Lynne Horn

                                                                               Following my resolution to make better use of the Smartboard I’ve been playing a lot with it this week, following suggestions by Jose Picardo. With the new S1s we are preparing to make vokis.  I got them to tell me phrases they thought they would use - I had already typed them onto a notebook file, and then covered them over with a line the same colour as the background.  As the phrases were suggested I used the eraser to reveal the answers - class were suitably impressed by this piece of magic!

With S4 I took some of the phrases from passages in their text book describing the climate in different areas of France - as groups recognised/worked out the meanings of the phrases they came forward and revealed the meaning on the board.

Finally S2 started with revision of some basic weather phrases - phrases were revealed under the symbols as they were guessed, we then decided what the weather was like in France moving the symbols to places as appropriate, finally each group predicted what the weather was like in differenct places on Mull and in Morven before I revealed the correct answer.  So a smarter beginning and hopefully more to come (pictures are in a funny order, but refusing to move for me!)

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I’ve had to tear myself away from long, lazy lunches and watching the Olympics (and isn’t Greco-Roman wrestling a fascinating sport!) to return to school, well all good things must come to an end…

So my aims for this term:

Continue to develop cooperative learning - had to give a little presentation on its benefits as regards behaviour this morning which seemed to go down well.  This time last year I had just done the 3 day “beginner’s” course, and have since done another 3 days over the year so I am brimming with more ideas and keen to take it forward.

ICT - iPods, blogging, wikis are all on my agenda this year, two important things though will getting the most out of the Smartboard and ensuring that I get as many sites unblocked as I can - I feel a mini revolution coming on, anyone coming to help me unblock the barricades??

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Feel this could be my anthem for school - keeps me going through the day.

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I’ve only got round to doing what I should have done a while ago and started adding links to a del.icio.us account.  I’ve never understood the name and why it’s broken up the way it is and it did turn me against it a bit - silly I know but I can never remember where the dots go, but never mind - as Sam says to CJ in The West Wing, “let’s not dwell on your coming late to the party and celebrate that you showed up at all”!

http://del.icio.us/lmhtob

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I like the way animoto delivers vocabulary and phrases in a kind of subliminal message.  My Higher class started making these earlier on, but access to the internet was a bit slow so it took a while to get together the information they needed (images from the films and some phrases from reviews).  I brought them home to finish - if I were to do this again (and I definitely would) I would put the phrases onto separate slides.  We started the period by looking at wordle images of the films (l’auberge espagnole and les poupées russes) which I’d created from reviews, then looked at the reviews and finally started to put together this slideshow.  What I like about animoto is if you’re not sure about your first effort you can remix it - so I’m not sure which of these I prefer, but what I like is that they are visual and creative without much effort on the part of this unartistic teacher!

 

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Well, not quite… Today my S3 class took on the role of teachers and went to teach primary 7 all about the Tour de France.  Starting in class they had written their own learning intentions and started with WALT and WILF and introduced a new friend “WALA” (We Are Learning About).  After an introduction and short video showing the route of the Tour de France they split  primary 7 into groups and then joined the groups themselves.  They had told the class that a special visitor would shortly arrive to answer their questions about the Tour de France and worked with them to prepare some questions - once done we went outside and called for “Lance” who duly cycled into the playground to answer their questions.
(another of my S3s who is into cycling in a big way and indeed sees himself as a potential future winner of the Tour).  Once all the questions had been answered they returned to the classroom to test what the class had learned using a Who Wants to be a Millionaire type quiz.

All in all a successful lesson and something which we’ll want to look into again next term.

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Just having another play with Wordle - this time looking at its use with poetry.



 

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What would you do without your iPod?  As we prepare to take S3 to France next week, my colleague and I have been using them a lot.  Apart from music to listen to on the way, I have also downloaded some tv programmes to watch on the journey (this is to avoid “2 Fast 2 Furious!” and any of its sequels much beloved on the boys I teach).

The class have been preparing a little memorial service - need appropriate music?  We have found lots on iTunes and downloaded, one of the class will bring speakers so we can listen to it.  I’ll also take pictures of the war memorials on my iPod so they can see the names on the war memorials here and in France.  We’ll be able to record the little service whilst we’re there and podcast it when we get back.

As if all that wasn’t enough, thanks to Joe, via his Tumbleblog, I downloaded the Métro map of Paris from http://www.isubwaymaps.com/.  Although you can’t really see the full map, you can see it joined together and can open up the bit you’re looking for - likely to rely on the paper variety in Paris, but very useful to put on our iPods in class for a bit of practical work.

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I read about The Magic Pen game on Teachers Love Smart Boards.  Ideal for Physics and Maths I think and very addictive - go on, have a go - you’ll be chasing little red balls and making new shapes for the rest of the night!

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