Tuesday, July 29, 2014

National Library PD

More than just ordering books per term.

Can order books more than once a term.

Can find online resources on "Resources for Learning" - always useful to go to High Interest Topics.

AnyQuestions - website. Like a chat room. Librarians won't give them answers, but will help them find the information they want. Will teach them about how to research. Suggested to do this as a class demonstration.

EPIC - website. has links to educational websites for research. Most useful website: Britannica School Primary, has lots of info, can be printed, listened to, favourited, definitions can be given (without going onto another page). Images and video are available.

Digital NZ - can search for images that represent them

Papers Past - Whole range of papers that have not been publish. 1800's to 1940's

The above can all be found on the Services to Schools page on the National Library webpage.

Creating Readers tab is very useful as well. Not there to teach children to read, but give them opportunities to read.

Read Aloud brochures - available in many different languages - when talking to parents get them to help promote reading for fun with the children.

Also can use NRL magazines to get the reading culture across the school

There is a whole range of maths stories that are actual stories.

Can do meetings at the National Library and then get tour afterwards


Monday, July 28, 2014

Kids Power PD

3 Powers kids have all the time:
Brain Power
Body Power
Voice Power

Powers to teach:
Stay Aware - are children aware of what is going on? How can we make them more aware?
Stop Power - Legs balanced (one behind other), hands out, but arms bent "Please stop" and if not effective: "I said stop!" a bit louder/firmer
Move Away Power - move to safe place/person - Calmness helps adults to help you. "Excuse me, I need help."
Get Help Power (see above)
Rubbish Bin Power - For all the bad words we don't like having said to us.


Bullying is a constant, repetitive behaviour. Children at our ages (year 0-2) don't have a concept of what that is.

Non-verbal checkins - two thumbs up/down/ one up/down. Good way to check chd and see if there are major changes (e.g. two up to two down).

Incident charts - allowing teachers to share/see what has been going on. Some chd come back and behave poorly because of something that happened in the playground.


Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Using the iPads to Teach and Learn

In our Busy Bee meeting today we talked about using the iPads to teach. Here is an activity I made for children to use. You could also use this as an activity I with the teacher. Here it is:





Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Karen Boyes PD Day 2

Strategies that could be used from Classroom observations
- giving chd opportunity to do it by themselves and in their own way
- think pair share - can often miss out on the think part by rushing - make sure to give time for this
- giving an example and then challenging chd to do their own that's different
- keep one, pass the rest on


5 Dimensions to HOM
1) Explore meanings
2) Expanding Capacities
3) Increasing Alertness
4) Extending Values
5) Building Commitment


Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Karen Boyes PD Session 1

What has changed in the last 5-10 years that has been major?
Smartphones, tablets, Internet (speed) etc

What is thinking?
Lots of different ideas - Defn from Dennis the Menace: when your mouth stays shut and your head keeps talking to itself.

Think Pair Share

What is it about your students that makes you think they need to learn how to think?
What do you see them doing?
What do you hear them saying?
How are they feeling?
How would you like them to be because of your teaching and learning?

Documenting progress in the classroom
- very connected to Reggio

Mindfulness
Does not mean: being on auto pilot
Does mean: becoming aware

Mindfulness of HOM
labelling the HOM
Transferring use from previous situation
enjoying the benefits
sequencing their use
evaluate their effectiveness
applying it elsewhere
consciously committing to improving

Karen Boyes Observation

Started with a poem about what a habit is.

Talked about what the habits are.

Look inside your head - before you move. Chd had to move to sit in a circle on the mat. Took some coaxing but they were able to sort the problem out.

Talked about sign language - how would you make a sign language for magic? For brain? Taught chd how to sign "I have a magic brain."

Had chd fold an A4 paper like a hot dog bun. Made a magic booklet. Looks like an "m."

Had partners choose to be an apple and an orange.

Chd drew a squiggle on their booklet. Swapped with partners and had to turn squiggle into something else. Many drew ice cream (Karen had used that as an example), but some variation. Repeated this with different shape. More variation the second time.

Afterwards, asked chd to partner up and come up with five things that help learning and five things that aren't good for learning.


Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Activboard Training

There are pre-made activities in the resource browser. These are good warmups.

Same goes for templates.

Cloze activity. To make a cloze activity fast, right click on a word (after cutting and pasting) and click extract text. Which will pull the word out. Then you can use the paint bucket tool to colour the word the same as the background. Make the words bigger or smaller to stop the smart kids from matching the size of the box to the word.

Colour reveal - can be used for many things. Two backgrounds, text matches one, so when it's moved you can see what it is. Eg. Fox in blue, es in red on red background reveals foxes on yellow background.

There are four layers in a flipchart. Annotations on top, objects in the middle, empty bottom and background, which is always fixed at the very bottom. The object browser can help show what is on the page and where it is (the level).

You can take pictures of a video as it is playing so you can order pictures afterwards (sequence the story).

To embed Youtube video, go to insert-link-embed HTML (and put code from YouTube in).

Active Expression
To Register a hub: Go to voting browser, Click on clipboard and then device registration. Instructions go on the screen.

Can paste word answers into flipchart AND check who did it and how long it took.

Can assign devices by name, need an excel spreadsheet with names.

Can find results in voting browsers from the whole flipchart/page.

ActiView
Can use this to show chd things (e.g. something on the ground/desk) so they don't have to crawl around. Demonstrating art. Everyone can see all at once. Fiddle around with it to see what it can do.