Twelve Days of Christmas

There are only two weeks left until the end of the school year in New Zealand,

so it is time to start thinking about Christmas activities we could do with the students in our classes. Even though Christmas is during Summer we still adopt a lot of the Northern Hemisphere traditions and teach them in our classes. One noteable case last Christmas was showing the teacher of the bi-lingual Tongan unit how to make paper snowflakes online and offline!
The next few posts are going to concentrate on Christmas activities you can do in the classroom using computers.

Twelve Days of Christmas

This was a favourite activity I did with students every Christmas where we would

• read The Twelve Days of Christmas
• sing the song
• read the Kiwi Version of The Twelve days of Christmas, A Pukeko in a Ponga tree
  
• sing the song
• finally we would plan and write our own 'Twelve Days of Christmas' story
• The children would write and illustrate their own books

The ICT adaption of this would be to create their own books using either

• PowerPoint (Younger children could have a template with most of the words typed and they would fill in the gaps, add pictures and themes to the pages)

Here is a download for the PowerPoint. Click on the Menu button and select Download Presentation. You will need to have a slideshare account.

Twelve Days Of Christmas

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• older children could create theirs from scratch
• draw the pictures in Kidpix, Paint or Artrage
  
• students could draw or paint pictures, take photos of final products
  
• or use online programmes to create drawings such as Sketchfu ( need to set up an account, click on Download to see image and screen capture or print); Odopod is more suitable for older students, drawings look like watercolours; Sumo is more suitable for older children as it has quite comprehensive tools; Artpad is a simplistic art tool suitable for all ages, take screen captures of finished art work
• other programmes that could be used are PhotoStory 3 (Windows only), Moviemaker (Windows) or iMovie (Mac) Insert photos, record voices or add a music track to create movie.

Inspiration or Kidspiration could be used for the mindmapping of the ideas and publishing as well. Both Kidspiration and Inspiration can be hyperlinked to websites, Inspiration can also have movies embedded on the page.

ComicLife is also another easy way to publish students work. Use their drawings or photograph artwork and add it to the comic.(If you are using images from online don't forget to reference!)
If you don't have ComicLife then use the Autoshapes in Word

A simple but fun activity for all ages is building a picture in Kerpoof and adding text, you can search for graphics and make it as unusual as you like. Print it or screen capture it when finished.

Of course the ever popular Wordle should not be left out. Adding a Tilde ~ in between each word will allow phrases to appear. This is when children need to learn how to copy and paste as there is a lot of repetition going on.

Themes
Different themes could be decided on. There are different schools of thought on the original meaning of the song. Here are some ideas for themes that could be used

• characters and settings from a fairy tale or favourite book 
• indigenous items from the child's country of origin
• favourite sports (teams)
  
• international themes such as Global Warming, Third World countries, Disasters
  
• based on a Social Studies/Science topic studied that year
• presents they would like for Christmas
• presents they would like to give for Christmas
• based on people in the school/classroom
• based on a favourite movie (See the youtube movies below)
• look through a current magazine or newspaper
• write about noteable school or personal events

How about a non-Christmas theme?

There maybe some students in your class who do not celebrate Christmas so they could have a theme about the holidays. I saw a great book in a classroom a few days ago called 'The Twelve Days of Holidays'. This is written from the mother's perspective as she is increasingly getting 'fed up' with her children at home during the holidays. Students could write about

• the holiday they are going to have
• their best holiday
• their worst holiday
• their dream holiday
• or from the perspective of a member of their family
  

Other versions of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' that can be viewed that could motivate students are the following

• this one is a slideshow with pictures (paintings) of each day

• This next Youtube movie is a good example of how you can create your own Twelve days of Christmas on a particular theme, in this case on Disney stories.

• This version will appeal to Shrek fans. This is a great theme to use picking out characters in the movie.

• And if you want to see the lyrics have a look at this Youtube movie

For more advanced ideas of presenting the twelve days of Christmas which could be embedded into Blogs and wikis...

Wallwisher: Add posts to the wall, could be an individual wall or a collaborative wall

For further instructions on how to use Wallwisher


Glogster a poster yourself application enables you to embed graphics, movies and link to websites.

Create an online book

Mixbook has some great Christmassy templates. Students can publish their Twelve Days of Christmas in Mixbook and then embed into their wiki or blog (for free). They can also be purchased from $6.99 US and sent to you.

There are a lot more online ways of presenting 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', for more ideas look at 

Publishing Writing Ideas November 2009

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Where the Wild Things are

Where the Wild Things are is an old favourite book of mine and one that I have used with classes many times. The movie is due out on the 3 December 2009 (in NZ) which will renew interest in this old classic. A few years ago I developed some activities using the context of the book and integrated it into the maths we were doing at the time; tessellations and rotation. The skills students learned from working with shapes enabled them create their own Wild Things.

Where the Wild Things are activities

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Creating Wild Things from shapes Activity Four

Creating Wild Things

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Build a Story: Activity Six

Build A Story Example

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A to Z of Wild Things: An example

A Z Of Wild Things Example

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Editing Writing, Telescopic Text and Magnetic Writing

Teachers want to know ways to engage students in editing their own writing. If you have a projector, whiteboard (or even better an IWB) try this.
Start off with Joe Davis's site http://www.telescopictext.com/
I ask students to describe what the tea could taste like, write some answers above the text, then click on the word 'tea'. New text will be inserted into the sentence.

We carry on in this mode predicting, describing and analysing the new edited text until we can go no further.

The next day we can look at this website which is based on Joe Davis's site http://basseq.com/fun/telescopictext/
Now we can add our own words by replacing the text that is already there by highlighting the word to be changed, click on Replace, type new word and then click on Submit changes.

The third day can then be spent looking at Tripticos Word Magnet site.
Type in a sentence. When you type in the full stop make sure there is a space between it and the last word.
Click Next.




In the next window you can choose from many different backgrounds but for my editing lesson I will keep to a blank page

Click on Done and the next page will appear with your text broken up into text boxes. Click and drag them up to make a sentence.

Now start adding new words by typing in the 'Add new magnet box', once you have clicked the + symbol, click on a colour to change the colour of your text box. Drag it into the correct place. Use the colour coding to identify adjectives, conjunctions etc.

This is a great way to get students interested in editing their work and to see how a sentence can come alive. These are the type of activities that I like to use with children as part of my modelling and teaching.
This will work well with just a projector and computer, but the Interactive Whiteboard would allow students to take over the manipulation of text and objects.

47 Ways to publish Students' writing

This is an update to a previous slideshow I had made on publishing students writing. This has more activities and explanations for teachers how to use in the classroom.

Publishing Writing Ideas 2

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Print out in PowerPoint

A teacher asked me today how could she print out all of the slides on a PowerPoint presentation on one page which then lead me to show her the different ways that are available to print.

Print Slides

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Number Knowledge, Basic Facts and PowerPoint

I was working with Jenny today at her school, and she was telling me that the problem she has with Number Knowledge is that children do not know their basic facts and this is throughout the school.

She wanted to create flash cards quickly, so  I suggested making them in PowerPoint.

Choose the Title Only slide from the Slide layout.

Drag the title bar down so it is in the centre of the slide.

Type in the number sentence, insert a square shape from AutoShapes (Shapes).

Resize everything so it fits in the slide

Click on the slide in the Slide Panel, press Ctrl D (Command D for Apple) to duplicate the slide.

Change the numbers and box around, repeat once more until you have 3 slides.

Shift click all 3 slides and then duplicate. Change all the numbers. Repeat this last step until all of the Flash cards have been made.

When printing make sure you select the Handouts - Slides per page 6

Cut out, write the answer on the back, laminate and bag the cards.

Doubles To 10

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The PowerPoints can be used as a computer activity as well. Duplicate each slide and type in the answer, resave as an activity. In Normal view, students click on the box and type in the answer or in Slideshow View they can use the pencil to draw the answer. The next slide will have the answer for them.

Doubles To 10 Game

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Make a series of cards and games and organise them into

• Doubles (to 10) (more than 10)
• Bonds to 10 (creates 10 i.e. 7 +3, 6 +4),
• Combinations up to 5, (a total less than or including 5)

Inanimate Alice - Multimedia Fiction and Networked Novels

Came across this site Inanimate Alice and I was overwhelmed with ideas of how to use this in a classroom situation. Inanimate Alice is an interactive multimedia story that grows as the main character gets older. The story starts in a simplistic way and gradually increases in readability and game challenge levels. There are 10 levels, four that have been released so far with Episode 5 coming sometime before the end of the year. All these episodes can be viewed for free!

What I liked about it was how it would appeal to visual learners and non-readers alike. Apart from reading, this is also a fantastic motivator for writing and publishing. I recently wrote a post about 'PowerPoints can be great' and this way of presenting a story lends itself (in simplistic terms for young children) as one that could be created in PowerPoint or Keynote because of the hyperlinking abilities. MovieMaker or iMovie could be used as well more so for the animated effects that could be added.

Have a look at this wiki Digital Literacy -Inanimate Alice, (Pascoevale Primary School) there are some fantastic examples of episodes students have written using PowerPoint.

Flight Paths by the same authors is a Networked Novel where readers can participate by adding fragments, ideas or chapters. Again, these stories would be great motivators for writing.



Ways to use this in your classroom

• create their own version of the story making themselves the main character
• take one of the main characters of 'Inanimate Alice' and build a story around that character and their adventures
• continue the story and create different chapters in different countries including details that pertain to the culture of that country
• use special effects of photo editing software (Befunky, Fotoflexer, Lunapic, Picnik, Aviary) for the photos on their story
• retell the story from another perspective

Available as well is the iStori.es software tool with an all time site license for $242 (NZ). This allows students to create stories in the same way as Inanimate Alice.
Teachers can request the comprehensive Education Pack which has lesson plans and resource pack. There is also an Education pack available for the iStori.es, an authoring tool.

What is important to note here is that the Multimedia fiction story cannot exist without the writing; that is what makes it powerful. There are striking images coming at you, but the writing is what leads you on, to think, predict, question and wonder what is next.
I believe that this genre of writing and reading is an important development in our literacy programme.

PowerPoint Presentations can be great

Given the choice of presenting digitally, PowerPoint is the most widely used presentation tool in classrooms. This is because a lot of teachers are not ready to let go of it and experiment with online media or free downloadable software. Consequently it is also a tool that it is used in limited ways

• most of the time it is used as a Text and Picture slideshow with animations and sound effects
• the presentation is more than likely linear
• and it is a regurgitation of facts
  

But PowerPoint presentations can be made exciting, informative and interesting just by deciding on the delivery of the information.
The following slideshow can be used to demonstrate to students the different ways PowerPoint can be used present information.

Dinosaurs And The Modern Day Hunters Guide To Presentation

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Walk the Talk: Day Two - Computer Lab

Day Two:
All classes came into the lab and sat at the computers. To remind them of the sequence of the programme I had written a list on the Activboard

• Come in
• Sit down
• Log on
• Open Server
• Open Wikispaces page
• Click on Sign in
• Type in User name
  
• Open Pages
• Type six lines of Home Keys asdf jkl;
• Choose a game from the Wikipage to play

Once all students had finished typing home keys, I called them from their seats to the mat in front of the Activboard.
We revisited the Writing and Publishing Online Rules. Next we looked at the Xtranormal slideshow I had made, this was also a reminder of what they need to do. This is also an example of one of the types of publishing they are going to be doing this term.








For the rest of the session students worked on their Wordles and Copying/Pasting edited stories onto their wikipages.

Some of the students have published wonderful Comic Life posters that have photos of children in them, but at the moment the school do not want to have the children’s photos online. So to publish them and protect anonymity we double click on each picture, click on the Details button and used one of the Filters to comicfy the pictures. .
Do this for each photo and the effect is that that you can still make out what the figures are doing, but you can't make out the faces.

One major teaching point this session was showing students how they could have multiple pages open on their browser.
I noticed that when they needed to go to a new website they would type over the address of the page they were on.
I demonstrated how they could press Command-T (Control-T) to open up a new page where they could type the address.
I also needed to remind them that they do not need to type the whole address, (miss out the http://www).

Routines have been set now, students now know how to respond when I need their attention 'Stop, look, listen' and they have already learned many new skills.
Next week the teachers would like their students to publish some writing they have finished. The week after that I will be starting Argument writing.

Walking the Talk: Day One 'Computer Lab'

For the next nine weeks I am teaching one day a week in a school in South Auckland. I am working with 4 different Year 6 classes running lab sessions. I have started a Year 6 wiki for them and the main concentration is going to be on the children's writing and publishing.
Day One
Introduction of me and my expectations for the next nine weeks.
What are the rules?

Writing And Publishing Online

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Look at our Wikipage.










Practice our typing.

Keyboarding Practice

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Play a Spelling game or Typing game.

Find a Recount we have already typed into Pages.











Make a Wordle of it. The students had to learn lots of skills for this activity, how to move between Pages and an Internet Page, keyboard shortcut keys such as Command-A to select all, Command-C to copy, Command-V to paste.
They also had to learn how to do a screen capture to save to the desktop, Shift-Command-4. They took a screen capture of their Wordle and uploaded into their Wikipage,

Wordle

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Bookmarks, Interactive Learning Centres and Delicious

In past blog posts I have talked about Interactive Learning Centres and bookmarks in Delicious. Teachers have embraced this management method of directing students to certain websites. This is a great idea and works well as long as the links are directly linked to a specific activity that is supporting the teaching and learning.
Ways to use Delicious

• make it the home page on your class computers
• make bundles of your reading groups and math groups (See page 7 of How create a Delicious Account)
• directly link to the activity rather than the page that might have several links on it
• send the link to your Delicious page home on your school or class newsletter
• when Parents ask you what are suitable sites for their child to access, give them the Delicious link
• when you start a new topic make sure that you have a tag or a bundle for it so that students can access these links at home
• make a bundle that is specifically child friendly games (check them out to make sure they are not full of inappropriate advertising)
• set student homework using Delicious Links
• keep your bundles well organised and your tags clear
• ensure that you have a Spelling bundle with spelling and grammatical tags (very useful when homework has not been set, but students can use these for practice at home and at school)

I have been asked by some teachers whether they should just have a wiki and not Delicious. I suggest that you have both. The wiki is more current and should show the posts, games, activities, discussions that are happening at the moment. The Delicious page is more historic as it shows all the links you have covered in the year and is a great resource for children to use quickly and easily.

Ways to use Interactive Learning Centres (ILC)

• create pages that are group/curriculum specific (Reading or Math Groups names)
  
• directly link to the activity rather than the page that might have several links on it
• use PowerPoint or Keynote to create ILCs (later versions allow you save as PDF files which means you can play them on any machine irrespective of Platform or Version of software)
• if you have special needs children create an ILC that is specific to their need and level
• create teaching lessons using ILC, make them in PowerPoint and then copy or import into Interactive Whiteboard software. Hyperlink to the Internet or games and activities that you have made in PowerPoint, Word, Pages, Keynote, KidPix, Inspiration or Kidspiration
  

The slideshow below is an example of how you could make a Maths ILC. One page shows games that are strand specific and two pages show 2 different Maths groups and the activities that they are doing related to what is being taught at the moment.

Interactive Website

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