children are encouraged to do better at speaking up, writing stories and sharing what they have learned. They love listening to their voices and seeing their work displayed on the www along with reading the comments. I have already seen children grow in confidence orally and can see that they eagerly decode to read the shared book. They are learning from mistakes they have made in earlier recordings. They remind each other about this. I feel pleased that the podcasts, videos or voice threads that we create are integrated into our literacy programme. Nothing is done as a stand alone. It can be done!- Thoughtful and Detailed Planning is the key.
I would appreciate new ideas of how to do voice threads and podcasts with my class.

Class Blog

I have finally set up a class blog. The sole purpose of this is to showcase children's work, encourage their oral language and give them an authentic audience.
Here is the link: The Brainy Bunch
Please visit and leave a comment! Cheers

Learning, learning, learning!

Wow! 2 days of PD. What a lot of learning. Having a cluster conference at our school was amazing. It was nice to work with and listen to like minded people and see the thirst that teachers have to learn new skills! I am so glad I was a part of it. Well done to people that organise these. Can't wait to start school and work with my little people. Hopefully all goes well this term.

Our Learning

Thursday was an exciting day for me because it showed me how much my class had learned in Term 2. At the start of the term I had asked my class what they knew about changes and they were able to only tell me about behavioural changes. I had to probe for the others. Then at the end of term I got a whole list of things they had understood about changes and this was without any probing or questioning. What was amazing to see was that my quiet kids and non English speaking kids responded too! The children were able to explain what they said.I have put up the 2 brainstorming photos.

Chocolate

Our class made chocolate, to do with our inquiry CHANGES.
We brainstormed words to describe chocolate and did this on
Wordle. The kids loved it!

Our Art Exhibition

Room 3's new student (for a day)

Apple Bus Tour

This week we had a group of teachers visit our school to look at how we use e-learning. My class had a show-case of things they did this term. They were so proud of sharing their e-portfolios, kid-pix creations, camera skills and smart board skills. My little JP was the star of the "show". It was a great experience and made me realise that my kids were learning lots of skills and knowledge. I must be doing something right!

Jelly

Today was my first day at Lead teacher meeting. There were some amazing ideas that I could share with my team, although I will have to try it out or go thru all the stuff we saw in the 1st session. It was nice listening to and sharing ideas that we do in our classrooms, although I felt I have so....oooo much to learn and explore.
Here is Suzie's page with heaps of learning activities.

Our Class Inquiry

This term our inquiry is about CHANGES. Our class motto is “I have the power to change”.
Here is a slide show about what we are doing and how we are going about it. Please click on the picture to take you to the slide show.

I Love Kid-pix

Was lucky to have time to work with a group of my kids. Kid-pix is great, there's such a lot you can do with it. My group worked on creating pictures that begin with a letter of their choice (there's just 5), used text, and together we made a slide show of the pictures. They were so thrilled with the outcome and so was I!

Integrating ICT in the Junior School

Juniors Can Do IT - Updated - By Rachel Boyd

View more Microsoft Word documents from rachelboyd.

Some great ideas a junior school teacher could use!

Butterflies and more

BubbleShare: Share photos - Find great Clip Art Images.

Trying it out

Today I had the opportunity to use an hour to work with a group of students in my class. They were to make a slide show in kid-pix. We started by making a story board. They wanted to make a butterfly life cycle. It took a while for them to understand that each stage had to be placed in a different box. We talked about the steps involved in making the slide show. They were pretty good because they did remember most of it. Well after that they started on their picture. I noticed that they found it difficult to use the drawing tools to make tidy, recognisable pictures. They would need a lot of practise to create better ones. They could also use a mouse though. Each of them completed 1-2 pictures and recorded their voices and saved their work. It was a fruitful session! Wish I had more time to work with kids using tech. It sure is fun!!!!!

A life well-lived

Today, a very sad thing happened. MR died... I hope she went peacefully. I remember times shared with her, she was always positive and did the best she could at everything, and she worked really hard. She was always happy to help and share. I miss you M. People come into the fibre of our lives and then all of a sudden, they disappear... but you will always stay in my heart. I am so glad we crossed paths. I hope you knew how much you meant to me. In my memory you will always stay, and every time I see a rainbow I will remember you and how you coloured our world, here at EPS. Life is to...oooo short friends so make sure you tell the people that matter most how much they mean and how much they are appreciated.

Life cycle slideshow

This is exciting! The slide show in kid-pix was uploaded without any problems.

kid-pix slideshow

BJ also came to my class to show my kids how to create a slideshow in Kid-pix. There is so much more to kid-pix than we know. The kids were very patient and excited with the end result. Some children were confident they could make one themselves. I will be working with groups so they can make their own slideshow about life cycles. Can’t wait to see what they will present.

i-movie animation

This week I had the opportunity to get support with using I-movie animation with BJ. She showed me how to use a tripod and move an object just a little bit before clicking each frame. The end product is quite exciting and I’m sure my little guys will enjoy doing this while gaining lots of skills. After you have taken the photos you drag it into i-movies and then add the sounds/music. Hopefully I can use this with my class in Term 4 to produce a nursery rhyme or story.

New Beginnings

What an amazing few months it has been... immense opportunities, new learning, growth, and now BLOGGING! There's lots to be learned and achieved. Thanks to all those angels in my life (U know who you r) who lifted me up when I couldn't fly. Gosh I can picture all those faces, and there's so many.
Now, I'd like to spread my wings and fly "somewhere over the rainbow". Touching hearts, touching lives, touching the future... So wish me luck I say and I'll be on my way!