"Its Magic!" IWB Rub to Reveal in a Phonics Session

Friday's are great with my timetable including a day with one of our younger Phase 2 classes.  The students all aged between 6 and 8 are Year 2 and 3 and a lively group.  Their day with me includes a focussed reading session, which for the last couple of weeks has involved using activities to investigate spelling and reading texts and words including the phonemes they have been working on during the week.  To help with this I have begun collecting images from the web, that we can use as a starting point for the sessions.

Some of the phoneme groups I still think are a little obscure, and image collections not easy to compile. This week for example we have been looking at the various graphemes that can be used to represent /er/.  The collection included things like ferns, birds, a teacher, a winner who came first in a race, a collection of words, a Whirlwind and  screen capture of a wordsearch.

The images were used as an introduction to the session, and as a way of re-engaging the students in listening for the sounds they had been learning about, or thinking about what each image might represent within the rhyming groups they were working on.  In addition however the images were also selected to support engagement with the main task, which was to work in pairs on a "phoneme Spotter" activity before sorting and grouping the words according to the graphemes they contained.  I was concerned that some of the words might be unfamiliar to some students, and hence the choice of a fern, though the choice of some images as visual metaphors, such as a flame for burn was also interesting allowing discussion of what fire or flame might have to do with the /er/ sound we were working on.

Previously I have printed or copied the phoneme spotters we are going to use to a smart board notebook, to act as a shared read before asking students to find and code words.  For some reason I decided last week to present the spotter covered by a layer of digital ink, and to make it into a "rub amd reveal" activity.  The students loved it, and were completely captured as the IWB eraser was dragged across the text slowly revealing the text a word or sentence/phrase at a time.  "It's magic!"  seemed to be the common consensus, and the looks on the student's faces who had obviously not seen this before was great.  This week when I was passing the class I was asked if I would be making the computer write stories again.  Moments like this are the kind of thing we live for and I was happy to oblige.

What was really interesting today was  though that element of "magic" remained, the students were now anticipating the text appearing and began to read along with the rubber as the text was revealed.  This offered some interesting opportunities to begin playing with the text,

• skipping on and revealing words later in the text while leaving others preceding it hidden.  Discussing what might still be hidden under the ink before revealing this and testing our predictions.
• Stopping to ask what might come next, before reading and checking our predictions
• revealing a few letters or a few words from the next sentence and asking what might appear next.
• Revealing the initial phonemes and final phonemes and asking which grapheme or sound picture will be under the ink to spell the word we were reading.

Putting the "magic" aside for the moment, engagement with the text in this way prior to the spotter activity, improved student familiarity with it, while the use of the images to begin meant some of the stranger vocabulary had been introduced.  In pairs I asked them to use their own versions of the text to identify the words that contained the /er/ graphemes or sound pictures, and then pulling the group together we began identifying how the /er/ sound could be written and where each grapheme usually appeared in words.


After this, the students were asked to test our ideas and generalisations by soritng the words they had found in a table.  The group was pulled together again for a final review with a "drag and drop" version of the table top task used to sort the words as a class and check against the work we had done.  While discussing how well our generalisations worked.  E.g did "ir" always go in the middle of words, and "er" always come at the end.  From the examples we had the rules seemed to work pretty well, even though I did introduce at least one example from our photos that didn't match, eg shirt, first, girl and bird followed our rule, but the fir tree didn't, however as a rule of thumb it worked pretty well.

I'm sure for many colleagues the structure of this session is more than familiar, however for me what was interesting was

• How use of "Phonic Photos" or text related images helped re-engage the students with phoneme and grapheme groups introduced and even though metaphorical in nature how some of these prompted discussion and inferential work, while also helping introduce visually, unfamiliar vocabulary
  
• How introducing the spotter as a whole class shared text, and in a slightly different way, using digital ink  and rub to reveal techniques opened possibilities to engage students with higher order reading skills such as prediction and deduction based around an accesible and manageable text chunk
• How student response and motvation seemed to increase through the "magic" created by a relatively simple extension of a previous task by the addition of digital ink and use of the rub and reveal technique.

Additional Stick Figures for Pivot

This week I visited students in a secondary phase ICT extended learning session.  The students were using Pivot Stick Animator, to develop short stories following on from previous sessions where they had planned and developed their own background scenery to help them tell these.  As I was talking to one of the students about their work from nowhere there appeared a beautifully crafted jet fighter that flew across the scene, needless to say I came away from the session with a new online space to share and explore. 

Droidz a webspace recommended by this group of students hosts collections of ready made stick figures and effects for use with Pivot, these include creatures, vehicles and weapons, as well as a forum and share space.  Though they may not all be everyone's cup of tea, and the existence of a forum and share space will have esafety considerations for direct use with students, the characters and figures available do provide interesting extension possibilities and variety for the existing set downloaded as part of this freeware tool.

I would recommend however a visit to the site in order that colleagues can review and check out for themselves figures available, and that primary colleagues might like to create collections using those they feel are appropriate to the activities they they want to develop with students, rather than giving free reign. Hopefully this space will make an interesting visit and add an additional tool set to your bookmarks.  Thanks go to the student group who pointed this out to me this week.  Can't wait to read your outcomes.

Revisiting Viewpoints: Working in the Style of Monet

In a previous post, Viewpoints: Working in the style of Monet I presented a learning story, showing how I and a group of Y4 students had used

• images as discussion points around the work and style of the artist
• drawn on these over a number of weeks to sequentially develop graphics using ICTs based on this work

The unit, involved the use of a common graphics package (MS Paint) to construct and manipulate student self created images while also consolidating functional ICT skills.  These include

• limited tool choices to create image elements in the given style. eg spray can and colour pallette
• Select and copy tools
• Introducing and consolidating the "cascade save" process, using save as and "sensible file" names to build a portfolio of progression through each activity, and return points to which we can go if errors are made, and navigation of network drive spaces.
• Understanding how we can use a graphics package to compose images by drawing together elements we create seperately
  
• Using a collection of predeveloped (drafted image) elements and toggling between software instances, through the use of select copy and paste tools to arrange image compositions.
• Explore cause and effect using rotation and flip tools (in Paint) or by extension to use more complex graphic tools, to investigate and explore filters and effects, before choosing images for our final outcome.

Previous units have resulted in students creating "IKEA" style Prints.  Using MS Publisher to import their final image before adding text and printing out their work on the colour laser.  This time around though I am intending to develop an entirely digital outcome by exploring Monet scenes that reflect seasonal change.  Working with KS2 Students the outcome and brief is to use graphics tools and the collect, store, share and prepare process to produce a short animated sequence based on a single viewpoint or landscape that shows how a scene might appear at different times of the year.

How will this be achieved?

Using Microsoft Paint the students will create a landscape, showing skyline, mid and forground and develop a simple tree skeleton motif using the spray can tool to include trunk and branches.  The tree skeleton will be saved as treespring, treesummer and so on.

Drawing on discussions about how trees appear in images representing the seasons, colour choices made by the artist for mood and effect, the students will  develop their own representations of the tree motif during each season considering  colour choices and exploring the effects they can create by layering spray effects. We will maintain a copy of our original tree skeleton motif as a return point, and for later use in the project.

Using the original tree skeleton, students will be encouraged to create a single landscape starting point, by copying and pasting instances of it to the landscape they have created, composing their own particular viewpoint before saving four copies of this, named landscapespring, landscapesummer and so on. 

To each of these landscapes the students will apply the effects  they developed during their exploration of their tree images to show how they think they might appear during each of the seasons.  They might also explore further detailing, eg sky colour effects perhaps through the use of additional painting tools and the undo tool,  while using save as to keep copies.

Digital Outcome

Using Photostory and the images the students have developed I would like them to create a simple morphing sequence of change for their landscape.  They will be encouraged to select 4 of their images 1 representing each season and to import these to Photostory.  These will then be chronologically ordered on the timeline, before applying transition effects and times.  They will be encouraged also to choose one additional image from those created and to add text to this forming a title overlay.  To complete the project they will add a music track before exporting their completed video for addition to either their class or personal blog space within the VLE for review by colleagues and other students.

If readers have any thoughts about how this project outcome might be further developed I would love to hear from you.  In my new role this year I am also working with a number of Key Stage 3 classes and would be interested to hear from colleagues any ideas they may have about how this type of work might be adapted, extended or used as an element within projects for students in this phase of learning.    

Embedables: Jigsaw Planet

Following my previous post about embedables, I came across another that colleagues might find interesting and students fun through my Twitter Feeds. Thanks to ianinsheffield for this. Jigsaw Planet, generates an embedable jigsaw puzzle from an image uploaded to the space and then code to embed either the puzzle itself or a hyperlink to the hosting space. This widget requires the Java Browser Plugin, and the example below was made from an image I had previously downloaded, but

• Can you see what it is or might be without using either the ghost or image tool?
• What clues or evidence make you think this?
• What strategies would you use to solve the puzzle?

Like Ian I was thinking this tool might be an interesting way to promote discussion in class in small groups and pairs or perhaps at home through the VLE, perhaps around a school visit, as a starting point/stimulus for a new topic, idea covered or to be begun in class. How about using it like an IWB hide and reveal activity, encouraging students without using the ghost or image tools to solve the puzzle, gradually building up the mystery image or object, what clues did they use drawing from these discussions to support vocabulary choices. Any other thoughts?

VLE Reflections 1: A few embedables to get started

It is a wet and miserable day outside today and having spent yesterday indulging in a spot of amateur joinery in the real world, I thought I'd put aside the hammer and saw before I do any real damage and spend some time banging on the keyboard instead. Its been a fair old while since I posted anything, though I have been dabbling in the background, preparing bits and bobs. Listening in on twitter conversations it looks like I have not been alone doing similar things to many of my colleagues, those mundane behind the scenes things, that many don't see when they log on but if weren't done would certainly be noticed. Hopefully some of the things I have been doing will make colleague engagement with the ICT tools available to them more appealing.

One of these tasks has been setting up class templates in our VLE, setting up themes and installing widgets to be edited by colleagues. This begun I hope it will be less daunting to begin using the space in earnest as we move into the new year. A major barrier to date as I see it has been beginning, since the spaces we buy into, whether commercial or open source must first be populated with content, and this in turn must be planned and prepared before publication. For some of us I guess this can be seen as "doing everything twice," this bolt on image of the VLE is far from my own view and vision. If we are to embed these tool sets successfully, an alternative perspective that weaves the various components offered by a VLE or Learning Platform as an integral part of the learning experience must be taken. Rather than a repository for resources we make, if we see and make an expectation that the VLE be an extension or integral part of the classroom, then the tools and resources we make available here should reflect our view of learning and pedagogy by adaptation to meet the needs. social and academic, of the tasks we set.

This doesn't however negate the need to begin somewhere, so in this post I want to share a few online spaces offering embedable tools, one where interactivities are readily available for immediate use, and one recieved today through feed that requires some user input inorder to generate it.

The Ultimate Wordsearch Maker

Thanks to Joe Dale and Jane Croft for pointing me to the Ultimate Wordsearch Maker. This online tool generates "interactive" wordsearches. Below is a quick example, and I apologise in advance for the seeming lack of imagination in its content, however as a demo it was incredibly quick to create and publish here.

Make Your Own Word Search

Creating the wordsearch itself was straightforward,

• visit the site,
• input each word
• press the add button in between each new word.

Slightly more complicated but really satisfying will be when you have embedded a working interactivity to your page.

Once complete, your wordsearch can be added to your space in one of two ways, either

• copy the embed code,
• view your own web page as html
• click where you would like the activity to appear
• paste the code

this is what can be seen above;

or link to the page

• select the link code
• copy it,
• open a hyperlink dialog box
• paste the code
• press ok

this latter process adds a hyperlink, that on clicking directs the user to a host page. This may not be the most effective route, having possible implications for access in school if the site is filtered by the firewall. I think there is also probably more of a wow, if the wordsearch is embedded directly to the page to play there and then, and well worth the achievement factor on your part when you display the page for the first time.

Playing the game is straightforward, once found, click on the first and last letters of the word to highlight it, and if correct the widget crosses it off the list. What I was unsure about was the idea that in this version the word in the grid itself is not highighted, but this does leave the grid uncluttered, and easier to read. As a start the day task, for introducing new or extending vocabulary, engaging students with spellings, a discussion based warm up session, or simply as a motivator for the more reluctant to visit the class home page once a week this is a really nice tool.

Embedding this in our VLE (Netmedia) was a bit more drawn out since it "didn't seem to initially like what I was trying to do," and required the making of an html page first that could be uploaded to a "file viewer" widget. To do this I used the Microsoft Notepad text editor. Creating my wordsearch as above, and copying the embed code, then pressing start/programs/accessories to find and open Notepad (NOT WordPad). From here

• Click in the Notepad window,
• right click and paste
• press file/save as
• give your file a name eg wordsearch1
• delete the extension .txt and type .html
  
• select all files from the save as file types,
  
• press save

This file was then uploaded from the computer to the widget. Online tools and resources all have there own particular "quirks" and ways of doing things, the above worked in the tools I have been using today, eg Blogger and The Netmedia VLE, if the direct copy and paste processes don't work in your platform it may be necessary to play for a while in order to find the tool that works with your environment.

BBC Bitesize Activities

BBC Bitesize interactivities are ready made tasks created to support revision tasks. You may already use the space with students in school, directing them here by URL, but what you may not have noticed is that these activities can be placed directly into your own online learning content. If you are looking for examples of ready made embedable content to share with colleagues and use with students as you set up and establish your VLE, these are a useful starting point. There are a range of tasks to support English, Mathematics and Science, though in choosing which to use you will obviously need review them in relation to your intended learning outcomes. These can be added to a blog or web page using the copy and paste processes outlined above, and looked good embedded in a page widget in our VLE after following the final process outlined above .




Other Online tasks and Interactivities

In addiditon to Bite Size embedables, there are a host of other online tasks, and games on the BBC Schools Website that I have found really useful when setting up home learning activities for students. These sites have formed a focus for class based sessions too, where spaces created in the VLE have been used to direct students to specific content I want them to use and engage with. To enable this I have provided hyperlinks to the page, and simple instructions about how and why I would like the students to engage with them.

Finding resources such as these can be onerous, this is one of the reasons I began using del.icio.us to collect my bookmarks in one place it was also one way I chose to share these with friends and colleagues. I also began to sort and group some of these as a resource bank here. Some of these are getting on a bit now, and the space is looking a little neglected but perhaps you will find a few nuggets here as starting points. In setting up a link list of this sort for the students it is always a good idea to visit the space, first of all to check that the site is still there but also to ensure that it meets the exact needs you are trying to fulfill.

End Thought

I posted about Bitesize interactivities a while back and despite being able to embed them sucessfully into my blogger blog, and getting them to run in our VLE today, I have to admit I still haven't managed to get them to work with our Wordpress blogs. If anyone can offer any help or advice with this I would be really grateful, thanks.

BECTA Podium video

It seems an age now since Softease (now Lightbox Education) received their Award in the Content-free tools category for Podium at BETT this year. Having been ill, away from school and my blog for a while, it somehow seems even longer since I blogged about the day my students and I were visited by the film crew tasked by BECTA with capturing the tool in action and our thoughts about how it has supported teaching and learning in class. Logging onto Twitter the other evening after an extended break with family I was grateful for this tweet from James Watson.


If you would like to see how the video short turned out, and what we had to say about Podium, then it can be found on the BECTA website by following this link. Thanks for the heads up James, look forward to seeing you soon.

Honeycomb 7: Writing like an Agony Aunt

Today the students didn't actually work in Honeycomb, but rather the "static site" and comments we created during our previous sessions were used as starting points and stimuli for the session.

To begin this morning we read together and shared the comments and advice we had left for William, Greg and Claire in our previous sessions using the Honeycomb Worry Website as a shared text. The children were asked to work in pairs to identify the ideas that they thought the characters might find helpful, and then to work with me as a class to create a model opening for a letter to one of the characters. Prior to the session I had created a Smart Board Notebook, that divided the letter into the three sections I wanted the children to use in framing their response, within this I provided sentence/paragraph openers that they could choose from, to discuss and develop as they wrote.

Using their Asus Web books in pairs the children were asked to open the wordprocessing package "write" to create their own advisory letters to the story character of their choice. They were allowed to "steal" openers if they felt they needed to and encouraged to use, add to expand and improve the ideas modelled by their friends to support the advice they gave. Throughout the session the students were stopped and encouraged to read aloud their letters as they developed. Suggestions were sought as to where they might go next, while this process also offered opportunities for other children to reread, review and edit their works in progress in response to what they had heard.

To end the session students were asked to attach and send their letters by email to me for moderation, review and printing. As web books the Asus Ees do not have a direct connection to our school network or print solution, they are intended to be used to support use of local applications alopngside the online learning tools and storage spaces we are providing such as the VLE. Drop boxes are the main vehicle for doing this in our current environment, however as I have mentioned in previous posts I really want the students to see our VLE as just this a Virtual Learning Environment, and a social tool to boot. The drop box approach seemed somehow not quite right contextually for this activity and the type of work the children have engaged in. The emails and letters are currently sitting in my inbox, awaiting a response. Being concerned not to lose the enthusiasm that this process has evoked, I am thinking after all their hard work that the pairs of students should recieve a reply from the characters they have sought to help. This should not be too difficult or time consuming, drafting a short standard reply from each character, that can be copied, pasted and edited to provide a little personalisation . Keeping the children hooked in this way I hope will be a really cool in and starting point to the next phase of our writing process which will involve the children using the ideas we have developed empathetically to write their own dilema based stories on these characters and evolving around similar themes. It will be interesting to see what response having an email from either Wiliam, Claire or Greg will have on Monday Morning. Hopefully next week we will be able to upload our letters to the class blog and share some of the outcomes. In the mean time here is a taster offered by two of the boys...

Dear Greg

We are sorry to hear that you have been having girl problems. This is something we don't usually have. We both have a sister and know all about the problems that girls can cause.

Why don't you start by talking to her at lunchtime. You can find out about her and see what she is in to. After that you can ask her out then if she says yes, you can take her on a date somewhere she might like to go. Perhaps you could go to the movies or for a walk in the park.

Good Luck

J and B

I wish I'd had friends like them when I was at Primary school.

Previous Posts

• Honeycomb 4: Thinking Through an Online Role Play Project
• Honeycomb 5: Beginning our Role Play Task
• Honeycomb 6: Collecting Ideas For Empathetic Writing
  

Honeycomb 6: Collecting Ideas For Empathetic Writing

The students had a fantastic time today using our Worry Web to engage with character problems presented from the text we have been sharing this week. I was beginning to worry myself that the work done over last weekend to set up the static site model would flop disasteroulsy if I couldn't get the technology to work for me rather than against as seemed to be the case yesterday.

The problems/dilemas the children were asked to consider were those of three children

William who thinks he is useless at everything...

Greg, who says "I like this girl. I like her very much. I want to be her friend. I want to be her BOYfriend. I've gone all red and shuddery and yucky just typing it! I hate all this lovey-dovey stuff. It really sucks. I don't want to feel like this. I generally HATE girls."

and Claire who says "I have this nightmare. Its really scary. I don't know what to do. I dream it every single night. Does anyone else have nightmares or am I the only one?"

The three problems stirred up active discussions, and it was interesting to see this evening which of worries the children had chosen to respond to in most detail, and how responses had divided along gender lines.

Greg got some really interesting responses from the girls, who interestingly set about replying by changing the perspective for him by reviewing the problem and presenting a way of dealing with what he wanted to do from their point of view. Several of the responses included a "Well as I am a girl," viewpoint, while sharing with him their wisdom and outlining some of the things they thought he might do.

Claire seemed to gain most responses from the boys, who were quick to point out she was not alone, they too had nightmares or bad dreams, they tended to explain the reasons they thought they had "bad dreams" and made practical suggestions about how they had overcome these. These included sitting down and trying to relax before bedtime, emptying their minds and thinking happy thoughts. Perhaps the problem stemmed from the things she was watching on TV. One of the students explaining how he asked his mum to help him decide if the things he wanted to watch might be too scary if close to bed time. There were also some interesting suggestions about what to eat and drink and ideas about how to make yourself comfortable before trying to go to get off to sleep, perhaps taking a waterbottle and teddy to bed, putting luminous stars on the ceiling and so on.

It has been really interesting reading the responses to see how the nature of the space seemed to affect the boys partiucularly in terms of the things they said. The sympathetic and open way they said they too had nightmares, and the suggestion of a teddy bear is something some of the "cooler" guys would probably not have suggested so matter of factly. There was none of the switch to "she could" we would have gained in discussion, but more of the "why don't you.?" or "you could try.." type of response, that is exactly what Iwant to develop in our writing outcome.
I am really pleased about how the task and environment engaged the students empathetically with the talk for writing process. It also began the initial drafting of models we will draw on for our guided write tomorrow.

During our writing task I want to build on today's using the comments collected as scaffolds to help us write Agony Aunt type responses to the characters. When we planned this process I was thinking how interesting it would be for the children to work with the responses we collected to write a Dear Claire, William or Greg Letter. I am now wondering about having the children create these collaboratively using a word processor and offering two publishing outcomes. One to be printed for display, the other publishing to their Blog spaces, in order to extend the conversation and commenting process as part of an AfL and review activity. Encouraging review of each other's letters not only in terms of the content or how they feel about the advice. But also in terms of our ongoing writing targets while extending our ongoing work around reading for meaning.

Previous Posts

• Honeycomb 4: Thinking Through an Online Role Play Project
• Honeycomb 5: Beginning our Role Play Task