Check out this really cool song by Eric Herman…Love it!

What a super day we had today! Dave, one of our super teachers at school has taken extended leave and is travelling in the UK with his family experiencing many wonderful places and getting into some real hands on and hands in learning experiences. This morning (our time) we set up a Skype session and spent time talking with and seeing some amazing pictures of Leah’s UK adventures.

The Troops along with the other grade 1 class (The Caterpillars) and Leah’s class mates of 2009 (now big grade two-ers) were thrilled and amazed to be able to see and talk to Leah in real time when she is in fact on the other side of the world. They could not believe that it was night time for Leah and that it was infact Thursday night when for us it was Friday morning. What a wonderful opportunity to have rich discussions about the earth, rotation, time … we do love technology!

After this great chat with Leah we learnt a poem about how super special and different each of us is … the kids did a great job describing how they were unique and special and illustrated something they really loved which helps to make them special.

So, as week one of term one comes to a close I want to share how lucky I feel to be the Troops teacher this year – what a super group of 21st century learners! Looking forward to next week.

Until next time, Trish

Wow – what a great day we had today. It was great to see 21 happy Troops come to school this morning eager to learn and to be back at school. We started the day getting to know each other and sharing some of our holiday experiences. It was wonderful to hear the great variety of experiences had by all the children.

We read a great story about a very Sneezy Camel named Columbia and the kids did a great job is joining in the ‘Atishooo’ moments during the story.

We talked a little bit about how we will look after each other this year – how to be good friends and to help each other learn. We decided that my job as the teacher is to help keep them safe and to help the children to learn. I might just say now that I think I have the best job in the world and I will do my very best at all times to do these two very important things.

After lunch we read and chose a book to take home and then did some great painting and construction work. Can you believe this was only day one!

I hope that you come and visit with us here on our class blog and please take time to leave a comment – it is alway great to know who might be visiting us here and it helps us to see how what we learn and share on here can travel around the world.

See you next post

This week I received an email from a tech specialist teacher in California asking if our school would like to get involved in sharing our learning with children from the Rancho Romero elementery school. Matt and I are pretty excited about the possibility of our kids talking via skype and learning about things that are the same and different in our home towns. Hopefully we’ll be set up in first term and will see and meet the Grade one kids from California. I’d like to extend an invitation to our parents to come along and participate in these sessions and see how technology can bring kids from the other side of the world into our classroom. How exciting and what a great opportunity for our kids!

Today I spent some time setting up our classroom, getting ready for an exciting year ahead. Thanks to my two helpers
for all their hard work. Thrass training in January – looking forward to this proffesional learning opportunity.

As we are drawing close to the end of term I would really like to open up the world for my class and get them to share Christmas traditions with children from other parts of Australia and the world.
Recently I joined a great wiki called Skype in Schools which contains some great resources, research articles and a directory of teachers using skype.
I’ve had contact from a number of schools in the US and we are hoping to set up a day/night when our kids can get together and have a skype session talking and sharing information.
I’ve also joined a directory set up by Andrew Williamson which contains a listing of Aussie teachers using twitter.

We talk often about teaching for the 21Century and about providing our students with the knowledge and tools to be active, creative, reflective and successful global citizens.

These two great tools are a great way to get started so if you are interested in skyping with other schools or joining the Twitter talk please visit these great sites and join in.

I know for sure my class and I would love the opportunity. Cheers Trish

Here is where you can generate your own talking tomato or this very clever wizard… check out fodey

Check out my really cool animated Tomato… you can make one easily for your blog/wiki… the kids will love it! As part of our ‘rich word focus’ I’m going to get the kids to make their own animated creature and have them add some great rich language. Watch this space to check these out.

E5 Instructional Model for teaching – the coaching process

Our school leadership team was selected to participate in a research project on how to implement the e5 Instructional Model of teaching into our school. Our Super team have developed a coaching model where teachers work with a coach to help them plan and implement teaching and learning opportunities in line with the e5 model.

We began with some Pd about the model itself – some fun and sharing at staff meetings to get a better understanding of what this whole things was about.

We then completed a survey to help each teacher assess what they do well and areas of the e5 that we would like to focus on. I chose to focus on ‘EXPLAIN’ and in particular to develop language skills and understanding – a BIG need in my class of very talented Grade 4 students.

We then met with our coach (Super Jen was mine) and had a professional discussion about what I wanted to do and how I would go about setting this up. What was fantastic in this instance was the opportunity to sit down and have this conversation – as time is a teacher’s worst enemy at times but finding the time for these conversations is essential.

Over the last two weeks my class has been immersed in a variety of learning tasks and opportunities to develop rich language. I have used a variety of teaching and learning strategies and have used ICT in a variety of ways to support and engage the kids. We are currently in the throes of making ‘rich word’ movies and have a voicethread almost complete. We are using the thesaurus in word and using images and sounds to ensure we develop a rounded understanding of the richness of language and ways to use it.

The kids are having a great time and it is great to see and HEAR the language choices the kids are now making. As one of the boys commented to me the other day, “Trish, sad is a pretty bland word!” Well done Baynsey!!

The wordle below was created from a collection of rich words the children gathered as a homework task in which the children all completed their own wordle. Brilliant!!

A few weeks ago I attended a workshop on how business owners could use twitter and other social networking sites to  grow their client base and ultimately their business. As I am a teacher and my business is ‘education’ I was trying to gain insights, skills and knowledge of how I could use Twitter and Social Networking more effectively in my classroom. Sam Mutimer was fantastic and as most PDs I go to I try to take home atleast one thing with me – on this occastion my thing was ‘tweetdeck’. This application/tool is great for organising who you follow and keep up with the volume of tweets. Using tweetdeck I began to build a better understanding of the use of hash # tags and how to find great people to follow. Since using tweetdeck I have found a number of great sites to use in my classroom including:

langwitches blog

Interactive maths site

The Book Chook

Scavenger Hunts

and Writing Fix.

I’ll write more about these great sites and some others in the near future. 

I’d love to hear from you and will look for you on twitter.

Find me on twitter as ptoosh and see my bookmarks on delicious