Today in year 5 we have been exploring Zondle this is a website that has games to support learning. The topics range from KS1 to GCSE and cover a wide range of topics and subjects.  It a site that enables teachers and students to create their own topics and questions that can then be added to the website and used and commented on by all Zondle users.

We were delighted to welcome Wayne and Ben from Zondle into school as they showed the children and the teachers the benefits that creating games could add to the learning experience.  We started our work a couple of weeks ago with the children drawing their own characters that they would like to see in a Zondle game.  The children have also been exploring the website and evaluating it.

The sessions today ran three times with each Year 5 class – this was a great experience for the children and the adults involved. The sessions started with an introduction to Zondle and talking about what the children already knew and what they liked.  The question aspect of the games was highlighted first and the children were set the task of creating their own questions based on our space topic from last year. This led to an excellent discussion as the types of question that could be included as well as the answers.  The children in pairs then spent time formulating questions to put into Zondle these ranged from  – can you fall through Jupiter? to what is the largest planet in the Solar system.

We then went into the ICT suite and the children all logged into Zondle pressed create and created their topics – they then entered their questions with the answers and the wrong answers – these topics can be either made public or private and then tagged so that other users can easily find.  We also found out that clicking on quick insert enabled us to enter all our questions at the same time.

That’s it – Zondle then creates games using the questions thisenables them to play each others topics that have been created.

Once the games were created the children then all had a play and answered the questions, feeding back as to which games they enjoyed as well as editing their questions as they went through.

We then moved on to creating their own – looking at the introduction screen and the reward screen – the children had to choose a background and a character – these were ones that they had drawn earlier on in the term – the children then found out how to re size, position and make them disappear as well as which was the best screen to have as the reward.

The children then began creating – the buzz within the room was fantastic as the children worked together and found solutions to problems as well as sharing what they had found out with others and the adults in the room.

The sessions were hugely successful and thanks must go to Wayne and Ben for agreeing to come in and run them we all discovered a lot.  For me it was using another free tool to engage the children with their earning – creating topics, games to test their knowledge – a tool that can be used for revision, finding our skills and building on their knowledge.

Zondle is part of our digital  toolbox – is it part of yours?

Zondle blog on the day                    Examples of games on blog

For the last two days I have had the pleasure of attending the Norfolk ICT conference – a two day event for teachers and leaders within the county with the themes of Aspiration, Inspiration and Collaboration. The day started with Sebastian Gasse outlining what is currently happening in Norfolk schools and presenting the challenges that lie ahead.  It was great to hear from the children as well who spoke about how technology has aided their learning including home access with laptops, being free with their learning and finding things out for themselves by designing games and pr for companies as well as the varied wa

y that pupils engage with ICT within the school from radio, flips, animation, laptops to name a few.

The first Keynote of the day was from Ewan Mcintosh –  whose theme was if you truly want to engage pupils, relinquish the reins – you can read about this on his blog once again Ewan challenged our thinking and has certainly given me a few wee things to ponder on!

Groups then moved on to workshops which covered a range of topics from e-safety, using social media, ICT in the early years, home access, the power of data to reveal stories and using games in schools.  These were both informative and interesting – I attended Ewan’s workshop on using data, this included the amazing work of David MCCandless and his information is beautiful site, David’s talk at LWf was a highlight for me and you can watch his talk here .  Ewan encouraged us to think about how data could help us tell stories and encouraged to think about the stories that we could tell using data and solutions that the children could themselves come up with and I will be looking to include some of these ideas in my teaching in the Summer Term.

Johannes Ahrenfelt also prompted me to think more about making the best use of social media within Junior schools, as he talked about the power that these have and how they can be used to bridge the gap between students expectations and the reality of 21st century education – the link from his talk and resources can be found on his blog here

I was presenting he second Keynote of the day in the afternoon looking at using games within the classroom and the power of collaboration.  I started off by asking why we use games and explored the notion of play and ‘secret learning’ looking at the fact that games enabled children to be challenged, motivated, to set themselves goals and take risks.  I spoke about some of the projects that we have undertaken at school.

I also looked at children as games creators and the importance of them having time to look at game development and design using Scratch, Kodu – @GeekyNicki has shared her scheme of work for using Kodu here and 2DIY I also mentioned the Video Games Ambassador scheme that was launched today by Stemnet and UKIE which looks like an exciting scheme to encourage children to work with the Games Development industry.

I moved on to the power of collaboration through networks and spoke about the work of the Redbridge Games Network what schools within the borough have been using and what we are looking to develop further in the future. Also, highlighting other networks across the country who have been set up to share ideas and work together.

Perhaps the two best tools I use for collaboration and CPD both turn 5 this year - twitter and teachmeet and I highlighted the benefit of these for finding things out and developing myself professionally as a teacher.

I finished with some small research that the Active Learning Network within the borough have been looking at to see impact of games on narrowing the gap, spelling scores and maths assessments.  These small research projects are now being replicated within other schools to see if the results are replicable – I looked at spelling using word coach and my project and results can be seen below:

It was great to follow this with a workshop where work that is on going in two schools using the Wii and the DS was presented with time for questions and answers and a discussion on how to get games based learning into classrooms.

It has been a great two days and thanks must go to the Norfolk ICT team for their invitation to keynote as well as their warm welcome and hospitality.

This term we began our Cars and karting topic for the second year running, I always like re visiting topics as they invariably change direction and shape as the topic unfolds.  For the main part we use Mario Kart and a software program called Race to Learn from Cambridge in association with the Williams F1 team which we can access through the LGFL.

We base a lot of cross- curricular teaching around this, the most important part of the whole topic is that the children work in teams.  For this half term, we have used the resources to cover the following:

* Design – teams come up with their own logo, car design on paper and using 2 D&M, Google Sketch Up- creating an ultimate drivers pad.

* Literacy – advert for Mario kart on paper and radio, advert for new driver, letter to congratulate driver on getting the job, formal invitation to launch party, presentations of designs to rest of class, creative writing using Bowsers castle as the setting.

* Science – air resistance, healthy eating, friction, gravity, fair testing.

* Maths – timings of races, working out averages

* DT- constructing their own moveable vehicle, cakes for launch party with own designs

* ICT - recording using easi speak microphones, using word/publisher/2publish to create adverts, Google Sketchup, research into F1 drivers and biography sheet.

We will be continuing with this after half term as well, the children have once again really impressed me with their enthusiasm for this topic and have shown qualities of perseverance and determination, particularly when constructing their moveable vehicle and team work. The children really are operating in ‘teams’ now that they choose themselves, they co-operate together and work hard to solve problems and work on tasks set.

Below is one of the stories that came out of our creative writing week – an interesting take on Mario

Today in year 6 we were looking at averages – the mean, median, mode and range. While I was planning this lesson last week – I noticed a tweet highlighting a lesson on averages using the Wii from Robert Drummond the blog post set out how he planned on using the Wii and bowling to teach averages – it fitted the bill perfectly so I stole – sorry ‘magpied’ the idea for today!

I followed the lesson set out in the blog – I already have five groups in my maths groups so just spread one of the table onto the other four so that I had the four bowling teams.  The children had not idea that we would be using the Wii for maths. Instead we began with the words mean, median, mode and range on the IWB and I asked the four groups to talk on their tables as to what the words meant – about half of the class could remember the definitions which was a good start.

We then came to the conclusion that we would need some data – they had various ideas, shoe sizes, heights etc.  When I switched the view on the IWB to the WIi – there was an increase in the excitement level in the class! I explained that each group of 4 would be bowling and that they would need to write down the score – on their score sheets – you can see the one I used below:

After round 1, I paused the game – pressing the home button is a quick way to do this, and gave them a couple of minutes to work out the mean, median and mode. This was then shared with the class and then we proceeded with the game! This continued until we had completed all 10 rounds – working out the averages as we went.

It was a thrilling ending with one team winning the bowling by just one point! However as I had stated at the beginning of the lesson this was not the ‘true’ point of the lesson – it was the team who had worked out the averages correctly – that team earned themselves an extra 5 minutes playtime. While I worked this out – the children then wrote definitions for mode, median and mean in their books as well as commenting on if they enjoyed the lesson.

The comments included:

‘great way of learning – fun and enjoyable thanks’

‘if i get a question on averages in my sats i will just think of the Wii to remind me’

it was fun working in a group to bowl together and work together on our maths’

‘will you thank Mr Drummond for the idea miss – it was cool’

So thank you Robert for letting me and the class ‘magpie’ your idea – it was a great lesson and a great way for working out averages.