Today I visited Silverton Primary school and was inspired by Discovery Learning. I hope to explore this more and incorporate this approach to my teaching practice. Thanks to staff and students at Silverton…you rock!
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Update newsletter
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The Utah Education Network has put together some great interactive activities to support learning. Here you can make a book all about you, create a flip book, create buttons, make your own music, play games to learn about our world and so much more. If you have a big sister or brother there is also some great things for them to explore.
I recommend checking out some of these activities and would love to hear what the kids think of these. Thanks to @starden on twitter for sharing.
Utah Education Network Interactives
Utah Education Network Interactives 3 - 6
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Last week one of our Grade 5 classes logged into the Ultranet. It was a great session with the kids exploring and see what they could do. I am really looking forward to all the kids logging in to the Ultranet and beginning to build their learning portfolio which will showcase their learning and growth throughout the school life. Yep, another exciting day at the office!
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Tonight as I was leaving school I bumped into a student from Grade 6 and his mum. Rory was very excited and told me about a book he had written, illustrated and now published. I have never had the opportunity to be Rory’s teacher but have watched his artistic talents develop over the last 7 years at our school. His book titled, ‘The Lost Things’ looks amazing and for me it demonstrates the what is possible when passion and support come together. A big congratulations to Rory and to Kate and Danny. I certainly hope this is the first of many books to come.
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Today we read the book, ‘Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!’.
Some interesting facts:
Bugs eat othe bugs. Trish
Spiders eat lots of food .Emma
Help! Bugs look scaryclose up. Declan
Wood ants are tiny.Georgia.
Dragonflys lived before dinosaurs we know this because of the fossils. Emma
Most bugs are only dangerous to other insects. Georgia
Well done guys! Hey, check out these acorn weevils. We have acorn trees at school so I wonder if this will be happening at our school?
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Today we had a visit from Lori Anderson – Ultranet Coach from down Warnambool way. Lori is working with teachers in her area to help support the introduction of the Ultranet – an online digital personalised learning space that is being rolled out in schools across Victoria. Lori was keen to see what we are doing with technology at Pleasant St, in particular in how the junior classes are able to use technology to support student learning.
In our reading session today we read ‘The Growl’, a great book with lots of rhyming. One of the activities the children were then asked to do was to find rhyming words or think of their own rhyming words and post these on twitter. Twitter provides the kids with a ‘real audience’ and they love getting their hands on, and their learning out in the world with technology. We also had our classroom roving reporter (today it was Matt) going around the classroom interviewing his classmates – asking questions about what they were doing and what they were learning. We use the easi-speak microphones which are really simple to use.
We visited with a number of other classrooms and it was great to see teachers and students engaged in such engaging, challenging and creative learning. We even had time for a quick mini-lesson on Glogster with one of the Grade 6 students.
We are really proud of all the great work that is happening in our school and are looking forward to meeting up and collaborating with some schools from down Warnambool way. Thanks for the visit Lori.
Bye for now, Trish and The Troops
See The Troops on Twitter @troops1psps
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Today we celebrated 100 days of learning at school for 2010. We ‘wrote 100 words’, ‘ read 100 books’, counted 100s of M&Ms (we ended up with 1000), made ‘groovy glasses; attempted 100 tweets; created a wordle with all the kids contributing 5 words each and had much more than 100 minutes of fun!
100 x 10 M&Ms = 1000 M&Ms
The name's James....James Cool!
keep an eye out for the video…coming soon.
Trish
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Today we were looking at adjectives. Adjectives are words that describe something. In our book, ‘Mother Hippopotamus’ Bad Hair Day’ the author describes the hair of the characters with great descriptive words. The giraffe has ‘lanky locks’, the zebra has a meticulous mane’ and the monkey has ‘curly curls’. The Troops created some of their very own creative hair-do’s and then wrote a descriptive sentence to describe them. They all did a fantastic job. Well done. Let the kids know what you think by leaving a comment. Trish
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screenshot of iPod touch
This week I spent a day in Shepparton, Vic attending a great conference focussing on using mobile technology devices to support student learning. #Slide2Share was a great event where teachers from across Australia gathered to share and learn ideas for using iPods and other mobile learning devices in classrooms to engage and support student learning.
I was amazed at the number of applications available for educational purposes, something like 150,000! We were fortunate to hear stories from schools within Australia and the US and how these tools have be implemented in schools. One school in Bendigo shared some amazing work created by kids in Prep and Grade 1. I am very keen to continue to explore how we can use technology to support my class in their learning and will keep you up to date with our progress.
A big thank you to Jenny Ashby, Louise Duncan and the team at #Slide2Share – what a great way to spend some of my holidays 
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