Fantastic Fathers Day Activity

For my literacy intervention in grade one, we are focusing on the students written vocabulary, specifically working on descriptive words. Fathers Day (on 2nd of September for all those who may have forgotten) provided a perfect opportunity to practice using some of the new words we have learnt. I purchased an activity from Teacherpayteachers.com, which is called "donut you know I love you" by A Cupcake for the Teacher and it involves getting the students to first construct their donuts (using 'yummy' colours to decorate) and then adding the sprinkles a.k.a the descriptive words to their icing. Some of the words were "supportive" "handsome" funny" and the students were given blank sprinkles to make up their own descriptive words "cuddly" "strong". The students assisted each other with new words, and also their definitions. There were some great conversations going on while they were making these. We added some glitter at the end, and then they were all ready to give to their dads for Fathers Day.

This activity is very fun, but most importantly provided students with an opportunity to learn and use new descriptive words.  

Here are some wonderful examples made by the grade ones:

Hopefully you find this activity as useful and entertaining as I did. Also, for those students who no longer have their dad's in their lives, the activity includes 'uncle' and 'grandpa' labels as well. 

Kellie

Teach Meet Melbourne August 2012

Yesterday I attended my first Teacher Meet at the Immigration Museum and I must say that it was wonderful. Around 60 teachers gave up their Saturday afternoon to join together to share their knowledge and inspire others. 

So many fantastic things were discussed, and I have pages of notes. The highlights for me were firstly Mic Lowne's presentation about KODU which is a visual programming game that teaches creativity, problem solving, and storytelling. It has a 'low entry point', so students in grade 2 and above can start using this program. The only disappointing thing is that its only available on PC, however perhaps in the future this will change.

Another highlight was Edna Sackson who discussed 'concept driven learning' i.e. the big idea. This is something that we have learnt at uni, so it was great to hear about it in practice, here are some images that I took from her presentation that some may find useful

The 'avocado' model - Worth knowing, important to know, enduring understanding

    The big idea - connection, responsibility, reflection, perspective, change, causation, function, form

Bernadette from Xavier College discussed Teachers Across Borders which sounds like a wonderful experience. Teachers travel to countries such as Cambodia and conduct short term workshops for teachers in developing countries. This will be something that I will consider doing in the future. 

One other presentation which really stood out was llja's presentation about Google docs forms, which I have never heard of, even though I am usually pretty up to date with new google features. It sounds wonderful, but is dependent on students have a laptop each in class to utilise it as llja does. Despite this, it is something that I will be using in the future if the resources are available. 

Other presentations worth noting were:

Nathan Jones - Aurasma

Rebecca Van Den Hoek - Danny deck chair: engaging science/maths lessons

Mark O'Meara - Characters on trial 

I will stop there, even thought there were more presentations that were very informative. So as you can probably tell, I really enjoyed it, so I will hopefully be able to attend the next TeachersMeet in September at Wooranna Park P.S. I highly recommend it, hopefully I will be able to see you there.

Kellie. 

My final semester

It has been a few weeks (or so) since I last posted, and since then I have started back at uni for my FINAL semester (yes, I am excited) which so far has been lots of fun. This semester is shaped some what differently, with most of our assignments centring around interventions that are undertaken in our placement classrooms. I am especially excited about my maths intervention which involves working with four grade one students who need extension in maths. At the moment, the classes topic is money, so over the last couple of days I have been assessing the students to see what they can and cannot do, thus identifying where they are conceptually. They are such a lovely group to work with, and they always try to challenge themselves and are not fearful of making mistakes which is refreshing.

When looking for specific activities to engage them, I came across this fantastic kit on teachers pay teachers. It includes some really fun and challenging games which the students have loved. Below is a photo of one of the resources. This cube (which has a different coin on each side) came with no instructions, however I decided that I would make one for each student (I highly recommend laminating them as the students can be a little rough with them). The only instructions that I gave the students was that they needed to roll the dice and record the coins that appeared and then calculate the total. Once they were comfortable, they were encouraged to add extra coins, and this challenge motivated them and pushed them to see what they could achieve. It was intriguing to watch, as they would keep adding more and more coins, continuously push themselves to see how far they could go. Two students even decided to use different operations to see what would happen to the total.

Until now, I have always conducted interventions with students who are falling behind, and I am finding it so different to work with students who are working far beyond the expected level for their age. Instead of trying to 'fix' something, my role is to help the students to challenge themselves, and provide new learning opportunities and this is such an exciting process.

I could write forever about this so I'll stop, but soon I will write about my literacy intervention (focusing on written vocabulary) and also my designing personalised learning project (which is centered around leadership and dance).

Tomorrow I am also going to the TeachMeet in Melbourne at the Immigration Museum, so I will be sure to write a post about that as well.

Kellie.