Hi everyone… Just wanted to let you know that I’ve changed classes this year and am now teaching Grade 4… yes, moved to the bigger kids. This year we have a class wiki (which is currently private) and we are sharing our learning on the wiki and using web2.0 tools to help us.

I’m still learning and still have my passion for integrating ICT across all areas of the curriculum and believe that it is my role as a teacher in the 21st century to not only support the learning of literacy and numeracy amongst other areas, but to provide my students with the skills and critical awareness that will enable them to be success citizens in the global world in which we live.

There are so many wonderful projects happening around the world and I sometimes still loose all track of time as I go from one exciting blog/wiki to the  next and wonder in all the amazing things happening in classrooms around the world.

I am inspired to continue to learn and when I get time, I’ll come back here and share some of this incredible journey I am on.

Until then…

Stay safe and be brave… it’s a whole new world… but it is ours and we’re certainly are right in it.

Cheers,

Trish

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a safe and happy holiday.
If you get the chance I hope you are able to spend time with family and friends and enjoy a break.
I know we hope to do this.
Thank you for your contributions this year to our blog and our learning - it has been great.

Check out our year in our Animoto video - I’m sure you’ll agree our year was BRILLIANT!

A big ‘thank you’.

Hi everyone, the last day of school for 2008 has arrived and I wanted to take the opportunity to say ‘thank you’ to all the Champs. I have enjoyed a wonderful and very rewarding year teaching and learning with you all. Each of you should be proud of all you have achieved this year – both socially and academically. When I think back to our first day this year and recall the little faces that entered Grade 2 with excitement and wonder I can’t help but smile. I’m sitting here thinking about some of the great things we did this year:

• Healthy bodies unit
• We are all scientists
• The Olympics in Beijing
• Whole school concert
• Big day out
• Animal day
• TV / Movie character day
• Wheels day
• A walk to Maccas
• Mother’s day visitor
• Animations
• Stop motion animations
• PowerPoint / Publisher / Paint / Class blog / Slide share / Voicethread / Notebook / Animoto

All of the above as well as lots of learning about how to become better readers, writers and mathematicians. And if that isn’t enough we also focussed on being the absolute best we can be in every way. We made mistakes (hopefully a million as we wanted at the beginning of the year) and each of these gave us opportunities to learn new understandings, ideas and skills.

We set ourselves personal challenges to ‘raise the bar’ – we set high expectations and worked toward these both individually and as a group.

I am extremely proud of each of you and wish you all the very best as you move into Grade 3.

A big ‘thanks’ also to our families - your support, assistance, encouragement and friendship makes teaching an absolute joy.

I do have the best job in the world!

I wish you all a very safe and happy Christmas and holiday and look forward to seeing you all around school next year.

Merry Christmas,

From Trish

Hello everyone and welcome to the last week of school for 2009.
Today is a pretty exciting day for all the students in the school as they go for a visit to their new classrooms for 2009 and meet their teacher.
Unfortunately I am not able to be at school today as Kaye and I are presenting our ‘MathsBook’ project to the Knowledge Bank: Next Generation team in Melbourne.
As I can’t be in two places at once I thought I’d send you a message using a voki - a web2.0 tool that allows you to communicate online without using your own image.

Press the play button.


Get a Voki now!


 

I am very excited to be teaching many of you for the second and for some the third time and am looking forward to some exciting learning opportunties next year. For now thought, I’ll ask Mrs. Hankin to return to the notebook file (get the kids to help if you need some) and I’ll leave you with a little Christmas fun thanks to James Hollis and the teacherslovesmartboards blog.

I was tagged by Mary-Anne Lynch for the Wordle Meme started by Lee Kolbert. Wordle is a Web 2.0 application for generating Word Clouds from text which you provide. Words that appear more frequently in the text are featured larger. I took the challenge and my Wordle appears below.

Looking at our wordle I was really glad to see that reading was one of the most popular words featured in our blog. It was also great to see words like children, magic, great, mathematicians, smartboard and creative showing up as common words in our blog. This has been a wonderful opportunity for me to reflect on the work we have shared on our blog and also provides a stimulus for us to think about what are some of the areas that we could work on more.

Thanks to Mrs. Lynch I have joined skype and have already made contact with Hamish at Alfredton primary school here in Ballarat and hope to share some learning with him and his class in 2009. I would love one day to meet up with Room 102 in Canada through skype and maybe that is something we can work towards in 2009.

Our world is becoming more accessible through the incorporation of the internet and web2.0 tools. This combined with the children’s ability to search and wonder and seek new knowledge is inspiring and I am looking forward to continuing the journey.

So with my reflection on the Wordle complete, I would like to tag Mrs. Lynch, Britt Gow,
Anne Mirtschin and Anne Baird and here are the directions:
1. Create a Wordle from your blog’s RSS feed.
2. Blog it and describe your reaction. Any surprises?
3. Tag others to do the same.

Check out this really cool website.

Shine and Write has loads of math games / problems to challenge you. Some of these are really very hard – but have a go and see if you are able to solve any.

Remember, let us know what you think – we’d love to hear from you.

Trish

On Friday we celebrated ‘Animal Day’ in our classrooms. This term we have begun an inquiry unit about animals and in particular animals of the ocean. We know a great deal already about animals but are really keen to have our questions answered about things we do not know.

We are all looking forward to our upcoming visit to the Melbourne Aquarium and hope to see and feel some amazing sea creatures.

Our animal day was a treat - a reward for positive classroom behaviour and attitudes to learning.

I’m sure you will all agree the creativity and joy seen here is wonderful. If you get a chance call into school and check out the fabulous ‘recycled’ creations the children made. Their challenge was to work collaboratively in teams to build an animal. The chidren were all able to articulate what good group work looked like and what it didn’t. I have to say here that they worked wonderfully together and I am very proud not only of their creations but of their continuing growth as learners. Well done Champs and Bunnies!

What is multiplication??

That’s our Question.

What is something you learnt in maths today? Did you make a connection?

That 3 x 4 equals 12. Tayte

I noticed that it counted by 2s when we were doing the shirts and pants on the smartboard. Issey

Multiplication is times tables and groups of. Madi

It’s jut like tops and jeans – you can use tops and jeans to figure things out. Jas

It’s a maths tool you can use when you have groups of thing. Holly

The Smartboard helped us make the outfits quicker than drawing. Molly

I liked how we had a challenge of finding the answer of 4 shirts and 3 tops. Perri

Mathematicians don’t draw pictures like artists. Tayte

Madeleine had a good strategy and this helped her work out the answer quickly. She could then use this strategy to help her work out other challenges. Molly

A great place to play and invent.

I found this cool site over the weekend and thought I’d share it with you as I know how creative and inventive you can be. This might be a fun site to check out on the holidays. Have fun!

Trish