Ilaisaane playground from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

As promised, today we sung our story. Interestingly not as much recycling was needed to get to this point! I also filmed ALL the class singing on their own. Check out Ilaisaane...her abililty to not only sing the whole story but also to monitor her voice so the audience can hear and understand her speech.

The suns rays from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

What a great language session today. Karen gave the class a picture of the playground. With some nudging and prompting a simple story was designed.... "I like to play on the playground." Next offering was "with my friends."the children were told we needed to add on to make it more interesting. From here it grew from "in the sun" to "sunshine" to "suns' rays"---all within seconds of each contribution the stakes were upped! Our final draft... "I like to play on the playground with my friends in the suns' rays." We built a song around our story....watch this space as we'll go public with our it tomorrow! Next step-we will re-visit and re-craft a more interesting sentence starter!

Today, as part of our post writing activity, the children were asked to open up an 'Explain Everything' and write their full name. After previous discussion we decided to begin this process as part of our writing programme inorder to help with size, letter formation and of course knowing how to 'write my name!' On completion their work was shared on the 'Apple TV' and previewed by their classmates.

Which Technology?

After a wonderful PLD with Manaiakalani 1-4 Team Leaders and Dorothy Burt, I came away questioning and reflecting our timeline decision with regards to our formal writing encounter and when we should consider doing more writing purely on the the iPad. I ran my reflections and considerations past ‘Karen’ my MDTA BT (and co conspirator). She felt the same way I was feeling. Although the learners get multiple opportunities to write on their iPads formal writing has been paper and whiteboard focussed.

Keeping with our adage ‘slow and steady’ makes me feel comfortable with all our decisions to date and when questions like this pop up it’s always good to rethink our pathway and reconsider the future goals! Next year may be completely different once we have experienced the new encounters!

Straight to their folders!

Over the past week we decided that we needed to start saving the children's learning into a more viable area other than their camera roll on their individual iPad (which we would later transfer into their Drive). Karen sorted out a way to send work directly from 'Explain Everything' directly into their folder on the Teacher Dashboard. This is is a wonderful time saver and allows them to save both photos and movies straight into their own folders. We have been walking the children through this process in small groups at the teaching table but will at some point create a pictorial for those who may need extra support.

Hard copies and EE Activities

Today we had a productive and successful guided reading session. We used hard copies and activities that were pre-made and purpose built for the book being read. The children remained at the teaching table so the book activity could be explained and begun. Even though the learners have had some experience with cut up sentences on EE on their iPads it was noticed that they haven't been recording their learning. Today we focussed on getting the children to record themselves and listening to the playback. Rae Jae was amazing. He needed support the whole way through the re-build of his sentence. He was scaffolded with each move of a word. The sentence was repeated after completion. On playing back the recording Rae Jae spoke with the recording-pre-empting his own voice over with the correct text. UNFORTUNATELY, as I went to save his work he had already 'not' saved any changes!! I was able to capture Casshius and Atlanta.

Atlanta rock pools from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

Cassius rock pools from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

Guided Reading App

This past week we introduced PM e-Collection into the class reading rotations. The week prior we set up the programme, making groups and establishing each learners library. We chose to trial the app on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This idea was floated as we don't have many of the titles offered online. The children need to take a hard copy home in order to consolidate their learning so the plan was to send home books on the e-Collection days that we either had a hard copy of or books they had pre-read. The first group logged on easily using a pre-made card displaying their username and password. Once 'in' each iPad had to be changed to 'Guided Read' so the words did not jump around and the voice over would not be activated when pointed to by the children. Each page loaded partially and then fully a few seconds later. For being a first day the experience was pleasant for both teacher and learners. The second day of the trial was however, gruelling! Out of the two groups (4 groups would normally be seen) who came to the teaching table the App would not open... either the password/username was incorrect (no matter how many attempts were made)or there were no books loaded in the individual learners library. This is something we have to look into....what is causing these issues.