G-Suite Slam

What?
For ELT today we learnt some useful ICT skills that we can use in our teaching practice about a G-suite Slam course that some learning coaches from our school attended on the 12th of June 2017.

So what?
Some of the ideas that I learnt from today's ELT session were using:
1. Equatio which is about Maths made digital.
2. TextHelp Read and Write Toolbar which has many toolbars to assist in literacy.
3. Gmail Hack which can help to delete emails sent to the wrong person as well as to get work back to check it before sending it.
4. Fluency tutor that makes reading aloud more fun and satisfying for students who need extra support.

Now what?
I will try using some of these apps to help me in my teaching especially the fluency tutor app which will be a big help for struggling and reluctant readers, as well as students learning English as a second language.

Connected community day

What?

Ormiston Primary School and Ormiston Junior College are having a Connected Community Day on 6 July 2017. 

So what?

The learners were given 6 options to choose from.

Option 1: Ambury Farm Trip

Option 2: BreakOutEDU-natural disasters edition

Option 3: Masterchef-the rations edition

Option 4: Mindlab Trip

Option 5: Natural Disaster - act it out

Option 6: Survival in the wild

I was in-charge of designing the  'Survival in the wild' activity together with a group of learning coaches. Some ideas were:

*Building a shelter

*Making a stretcher to transport an injured person

* making a fire to keep warm

* keeping a person warm who is suffering  from Hyperthermia

* making a meal

*Waterproof jacket from plastic bag.

*first aid - linked to  earthquake type injuries eg; broken limbs.

* crossing an imaginary stream.

* sending message with restricted length-what would you say and who would it go to.

The learners will be given the opportunity to participate in real challenges outside and see if they have what it takes to survive in the wild if a natural disaster destroyed our school or homes.

Now what?

*Team to go to visit route to Murphy’s Bush

*Need signmee message

*Need Off site SAP

Maths PD with Ian Stevens

What? Today for our Educator only day we had a Maths PD session with Ian Stevens.

So what? These were some of the things that Ian first spoke to us about:

The 3 character strengths that are predictors of success, which school can cultivate are:

• Self regulation
• Habits & attitudes of a good person
• Habits & attitudes of a good learner

• Educating Ruby: What our children really need to learn By Guy Claxton & Bill Lucas is a great resource to help us achieve the above.

Why is Maths important? Two parts are:

• Educators covering the knowledge
• Teaching a way of systematic organised thinking

To be numerate have the ability & inclination to use mathematics effectively:

- at home

- at work

- in the community

Next we played some games

2 players (odd & even), 2 dice:

Roll dice, add numbers. If even numbers are rolled then even gets the point, if odd numbers are rolled then odd gets the point. The first person to reach 10 is the winner.

We then discussed whether it is fair?

When explaining the answer we used the following prompts:

I see it

I get it

I can explain it to others

We realised that when we add playing the dice game it was fair as there were 18 combinations for both.

Multiplying was not fair because 9 out of 36 odd; 27 out of 36 even

Next we discussed Problem solving information. Our group had to discuss the organisation section. We spoke about introducing the problem, groupings and reflection.

                                                                           Symbol

                          Word                                                                      model

Concrete to abstract e.g 3x4 (symbol) is 3 groups of 4 (word) show action/ equipment (model)

We also created games using dice on 'Trello'. A good idea would be to organise these games into stages.

Next we played an Addition love bug bump game using 2 dice where we had to add numbers and bump our partner out or lock a number in.

Thereafter we did an activity called 'What is the value of your name?'

Vowel : $150

Consonant: $50

Radha:

50+150+50+50+150

An alternative could be: A=1; Z=26

We then did a Measurement/ Geometry packaging net activity using

1. Small cereal box
2. Large cereal box
3. Glad wrap
4. toothpaste
5. String
6. Toilet paper
7. Film
8. McDonalds fries

We then had to Draw a net to hold 4 tennis balls.

Finally we did an activity where we had to sort out Maths problems into the various stages, year levels & curriculum levels.

Now what? I learnt a lot from today's PD with Ian. I am looking forward to trying out some of the games with my learners and using more open-ended problems with my learners.