Junior Writing Idea for when students forget what they want to write

Use the Explain Everything app.
Use the Audio tool from the + menu.
Students record what they want to say.
When they stop talking they stop the audio.



If they think of another idea they record again.
They listen to the audio when they are doing their writing.
This will remind them of what they want to say in their story.

Day One: Walk the Talk Alfriston

I am teaching for 4 days at Alfriston School in South Auckland in a Year 5/6 class.
The school has just started on their e-Learning journey with 3 classrooms Yr 0-1, Yr 3-4, Yr 5-6 who have all been working with me this year.
This classroom is trialling tables instead of desks, and after a couple of weeks, students are not missing their desks at all. The school has purchased one high table, and one whiteboard table to test out in the room. I heard some students say today "I love working at these high tables!

I have made a wiki that is for the students to get their resources from and for teachers to see how I did the teaching. Wherever possible I will be using the SAMR model to show how I thought about 'Teacher Delivery' and 'Task Design'.

View Walk the Talk Wiki

Today I set up 2 Apple TVs, one on the big TV and one on the small TV (18"). These will become teaching and learning stations for the students.

This class has 9 Google Chromebooks, 8 windows computers, and I have brought in 4 iPads, a Samsung tablet and a Surface Pro.

Writing

I introduced them to the story of Theseus and the Minotaur by handing out copies of the story which they read in groups. It is also available for them on the wiki. I walked around and discussed the main points with the groups.

After a while I stopped them and showed them the Narrative Graphic Organiser. They could choose to do an Inspiration one on the iPads or use Google Docs on the computers.

Once the students had finished the Graphic Organiser, it was printed out and is now the structure for their narrative writing for the next day.

Reading

Today was all about introducing 2 groups of students to their Reading Task Google Doc. This involved them downloading it to their Google Drive, copying it, renaming it and moving it to the shared class folder so I could view it. They then had to do the same thing with their Vocab log and Chapter Title Assignment. This was quite time consuming and this is where 'Teacher Dashboard' would have come in handy.

Example of one group's Reading Task Doc

Maths
The students are working on Fractions, Percentages and Decimals at the moment and I have created a wiki page that leads to all of their resources. I am focussing this week on Fractions.
This page has the downloads they need for some games and their workshops that are completed with me or independently.

View Maths wiki page

They also have an Independent self pacing Maths Google Doc where they have to record what tasks have been completed.



I worked with one group today while the others worked through their tasks. We started the workshop Equivalent Fractions. We focussed on Slide 2 and looked at Equivalent Fractions.

We tried some examples using the app Explain Everything which was shown up on the screen at the Big TV learning station.

This was very successful, and the students eventually started racing the person who was completing the task on Explain Everything by writing the answers in their maths books.





Inquiry
I started the Inquiry topic today with a focus on Keywords. This is the presentation I am using.


And this is the SAMR model I am following. We completed the tasks in Substitution and Augmentation. The students used their topic books to record their keywords. Both TVs were used with iPads mirroring the story.

Teaching with Maths Apps

There are loads of Maths apps available, mostly as games for independent maintenance. But there are also a few that can be used in teaching sessions.

One example is 'Thinking Blocks'. There are several apps in the series and they are all free.

All of the Apps present problems to be solved and the solving of them is done in several parts. Mirror the app to a TV  or a projector  and use it in a group lesson. When I demo this I like students to have their maths books or a small whiteboard, plus a device i.e. an iPad where they can use other apps to solve/record the problems and their learning.