Mystery Bus Tour- Literacy sharing.

Last night I had the privilege of joining 100 other Whangarei teachers on a Mystery Bus Tour, organised by the local literacy association.

We toured 3 local schools, 2 primary and an intermediate and had a chance to talk to staff and look through the classrooms, libraries and staffrooms.

What an amazing chance to see what is happening in our neighbouring schools, an opportunity most of us don’t get very often as we get caught up in the busy-ness of our own school day.

The highlights for me were the amazing literacy rich classroom environments displayed in all schools, the adventure learning and self-managed timetables being explored by Simone Gentil at Morningside, and her classroom culture built around the bucket filling concept. 

I also loved the modern learning spaces explained so clearly by Adam at Morningside.

Whangarei Intermediate’s literacy lead teacher Karen Hinge shared her reflective blog and Tracey Allison at St. Francis Xavier’s classroom and blog show how effectively e-learning can enrich a classroom literacy programme.

Such a huge amount of learning is gained when a large group of teachers meet to share, discuss and learn from each other. I can’t wait for the next opportunity to visit new schools and share ideas with other teachers.

How about contacting your local literacy association to see if they already hold or will organise a similar event in your teaching community? 

On a smaller scale - spend a lunchtime at a neighbouring school.

Take one of your staff or team meetings to a neighbouring school and factor in some exploring time.

Run a shared staff meeting with another school(s) and then plan to do this every term with a different school - remember to factor in exploring and sharing time.

 - cross-posted from my update on the ICT in English list serve.

Creating reading responses using Sock Puppets.

So here is my number 2 app of choice.

Sock Puppets!

Sock Puppets are free but you have to purchase extras like save to camera roll and the ability to import your own backgrounds.

Great for independent reading responses, easy to embed into blogs and share!

Making full use of the (still) camera on the iPad.

I remember my excitement when the iPod introduced the camera feature. Suddenly our ability to quickly document our learning journey increased ten fold.
Now all iPads and iPods come with excellent built-in still and video cameras and spending a little bit of time ensuring the students can use the camera effectively will pay huge dividends when you are using other apps.

How to improve camera skills.

I introduced a bingo camera skills challenge. I gave each child a sheet, a device and sent them off to tick off the skills they already knew and could demonstrate. Once they had ticked off all the skills they already knew they then had to buddy up with one another to try and find others to show them how to do the rest.

Here are my bingo sheets - feel free to use and share.

Simple - Year 1 and 2.

Medium  - Year 3 - 6

Using popplet in a multitude of ways.

The more I work with apps in learning contexts the more I believe that you only need a few quality apps to fulfil all your needs.

If you keep on introducing new apps then you are going to have to spend a lot of time 'teaching the apps' rather than getting on with the actual learning you want to be doing. 

I am encouraging you to take one app and really explore how many ways you can use it enhance your learning programmes.

Here is one of my favourite apps - 18 ways!

Drag the posters off and print them out to inspire your students and colleagues to try using Popplet in lots of new ways.

Popplet online gives you the option of adding video.

The Free Popplet app is here. (you get 1 free-but you can delete and start again)

And the paid version is here.

Let me know how you have used Popplet. : )