‘What are your plans for the bank holiday then?”

“Well….”  I replied hesitantly “I’m going to Yorkshire for the weekend with Jamie and Tom to spend the weekend in a field with people that I know on twitter”

Hmmmmm

Yes you can guess the looks I got at that reply – in fact the only two in the household that were properly excited about the weekend were me and Tom.  Jamie was coming along to see what those twitter folk were all about – all I told him to bring was an open mind!

The weekend in the field was for #camped12 – an idea formulated more than a few months ago after a discussion about firstly the cost of a lot of education conferences and secondly that a lot of the great conversations took place over coffee or in the breaks or in the pub afterwards and so shed fest was born. Shed fest as originally the plan was to hold it in a shed – Tim Rylands shed of creativity! Although it soon became clear that a shed would be too small and so the Yorkshire triumvirate of Helen Daykin, Bill Lord and Dughall McCormick set into motion.  We soon had a venue – Helen’s mums farm – an absolutely gorgeous setting in Yorkshire.  Then with the help of tweets, hashtags and google docs plans started to form with the overriding thought – “if they build it, they will come”

So off we set – I had already been lucky enough to meet and spend time with many of those who were going along to #camped12 and was looking forward to continuing the conversations, building on the friendships and forging new ones! The 4 and a half hour journey up involved me describing to Jamie who all the twitter characters were – and to Tom what the activities would involve.

On arrival at the pub – we were lucky enough to book the family room in the Waggon and Horses at the top of the ‘lane’ (never has such a word been used in the wrong context! The lane soon became a hill which turned into a mountain!) The reception we got from the staff at the Waggon and Horses all weekend was first rate and friendly – although what they all made of us lot is anybody’s guess! Immediately on arriving we were greeted by a smiling face in the form of Dinah Lord – a lady I had never met but someone who over the course of the weekend became a friend and that really set the tone of the weekend.

We arrived at the same time as a host of others and wondered down the lane with the Bowen clan. I had met Dan on a number of occasions but it was a pleasure to spend time with his family – we both have tom toms – not the GPS devices but rather rowdy boys! Just hoping that the windscreen doesn’t stop us meeting again! We spent the first activity with them aboard the steam railway and huge thanks must go to Jo Badge who arranged a behind the scenes visit to the shed courtesy of her dad. I’m not sure who enjoyed this more the children or the adults but it was a great way to spend the afternoon, riding through Yorkshire and chatting.

It was then back to the pub for the football – am still not sure what the score was as it wasn’t about the football but the conversations. Great to catch up people and make new friendships as well as watching the younger generation make their own friendships – Tom and Alex were pretty much stuck together for the rest of the weekend It was then time to set off back down the lane for evening tea and singing! Dan Bowen, Josh Lord and Kevin lead the music with Bev belting out the tunes, Parkin’s percussion could grace any festival of the future and Alex’s songwriting skills were lauded.

Then it was back up the mountain to bed!

Day two dawned with beautiful sunshine, a lot of people had volunteered to run sessions and huge thanks to all of them – we all came away with at least one new skill/hobby to take away from the weekend.  We took part in the moor walk, geocaching, den building and a bit of limping seagulls – it was a shame we couldn’t do all of them – so the art and astronomy will have to wait till next year! The day finished with  great planning session with the wonderful John, Susan, Dughall, Jess, Jamie and Kevin – if Calrsberg did planning sessions then it would have looked like this!

Day 2 ended with us all retiring back up ‘everest’ for another fantastic meal where the conversations continued as the drink flowed.  It was a brilliant end to a fantastic night.  Then it was time to say goodbye – still not sure how two days went so quickly.

So what will I take from this amazing weekend, the warm welcome that was extended to Jamie and Tom from everyone – making them fell truly welcome.  The fact that a couple of years ago I had not met any of the people that took part in the weekend yet thanks to 140 characters I now have a fantastic set of friends from all across the country. The atmosphere throughout the weekend was fantastic – if it could be bottled we would make a fortune.  So thank you to all of those who are reading this who made it so special.  It involved not just those on twitter, but our families with the children at the centre leading and enjoying the activities – although how much Chris Mayoh enjoyed Tom offering to play football on the Monday morning is debatable.  But what about the views of those not on twitter who came along and were thrust into  this weekend of madness so over to Jamie:

Although a true City boy at heart I’ve always appreciated the countryside as demonstrated by numerous trips to the farthest reaches of West Wales & other areas over the years where the relative peace & quiet not to mention the rolling landscape always proved to be a great tonic to my weariness of the concrete jungle that is my workplace since I left school at 18 : The City of London

Being married to an avid Twitterer (or Twit) as I call her affectionately at times is awkward as when watching my favourite programs or when football is on all I can hear is Dawn chortling away to herself over some conversation stream or other that’s raging amongst her fellow Twits … Names & abbreviations aplenty,I’ve heard plenty about them all over time so although I approached the weekend with a little trepidation I felt that I had a flavour of what to come having been told on several occasions that ‘they’re all really great people’ … I was not disappointed on any front .

The drive was fine courtesy of Google Maps & we made good progress to the Waggon & Horses pub … a truly warm & inviting place that was to become our second hub away from the barn…The views were truly wonderful & as the warm sun beat down on us and the surrounding Yorkshire Countryside so began the tasks. I jokingly mentioned to Dawn that as this was  billed as an ‘educational weekend’ I demanded that I should learn something new … and I did

This was in no small thanks to all of the people who travelled from far & wide to come together in a barn & fields to share thoughts & views, to try new things & to basically have a laugh whilst doing it … Mission accomplished  !!!

Kids played, adults relaxed … and I think that being an outsider of sorts actually helped as it meant there were fresh eyes & ears in the discussions which I enjoyed sharing in. Meeting the people behind the name was also great fun too as obviously we’d all heard plenty about each other yet this (by and large) was the first time we had met & I truly want to thank everyone for their time, their patience & their friendship over the weekend. 

Was a truly memorable couple of days,and I very much look forward to meeting people again sometime,someplace …. I think I’m now a Minor Twit !!!!!   

‘Build it and they will come” – you did and we came and my thanks to you all.

It’s been a busy term – looking at this blog and realising that it’s been over two months since I last updated it with work that we have been doing in class, so here goes!

Within Year 5 last term we have been studying the Tudors and as part of this work our corridor became a museum – with children adding to exhibits.  To tie into this I decided to use the game Night at the Museum to provide an impetus to a range of writing that we were covering.  I was also inspired by the work carried out by @nickynewbury who wrote about her work with her Year 5 class using the Night at the Museum game here .

We wanted to use the game to cover a range of writing including job applications, leaflets, adverts radio, revision of story setting and instructions.  So this is what we did:

We started by talking about the ‘museum’ that we had created in our corridor and spoke about what was in in it how it was laid out and had a discussion about the roles of museums as well as what we liked about museums.  We began by watching the first 3 minutes of the film Night at the Museum 1 – all of the children had already seen the film and we were focusing on words to describe the setting and how we felt as we looked around. The task for the children was to describe the setting for someone who had never seen it.  There were some great descriptions as the children focused on being clear with their descriptions and vocabulary choices. We also spoke about Larry as the main character and what his role was in the film.

The following day we used Google Earth to fly to New York – the setting for Night at the Museum 1 before flying on to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington the setting for the Night at the Museum II and the setting for the Wii game.  We then introduced the Wii game to the whole class and explained that today we would be playing as a class – so that we got used to the controls, listening t each other, co-operating and understanding how the game worked.  As we ere playing – we had to note down what the controls did and suggestions for how to help each other in the game.  This was the first time I had used the Wii as a class this year – having only previously used it in groups in maths and it was great to see the level of engagement and talk that went with the opening session.

We then introduced the carousel activities that would take place during the week – we thought that a carousel of activities would work best while using the game.  The activities that we used were as follows:

Group A – playing the game – working through, finding and listening to the audio guides – making notes as they listened as well as solving problems that they encountered, they did this for 20-25 minutes and then returned to their books writing a recount of what had happened in the game as well as top tips for playing.  During the plenary they also had to explain what had happened in the game so far, what they had found  out and what the current tasks were so that the group playing the next day could continue.  It also meant that they had to think about summarising key information which we found very useful.

Group B – had to think about the qualities of a night watchman, we brainstormed these as a class and watched the interview of Larry from the first film, and the task for this group was to write a letter of application for the job of night watchman within our own Tudor museum.

Group C – Worked on a leaflet for our own Tudor museum, they had a selection of leaflets from museums around London as well as local museums to refer too.  As part of this task they also spent time in our museum thinking about what the highlights were and how best to appeal to their audience.  The audience for the museum were our Year 4 pupils who spent an afternoon with our Year  5s being shown the work and the leaflets and asking for their feedback.  We also displayed a selection of the leaflets for all our parents to use during parents evening.

Group D – were given a descriptive writing activity – to describe what happened on their first night as a night watch man – they had the choice of the museum that this was based in – this meant that the children could choose the genre of descriptive writing that they wanted to focus on. From our initial brainstorm they also had access to a vocabulary bank and used this task to link to their targets as well.

Group E – had to compose a short radio advert for our Tudor museum – again focusing on persuasive writing – we listened to a range of radio adverts first and wrote down key features.  The children used a range of devices to record their adverts – iPad, easy-speak microphones and recordable speech bubbles which we then attached the entrance to our Tudor museum.

At the end of each lesson as part of the plenary the children shared their work, they also talked about what they found easy/difficult and also tips for those who had not yet completed the tasks.

As a teacher – I really enjoyed using the game in this way – it enable me to cover a range of writing and also enable the children to work collobartively, driving their own learning and learning from each other.  As well as improving the quality of their writing it also improved their speaking and listening skills.

 
Night at the Tudor Museum on PhotoPeach

Yesterday I presented at the Inside Government conference. It was  a fantastic day and here are some of the highlights – this is not quite a ‘live’ blog but I did try to blog as the day went on :

Lord David Puttnam started of the day he spoke about the fact that  the world of education is about 10 yrs off the pace of where we need to be  we have no choice but to embrace power of digital techs at every level.  Life in uk has been  transformed in last 20 year – reshaped ways that we have connected and live – rightly or wrongly we expect a new relationship accessing old but also creating learning that does not have to happen in one place – there is a fantastic knowledge resource one click away.

The teachers  role in this is as a trusted learning guide schools have a central role.   Young people may be smarter in using new technology access to this not confined to small elite – anyone can set up blog twitter – distance no longer an obstacle – too often loudest voices drown out most reasonable choices – digital lynch mob that needs to be guarded against. Our digital society should be a society  thoughtfully balanced rights for respect and learn from each other – librarians crucial role to play in this.

For our children they will begin work in 2025-2030 – retire 2070 cant predict what world will look like in 2-3 years time never mind when they will begin work. One example pace of change – FB 850 million daily users paying 1 billion dollars that employs 13 people that has not existed for a year – this is the pace of change.  We need to prepare students for risks to equip them with skills that involve co-operation, agility and compassion to deal with challenges and changes.  Careers for young children will now be varied no longer just one career – but more than one.

Average is over today – every one today needs to find their extra!  Digital technology – needs a framework and vision – so that every policy decision across govt is able to compete with others - we are not living in victorian era our immediate task is to explore and harness these new opportunities. We are in difficult financial circumstance  - the question should be how can uk up its digital game? Change is  the only certainty .

Oracy strong feature of learning we need a quality quality discourse, teachers have to become better at listening and pupils more articulate it is fundamental to life, it requires pupils to talk more and teachers less  -traditionalists dont lik this goes away from 3 rs.  Technology can  help with assessment  gives us an insight into how and why things have been learned – simply have to know more about e learning potential of each child!

If all you do with tech is to use it to support existing methodologies – why are we doing it ? We need to look at the whole of the education system, no education system  can ever be better than the quality of teachers that it employs and finally the undisputed role of education of women across the globe.

Next up was Ian Livingstone:

Ian is the co-author of the Nesta next generation he spoke about how he had been involved in games form World of warcraft to Lara Croft  – he spoke about the fact that games have moved from the niche to more mainstream. We are the creative nation in the world?  The Uk is celebrated around world for its creativity  but do we empower tour students  to create?   Despite growing market the UK has  dropped from 3rd to 6th in the global league why?  Making games not easy it is a combination of art and technology and in the past we have  made pupils choose between the two – it should not be a case of STEM but STEAM we need coders and animators.  Problem with ICT- kids now know what computers are – creative learning outside the classroom. Historically from the  1980s children used the bbc micro it was the c cornerstone of computing within school with the  zx spectrum at home.  If we do not teach coding and programming skills we are effectively locking down computers and teaching children to read and not to write.  We can not build a digital society without digital skills.  It should also not just be about games – these skills are relevant to all creative industries.

Ian spoke about the next generation report – looking at all 11 year olds using scratch to create 2d animations in scratch and computer science becoming more of an integral part of the curriculum.  All the recommendations of the report an be followed by using the link above.

Matt Clegg spoke about procurement and used the case of Dudley as an example of what ‘good’ procurement should look like this was followed by the head of Roding Valley high School who spoke about their work with Precedence in creating an IT solution that worked with them and for them as a business.

I was next up talking about use of games within the classroom – just for a change! I will embed slides from this at a later date.

After lunch we had Valerie Thompson from the e-learning foundation  this is a national education charity – focus on digital divide and attainment gap so far they have helped over 1000 schools overcome barriers to 1:1 provision.  A lot more about their work can be found on their web site.  She spoke about the need for 1:1 provision to overcome the digital divide and to help overcome the attainment gap . Finding solutions to fund this that suits school – leasing and subscriptions/parental donation approach/.pupil owned devices and finding a solutions that works locally making the  most of pupil premium within schools to achieve this. Every March e learning foundation  conducts a survey  from parents they found that parents say they struggle with homework, welcome more support from schools and are prepared to contribute towards the cost if….. they can see skills growing and that they siblings don’t need to share.  They  resent paying for it  if schools have poor track record of maintaining and do not explain fully to the teachers what their use is.

Neil Selwyn – Insitute of education academic researcher spoke about digital literacy  he mentioned the london knowledge lab .  He mentioned the need to have a sense of history and that  there aren’t any simple solutions. What is digital literacy and why does it matter? There is a big danger that we take for granted that everything that we are talking about today  is a big issue – in the real world most of that stuff does not matter. Rose review – 2009 – lots of interesting proposals of bringing digital literacy – a lot of the press were against mainly from the daily mail – “exit winston churchill, enter twitter, yes its the new primary school curriculum” but also the head of NUt saying the same thing and michael gove – moaning replacing soldi knowledge  – a lot of hostility towards was shown at the time towards the Rose Review proposals.

Another argument  is that digital literacy not an important technology because children pick it up as they go along – another argument that digital natives are born into this and therefore do not need to be taught – young people know more about tech that adults – digital natives a good example of why we need to continue with digital literacy – because we don’t live in simple world where technology is ubiquitous.

Digital natives are a myth  - when we actually look at it – most students use of tech is low level sporadic not the creative c – oxford internet survey 16-24 research shows that the largest t group are the normative – use facebook, wiki but nothing more that that.

We do need digital literacy- but we have had every type of literacy competency that you can think of it is an area that is very messy and can be very woolly – very little changing on the ground – we need to be critical of digital literacy.  He recommended reading the following paper by Ivor Goodson – Computer Literacy as Ideology this can be found here.

We also need to look what are the values that are driving the current debate – obvious ec focus – but does need challenging – what skills are we talking about?  Idea of critical digital literacy – ideas of social justice help people be critical consumers – particularly  popular in Scandinavia – Dutch refer to it as digital wisdom.

4 points to consider in conversations

1 – what are the problems that we are trying to solve?

2 – there is no one size fits all solution – danger of finding one

3 literacy’s not literacy

4 the need for better debate and discuss – getting people in real world to care about it – involving people

if we ask general public what are the real issues that they are worried – what about the students?

Up next were Professors from Herriot Watt University who spoke about their Scholar programme – more information about Scholar can be found here: http://scholar.hw.ac.uk/England/

Next up was Miles Berry - who was representing Raspberry Pi his slides can be found here  it was a fascinating talk.  I recommend that you do go and have a look at this Prezi.

Up next were CC4G they are an after school/lunch time  IT club for 9-14 year old girls – e skills uk - reason behind CC4G is that IT is seen as  a boys subject – to do with gaming – gaming focused on boys games, it a solitary  lack of girl friendly materials lack of role models.

Girls career aspirations – girls  start thinking about careers from age 8 they understand that all careers are open to them but they aspire to traditional female roles – things that change these are personal encounters, mentoring activities and meeting professionals.

computer clubs for girls – aims to solve this – 8 islands that contain a different topic – designed specifically for girls aged 8-14 – designed by Aardman – used by schools as extra curricular activities. schools like it – club in a box

why it works – high quality content – guarantees time on the hard ware matches girls preferred ways of working bite sized and reward heavy and is seen as a treat, it has been around since 2005 – 3,8000 schools have run clubs with 135000members – 80% of members more likely to consider ITrelated careers.  This used to be a free resource but sadly has had its funding cut so is now a paid for service.

Finally Chris Binns from  21st century skills – spoke about the need to prepare students with skills and recommended the following book- the world is flat by Tom friedman http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/the-world-is-flat the competitive bar for students is raised and we need to think about skills that we are giving them.

All in all a great day.

Your help is needed to help fund  Mission:Explore Food, the latest in the series of children’s books which The Society of Authors have said “encourage children to explore the world around them, developing their curiosity, confidence and courage along the way…”.

Mission:Explore Food will be a revolutionary cookbook, guide, fieldbook and atlas to what we grow in the ground, chase around fields, put in our mouths, poo out our bums and plant our seeds in. The book will include scores of both delicious and disgusting recipes, missions, games and wisdom on good ways to find, eat and dispose of food.

Written by The Geography Collective (a team of teachers, academics, artists and explorers) in partnership with City Farmers and illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones, Mission:Explore Food will go where no other family food-related book dares!

n true Mission:Explore style readers will be challenged to complete missions which involve planting, digging, watering, finding, foraging, growing, investigating, testing, questioning, sifting, rolling, talking, throwing, climbing, harvesting, hunting, picking, sharing, learning, soiling, pooing, weeing, recycling, trading, singing, creating, cooking, stiring, boiling, grating, skimming, churning, thinking, mapping, eating, tasting, smelling, sniffing, burning, chilling, drinking, gargling, farming, playing and fooding.

This is a great example of crowd sourcing you can pledge as little as £1 to be part of something truly special and if it hits the target the Mission Explore team will give Mission Explore Food taster as a pdf free to every school so that they can download and carry out missions in school and home.

So to Thursday and back to LWF with the chance to look around and hear some of the speakers in the main event – for me I liked the domes, although at times they did seem small for the number of participants that wanted to listen to the breakouts – having also been to the brewery the same  can be said. The theatre space was large -although my favourite was the round from last year.  At times the noise from outside could be heard but did not detract from the main speakers – it will need time to develop and I look forward to seeing what Graham has in store for us all next year.

So onto the speakers

First up was Mitch Resnick who I absolutely loved and could have listened to all day! He spoke of the discovery of learning that comes in Kindergarten, of Scratch the programme that he came up with and that is used in my school and thousands of others across the world to give children a chance to discover and program for themselves, he then moved onto warrior cats something that was new to me but will investigate and used it as an example of how people where using scratch to take well known literature and changing it for themselves. including a lovely example of mothers day cards – his talk ended with his view of ICT as “Invention and Creativity Technologies” something that will most certainly stay with me.

Next was Mark Surman and Michelle Levesque from Mozilla who carried on the theme of discovering and creation and talked about enabling a generation of web makers through tools such as hackasaurus and open badges – again another great talk about enabling children to discover and create.

I skipped out of the main hall at this point to have a look around the domes – talking in Lego- building a classroom of the future, looking at the computers in the Museum of computing as well as watching young hackers come up new and interesting developments that would be shown later in the main hall. I missed one of my heroes Jesse Schell speaking as I was hosting a session straight after in one of the salon pods that involved myself and 9 teachers all who I have met via twitter and all who agreed to help me – each of them are inspirational with what they do and I am lucky enough to call them friends.

The aim of the session was to show what is happening in Education now – not in the future but wright now in classrooms up and down the country – we took the approach of starting at Year 2 and taking a journey through the life of a child right up to university. This idea and line up was decided before Gove made his announcement at BETT  at the beginning of the year and is an example I feel of what can be achieved in schools with technology – the presentations if you missed them or would like to watch again are embedded below – with a few to follow.

I think we really showcased what is happening in schools as well as the power of Twitter for CPD and forming relationships – it was certainly something special and I know from following tweets those in the audience agreed.

Once it had finished it was time to head back into the main stage after a few conversations – part of these conferences for me is the catching up and the face to face conversations that make these a special occasion.

Back into the main hall for talks from Jim Knight who spoke about the design of spaces to encourage learning and what would schools look like if Steve Jobs had gone into education  and not technology an interesting talk – I also enjoy listening to Lord Knight speak – he regularly talks and listens to teachers and the same was true during one of the breaks – a real pleasure. Then it was on to the Young ReWired State with young people demonstrating what they had been working on – a great demonstration of passion for ICT and coding as well as brilliant presentation skills as things sometimes did not quite go to plan a great way to end the afternoon session.

Then it was time for the closing with Sir Ken Robinson live from LA- one of his quotes that resonated both with myself and many in the audience was that Technology does not remove the need for great teaching and active learning – it enables them.  This was the last talk of the conference and home I headed.

Final thoughts – the domes I liked being able to move in and out of – although would bigger domes next year be possible? The talks prompted my thinking as always and given me things to think about which is always good, the connections made and conversations were fantastic, I was delighted to host a session and thanks go to Graham for inviting me to put something together. I missed some parts of the Brewery – mainly the main stage area but not others and next year LWF will be in the ‘new’ West Hall of Olympia – it will also cross over with BETT which next year moves to EXCEL which could be an issue mainly for those teachers who would like to attend.

Last Wednesday night I left school and headed to Olympia for Learning Without Frontiers 12 this was the first time that it had been held here and from following the tweets that led up to the event I know that organiser Graham Brown Martin was going for a different experience!
This was true on arrival to be meet with a series of domes – these were part of the Free conference and hosted break out sessions as well as Lego, Rewired state, Nintendo, Toucan, Pearson and History of Computing.  It looked very interesting and unlike any conference I had been to before.

I headed to the Pearson Pod as I was taking part in WeTweetED the main points to come out for me were: collaboration will push technology use in school forwards and fear is what often holds us back. That training and research needed to be ongoing, with networks working together having the children at the fore front using their skills.

From here it was on to the LWF Awards and a chance for a nice tweet up as we all headed for a table – for me this has been the fantastic part of twitter – forming friendships face to face as well as the virtual online tweets.  It was great to see David Mitchell win the Primary Innovator award for his continued work with blogging, quadblogging and now his latest project of blogging the leap year.  You can see a full list of the winners here. I was also there to present a Eulogy with Tony Parkin to remember Tom Cooper who sadly passed away at the end of last year, it was a lovely moment and a pleasure to meet both Jenny and Tom’s mum – just a shame it was under the circumstances.

This year the Learning Without Frontiers Conference and Festival will be on Wednesday 25th and Thursday 26th, this year signals a venue change as well – moving to Olympia for the two days.  The conference is the paid for part of the event and features speakers such as  Ray Kurzwell, Ellen MacArthur, Jesse Schell, Keri Facer, Stephen Heppell and Jim Knight to name a few.  There is a cost involved in this – although there are incentives such as education scholarships and an invite to businesses who sign up to take an educator with them.

The festival part is FREE – although you do need to register.  The festival is titled the future of learning and will include experience domes which will cover the following:

• Mobile & Handheld Learning
• Game Based Learning
• Digital Society
• BYOD – Success with Bring Your Own Device schemes
• Global Learning Innovations
• Learning with Apps
• Learning in the Cloud

It’s now the first week of a new year – since I have started blogging I always find it good to reflect on the year that has just gone – and to look ahead to the year ahead!

Once again it was a fun packed year with lots of highs and unexpected events that I did not think would happen back at this time last year.

Highlights:

Teaching – leaving Year 6 was quite hard but Year 5 has been great and am enjoying working and learning with a new set of children

Teachmeet Bett 11 and the understanding of the word Hoar as well as the chance to meet so many great people from my PLN

LWF – presenting in the main room on a round stage in front of too many people to think about! Dressing up for the teach meet and sitting next to katherine Birbalsingh at dinner.

Being told I was complacent and all that was wrong with the education system today at a National Curriculum Review – an entertaining evening all in all!

Working with New Directions within school on an art and environmental project

Hearing Ken Robinson speak

Speaking at a variety of conferences around the country – always an honour and a pleasure having the chance to meet and learn from others

Speaking at my first International conference – Denmark in the company of two Scots – a fantastic time

Being part of the London Educational Games Meetups – a great concept and also great to meet and talk to others

Being a Mentor at EdTech Start up Weekend – an amazing opportunity that still has me buzzing

Tweetups and meet ups including a Christmas one at Google

These were my professional highlights – personally it was a year of travel and it has been fantastic visiting so many places and exploring as a family especially attending our first festival as a family!

So to 2012……

I love  a new year, new term , new day not knowing what lies ahead – there are already some dates and events in the diary and will be blogging about these!

The year ended for me on a sad note – finding out that Tom Cooper had passed away – Tom had become a friend of mine who was also a mentor, always willing to give advice, he was a true giant among men who will be greatly missed but my resolution for the year is to take his words with me throughout the year – those words are to

‘grasp the moment’ something that he always did.

At the end of last term we embarked on our myths and legends topic.  As it is the first time I have taught in year 5 and as the children cover the Greeks and a lot of legends related to mythology in Year 4, I turned as ever to twitter for help and inspiration.

The first site mentioned is the fantastic myths and legends from e2bn – this has a great collection of myths and legends as well as enabling the children to create their own.  This was a site that we had already planned in using in ICT but also wanted to investigate the genre further in writing and speaking and listening through Literacy. Inspiration for our planning came in a tweet from @philstuart, he is the creative director of preloaded, a company which creates games with a purpose and he directed me towards myth storybook a series of stories and games that were made to link to the Merlin series on television and so our Myths and legends planning was formed!

We started the topic by putting the words myth and legend on the board and asking the children to mind shower what they could remember about them – where they were set, characters and min mapping these in groups. We then planed to take them to our wildlife area to read them the legend of King arthur so they would have a ‘sense’ of the settings – unfortunately because of the weather at the end of term this was not possible – however we went ahead with the reading as well as watching two short clips from the BBC site – while the children watched these and while they were listening to the story we asked them to note down any characters/settings that we could use as well as any words that they did not understand. We moved on to give each table a picture (these were taken from the internet and had a different theme/setting for King Arthur and his legends) each table was given five minutes to write describing words around the picture and the pictures were passed around the tables.  The completed pictures then had a whole host of adjectives, adverbs and sentences – we then put these around the classroom so that the children would have a range of vocabulary to use.

We then moved on to watch the animated stories that were first tweeted by Phil and the children watched others and played the games as part of an ICT lesson – the children loved watching and listening to the stories  as well as playing the games – they especially enjoyed the graphics and finding out more about the legend of King Arthur. They went home watched them again as well as playing the games and coming in to tell me how well they had done – certainly their favourite website at the end of term!

We used these to launch the main writing focus of the unit work which was to explain to the children that as the Merlin series was finishing on the BBC – the BBC was looking for ideas for future ideas/stories that they could use in the next series.  This really got the children buzzing and they worked over the next two days on outlines of stories and the a synopsis along with the first three opening paragraphs to send off to the BBC.  The quality of writing was fantastic and the children were completely engaged by the topic – using the animated stories really fired their imagination and once again it was a resource that I would not have been aware of if it had not been for twitter.  it is a resource that I would really recommend for looking at myths and legends from a different viewpoint .

This is one of my favourite books and now that I am working in Year 5 means that I get to work with the children on it.  I have to say that the children absolutely loved the book and worked hard on a range of subject over two weeks.

Primarily our work was Literacy based we covered the following:

Settings, characters, drama and freeze frame, writing a synopsis and review, letter writing, menus, newspaper articles, diary entries and our own short stories.

We also used the text for a range of cross curricular activities:

We used Google Earth to search for a location where a film version of the book could be filmed – the children then used pin drops to say which part of the book was being filmed at each place – an activity that really got them thinking about the story and what for them were the main features of the text.

Following on with the Geography theme we gave the children the piece of text where Hogarth sees the Iron Man and runs home to tell his family – working in pairs they had to highlight the geographical features and then work together to produce a map of the story – thinking about scale and producing a key.  They were then given excerpts from the text to stick on to their map creating a story map.

In ICT we used 2DIY to create games based on the Iron Man – these ranged from catching games where the Iron Man received points for catching the metal to platform games with the iron man chasing after the metal.

In DT our topic was moving toys so the children worked in groups to create cam toys around the Iron Man.

For our ‘know and show’ homework the children created their own Iron Men and wrote stories – a selection of some of this work can be seen below:

Iron Man on PhotoPeach

The children also created short animations which they had to storyboard, create props and scenery for and film themselves

Would love to hear any other ways that schools have used the Iron Man

The Iron Man from oakdalej on Vimeo.