I thought I should upload this Maths games that we played many years ago just in case someone can use them in their classroom. We have had much fun playing it over the years. It based upon the Jelly Bean hunt from the IBM Kid smart program and Sammy's school house years ago. Instructions from that are below: Title: Jelly Bean Hunt Grade: K-2 Overview: Which way to the jellybean? Students use two kinds of directions, left/right/forward or north/south/east/west, to navigate a hungry ant. Students direct the ant across a napkin full of jellybeans. My Learning Objectives: Follow directions using cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west) Follow directions using relative directions (left, right, and forward) Jellybean Hunt displays two views of a gingham napkin: the ant’s perspective and a bird’s-eye perspective. Lead the hungry ant to the jellybeans by using either of the two sets of direction controls: Left/Right/Forward or North/South/East/West.
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I have been asked to set up some planning days for Teachers this year, The details are below: Contact me on [email protected] if you are interested. I watched a wonderful Year 6 student present her inquiry to her parents and her class, recently. Her inquiry was “What has Science got to do with a pandemic?” She used the image below to talk about Scientists and Mathematicians collecting data to inform and analyse BIG problems such as a world wide pandemic. The map below is of John Snow’s analysis of cholera cases in London in 1854 and the outbreak’s connection to the water pipes in the city of London. Everyone who watched her presentation were mesmerised by this slide and the student who presented it was well able to analyse the image and discuss the implications. This student is just beginning her journey into this subject but I was immensely impressed with her ability to understand it and its implications…in fact I was amazed!!! Hooray for inquirers who want to explore and understand!!
Natural disasters, bushfires, floods and pandemics. How do we talk to children about trauma?6/14/2021 These children were exploring the concept of Natural disasters in their inquiry. The teacher became aware that she needed to talk with them about resiliency and the way that they managed trauma within their lives and their family’s lives. She started exploring the text ‘Where do the children sleep?’ as a way of talking to them about personal safety and protective behaviours. She hopes to get the children recreating their bedrooms or sleeping spaces to identify what makes them feel safe and secure within their family and their home and build upon their awareness of personal security and safety.What do they value? What will they take with them if they have to leave home? This will be a wonderful project for the student’s in this class. Many of them are coming from family trauma so this will provide an opportunity for the teacher to talk to them about personal resiliency and what it is that helps them feel safe at home, school, community and in the world. It’s a complex topic to talk about but so important!!
As educators...What do we know about online learning at the end of 2020 that we didn't know at the beginning? We had a big challenge in 2020. Instead of visiting our colleagues in Luang Prabang and training them to take the DTL workshops up and down the Mekong we needed to work with them online. This required some planning.....lots of planning. We worked out very, very quickly that communicating via a Nokia phone with a tiny screen wasn't going to work for either of us. They couldn't see or hear us.... especially if there were people coming through the LPBG library to work there. We couldn't make much sense of their Loatian responses. They couldn't understand us either. We are NOT Laotian speakers. We only speak Aussie english and our communication relies on visual prompts and personal connections peppered with english and the occasional Laotian phrases. We make much use of our non verbal communication skills when we work face to face with our friends and over the past 10 years they have got used to us and our gesticulations! Well used to it! We needed a bigger screen so we could see them and they could all see us here working. So, procuring an iPad was essential if this was going to work. Chantha managed to perform a miracle [ with Rotary's help] and by week 2 we were ready to go with an iPad on the table in the Library positioned so that we could see everyone at a glance. We did the same thing up the Australian end. So positioning the screen was very important and then making sure the volume button was turned on! It wasn't enough, however. The communication was patchy. So, we worked out what we needed to do. We needed to work 'hands on' and slowly step through the activities we were working on... when extra clarification was needed we sent photos or images of the task. We also set up a followup worksheet to send with the series of steps in each task. Our colleagues followed the processes step by step... but slowly SO, we worked out that it was best to model the task... send through an image of the steps required and go and have a cup of coffee and a yarn for an hour or so whilst they worked on it. The magic was that they returned to the screen with creations that were far and away better than anything that we managed. We were so thrilled. So, that's how we keep working over the weeks together. We stuck with this structure We set the scene, showed what we had created, asked some questions, got more information, clarified what we had learnt and then left them to work on it at their own pace in their own time. We worked every week in just the same way as we have worked when we visit. This helped us all enormously as there was nothing new in the way we work, just the distance between us. After about 8/9 weeks of regular Monday workshops the Library staff had built a Tiger diorama and a workshop about protecting tigers in their world ready to share with the Village children up and down the Mekong and a Pangolin workshop in the same way that was equally as successful. The library staff rolled out the workshops with the children, in the same way that we did online. Over 500 children have learnt about Tigers and Pangolin in this way. So, what we know is that building strong partnerships with people encourages them to try new ideas and new ways of thinking and working AND engaging people in integrated tasks where the learning is hands on is magic!! We also know that these people are up for perfecting our ideas. We don't have to!! We just have to build the inquiry. So online learning worked for us... YAY!!! Now to the next project! Leith and Rachel Every educator in Australia needs to see this powerful documentary... every educator in the world. We need to move away from our Colonial past and our desire to control our student's thinking. We need to give them a voice. Not only that, we need to sit with the discomfit and work alongside them to build an education that will fit them for their future. This has to be two way. it can't be anything else. we need to support them to create a happy successful and fulfilling future where they are connected to what matters to them...
The restrictions of the pandemic in the past semester on classroom teachers has provided so many opportunities to connect to what is most important to students. There have been some wonderful examples from teachers building upon curious student's interests in Inquiry . I have seen some amazing projects in action. Here are some snippets of Saira's year 3 class' work following their interest in honey bees. Saira is a very talented artist so there are some very good examples of student's 'looking like scientists and creating like artists'. The excitement was palpable when walking into their classroom. The questions on the ' I wonder wall' were so complex and varied.. Fantastic!! Looking forward to seeing the action of next terms inquiry. |