MORE TOOLS FOR ENGAGEMENT

This is a great tool that could be used by the children to share what they know with others, present a timeline of events, reflect on the meaning of scripture through pictures, or to simply present a story they wish to tell using audio and video.
The site does everything for you all you have to do is upload the images and add some music
Type animoto into google its the first listing. HAVE A GO - this is so ADDICTIVE and engaging.

Janine

Improving student outcomes...what a team!

This arvo the mighty B team got together. What a wonderful 2 hours of sharing. We each shared our project and the strategies we are attempting to improve student outcomes. Teachers shared ideas, frustrations, questions, breakthroughs with certain children, technology tips, resources and passion for making a difference. We filled the staff room with 'talk on learning', of our students and our own. It was a privilege to be with such professional and passionate educators!! Maybe we have rediscovered on how we can work smarter rather than harder with the help of our colleagues.
My role is to continue to challenge people to keep their eye on the 'main game' .... improving student outcomes and to show to ourselves and each other that we are making a difference to the HFS students. I go to bed tonight a contented principal zzzzzzz

DISCOVERY

Robyn, Luke, Kate and Janine recently attended a Maths 300 cluster meeting. During this time we were introduced to an extremely useful link on staffnet. The site provides online tututorials that explain many of the Web2.0 programs that we are using in the classrooms with the students and also discovering ourselves. The tutorials are available in both Mac and PC formats.

http://www.atomiclearning.co.uk/tutorials

GENESIS - IN THE BEGINNING

Well, well, well here we are sharing a hot beverage and some thoughts with our team. I am still unsure of exactly what it is I wish to achieve with my learners. I have so many thoughts racing through my mind that it is difficult to decide which of these thoughts and ideas I want to go with.
FOCUS - FOCUS - FOCUS.
I think my main FOCUS is going to be the engagement of the children - that is I want their learning to be meaningful - connected to their own life. I want to create a learning environment that allows children and myself to be committed to, interested in, responsible for and reflective of our learning. If I create learning experiences that are engaging I am hopeful that the achievement of learning outcomes for the children will be enhanced.
FOCUS-FOCUS-FOCUS
We all need to reflect on our learning - so I think the idea of a reflective learning log is worthwhile - I need to be careful though that the log itself does not represent just another TASK to be completed because the teacher said so. Even the log needs to presented in a way which encourages and interests the children.
FOCUS-FOCUS-FOCUS
So now I am back to beginning how do we engage children in their learning - what is it they need and want to know????? Learning needs to be connected to their lives outside of our little classroom at HF. Learning needs to inspire thinking - meaningful, useful and COOL thinking.

I'm so confused - too many thoughts too few neurons.

FOCUS-FOCUS-FOCUS

Janine

My thoughts about "team thoughts"

A great discussion starting with 'engagement' and what that could mean to our students at HFS. We talked about the sense of ownwership students need to have to engage a lot like we are attempting with our Professional Learning groups. How can we implement and embed Higher Order thinking in to our learning? The use of Learning Logs as a vehicle to engage students in thinking was discussed. We also need to then;

• model for the students by 'thinking out loud' and drafting a Learning Log
• Provide a number of opportunities to attempt this reflection
• Provide Higher order thinking questions ones that encourage students to analyse, explain etc

Great discussion team.. Looking forward to our next meeting!!

Engagement and Higher Order Thinking

I am currently interested in focussing on mathematics - how can I make mathematics more relevant to the learners, how am I achieving the "connectedness" for them, building a relationship between mathematics and real life?
In planning my units I think I need to address the issue of higher order thinking - how can I use higher order thinking questions to enable students to become effective self evaluators? I am very interested to explore the scvience and tech model show to us by Gary. This model has 5 phases to consider when planning a series of learning experiences - engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate. With the system we have in place for programming I feel that I am not devoting enough time to developing meaningful learning experiences. I am going to revert back to the old system of writing specific lesson plans for a mathematical unit using these 5 phases of the model. I will then teach the unit for 5 weeks and provide children with a way of being self-reflective by providing them with a series of questions that will promote higher order thinking. These questions can be in the form of blog entries.

I also offered to collect a variety of questions that promote higher order thinking when reflecting on learning and I will give these to the group at our next meeting.

year 4 learning logs

well, after chatting this morning about the direction we will take im thinking that some kind of learning log will be beneficial to my childrens learning and my evaluation of my teaching and their learning. hopefully i can pinpoint what lessons were most 'value adding' to their learning and also, probably more importantly - what they want to know. that way, i can steer their learning to make it CONNECTED to their own life.
a weekly journal in which they can reflect on the weeks lessons and experiences about the theme unit will let me achieve this.

thanks for the hot choc janine :)