4 events

Here are 4 events that inspired me to record my learning journey as a blog:
1. In November 2005 I attended Professional Development courses run by Jacqui Sharp – "Digital Cameras for real Beginners and 101 Ways to use your Digital Camera."

2. I was next inspired by Dorothy Burt who spoke about classroom blogging at a Teachers Conference in Palmerston North in January 2010.

3. My wonderful techie and future focussed husband, Julien, continues to inspire and challenge me to try out new "technology." Hence my iPhone is now my favourite device that I am addicted to and would be lost without. Together with my iPad it has made it so easy for me to keep in touch with current changes in technology.

4. The last event that catapulted me in the deep end and showed me what could be happening in my school, was attending the ISTE conference in San Diego in July 2012. This conference opened my eyes, inspired and motivated me to share my learning. This blog, hopefully, will have ideas to inspire you to get e-learning happening in your classroom.


Daily 5

I attended an Educamp unconference at Albany Junior High in the May holidays and discovered Daily 5 as a possible answer to organising and managing my reading programme. I then read both books written by the 2 sisters as well as The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. A lot of reading for 2 weeks!! But eye opening and very motivating.


There are lots of  wonderful ways to personalise or make Daily 5 work in your classroom. Here are some people who were instrumental in getting me started:
Kathryn Trask @kathryntrask
Judy McKenzie @judykmck

@traintheteacher
http://elearningr14.blogspot.co.nz/

Kimberly Rivetts blog


Daily 5
A quick overview of each activity:

Read to Self
This is about independent reading.
Finding a quiet space to read to themselves aloud or in their head.

Read to Someone
This is about reading in a pair or three.
Finding a quiet space to read to their group and talk about their book.

Listen to Reading
This is about listening to good models of reading.
Listening Post stories - readers or Journals,  or Sunshine Online 

Work on Writing
Developing a love of writing -  All the free writing that the students don't get to do in the dedicated writing sessions during the week.  This is about writing for enjoyment and fun - self selected topics and styles.

Work on Words
Spelling or Grammar - this is about playing around with words, spelling rules and grammar or playing word games.


Reflection on Term 2/Next Steps - Term 3
Am going to run Handwriting & iPad; Buddy Spelling & iPad; Oral Language - folders from 9.05 - 9.30
Some Handwriting had deteriorated without regular lessons during Term 2 - would like to get iPad stylus' and use iPad handwriting app that teaches correct starting points
Could also use this time to have 5 children write on their wiki page? Have a rotation - a list of tasks to be completed on their wiki page or some other elearning skill  tick off when done - publishing, new skills  - send an email, take a photo, send a tweet, AudioBoo, Fotobabble etc - could keep a track of wiki page content, who hasn't had a turn at....

Term 2  Week 9 & 10
The most eventful outcome so far - the children and I made a presentation to Sue, Amanda and Clare using Educreations outlining reasons why we would like more iPads in the class - we now have 5 to use! (plus my old one when there is a group of 6.)
So how to use them to the max?? And incorporate Daily 5 rotation
I'm thinking to begin with: only have groups of 5 or less -
1. 5 iPads - Work on Writing on their Wallwisher/Padlet that I created to go on their wiki page - own choice writing
2. 3 PCs - 2 chn sharing - Buddy Reading - Sunshine Online stories - read out loud together and listen and activities with each story
3. 2 laptops & my laptop - Storybird - Buddy Writing - create a Storybird together - read other Storybirds
4. Word works - word building activities
5. Read to Self
6. Teacher guided reading group
We might have to change it to Daily 6!
We don't get 6 rotations every day - this would be over 2 days 15 minutes for each
Children won't be able to write on their wiki page during the rotation unfortunately - we would need more laptops - you can't work on wiki pages on iPads

Term 2  Week 7 & 8
Messy weeks - L & A for 3 days, ST 2 day release, doing end of term R/R for reports, class photos, visitors etc
Am using Audioboo again for recording R/R - then pasting link into Confer notes - chn and parents can hear  - Charlie and Kartik read so fast they lose meaning and details in the text - can play it back to them so they can hear themselves
Chn enjoy Daily 5 and request it each day - try to fit in 3 changes when possible - 15 minutes is long enough for Read to Self and Teaching group but not long enough for Word Work and work on Writing on the laptops - the morning goes so fast.
Have also been going to the IT Suite each Friday 10.15 - 11.00 to publish/ add stuff to our wiki page - it means they get a concentrated time to get something finished on their page - but I'm finding they can easily delete things off their page!! Is a wiki page the best sharing tool for this age
? Will check out Kidblogs - a page added to the syndicate blog (Blogger) is too limiting

Word Work - Buddy Spelling with 5 words each takes a while, so the word activity just gets started when it's time to change - have been having a zoo word activity sheet as well as the card matching/ sorting games

Work on Writing - after David Kinane's visit have sorted their wiki pages - they now have a contents page showing posts - so each new post needs to have the date and a title using Headings3 - so have solved the problems of their writing being written anywhere on their page.

Term 2  Week 5 & 6
Work on Writing -
- own choice writing on their wiki page
- zoo animal research fact sheets - using books or Wikipediakids to find facts
- turn these facts into a piece of writing
- read onto Audioboo, fotobabble, publish on wiki page, or make a QR code

Listen to Reading
Junior Journal stories
- take turns at laptop choosing stories for group
- have no more than 2 journals
- get monitors to set up headphones before school


- monitors to unplugged, untangle and hang them up at end


Term 2  Week 4
We brainstormed a list of own choice writing ideas - all chn excited about this - spent the rest of the week working on their own writing - Oscar was the only one who found it difficult to choose a topic.
Other ideas -
Need to display this list
A box of photo story starters
A box of interesting objects
Bubble Cat - Bubble Dome writing box
Storybird

Confer - am trialing this app for conferencing individuals and groups for guided reading. It looks perfect - I add notes while sitting with the group or beside one child.
You can group chn, add group notes, write teaching points discussed and write next steps. The chn are included in this note taking and can see - could it replace a modeling book?


Can then email each child's notes to their OneNote page

Term 2  Week 3
It's all starting to come together. The kids are enjoying the rotations - we managed 3 x 15 minute ones this week on 2 days.
Had the zoo trip on Tuesday so did writing & art follow up on the Wednesday and that interfered with Daily 5 and reading. Then tried to fit finishing off art and writing within the Daily 5 and that got a bit too messy!
So.... Need to stick to really basic activities within the Daily 5 rotation.
Still need to do Work on Writing i-chart and brainstorm ideas for this activity  - suggestions for personal choice writing - would like to use the 4 computers and iPad for this. I'm thinking of introducing Storybird for the computers and a book review Wallwisher/Padlet for the iPad - photo of the book followed by 2/3 sentence review.
I have made up a Boggle sheet for Word Work - but it seems to be taking the kids a while to do their buddy testing.
Would like to do another QR code - maybe some facts about a zoo animal - then put them around the room for everyone to read with the iPad and put on their wiki page as an example.

Term 2  Week 2
The Read to Self boxes are a hit! They are also enjoying the SSR time we all do together - building stamina/capacity.
Tried to focus on getting the anchor i-charts done this week. Got the Daily 5 rotation up and going and introduced this too even though we hadn't done all the i-charts. I actually think it was better to do the i-charts after a group had done the activity then they had more of an idea of what the steps were and what sort of behaviour was required - they could also add their name next to their suggestion on the i-chart - the kids seem to like having ownership of the idea on the chart. This worked for the Listen to Reading and Word Work i-charts.
Listen to Reading is reading along with the listening post - 5 headphones and one laptop - a tekkie controls the laptop and chooses the stories from the Junior Journal series. This activity is a popular!
Also worked on introducing reading strategies into the picture book read aloud. Made an i-chart for predicting using the title and pictures. "Dart the ..." And introduced the idea of a Word Collector chart - our first word is "muster."
Heard groups read and added some work form last term to their wiki page as well - practised copy/paste.


So much to do to get it all up and running!

Introducing Daily 5 - Term 2  Week 1 2013
Day 1
Into it on the first day of  Term 3! Individual Read to Self boxes are all set up. They look new and inviting with names and bright coloured contact on them. We spend the first part of the morning selecting  6 books to go in the box. Then we brainstorm ideas  - our first i-chart for what Read to Self will look and sound like. Then we practice it the wrong way then the right way -just like the 2 sisters say - they manage 3 minutes the first day.
We start "Stella Steller" - a favourite chapter book of mine and popular with Year 2s. Try to talk about the strategies of predicting what will happen  next - it gets too complicated trying to write up a chart as we go along - it seems to spoil the excitement of reading. Manage to get a holiday recount done as well on that first day.
Day 2...
The rest of the week was spent  - introducing Good Fit books - I used the shoe talk
Practising buddy spelling again and checking their lists were up to date.
Practising Read to Self - choosing a quiet place - built our stamina up to 5 minutes.
Eva and Maia organised the others reading their holiday stories onto Fotobabble which we then embedded onto their wiki page - embedding was new so that took up time.
Also brainstormed books they like to read and they wrote a couple of sentences that they then generated into QR codes - using quikqr.com. Printed them out. This was a hit with them - used the iPad to read each others and check they had the right one pasted onto their Read to Self box
Plus had to fit in a writing sample for e-asTTle for whole school wide moderating exercise.
So much to cover in introducing The Daily 5  - but can see that my class will love the independence, freedom to choose, self monitoring aspect within the confines of some structure - the 15/20 minute rotation.
It just seems a lot of whole class sitting and brainstorming i-charts together to set it all up.

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