Identical shoes

Identical shoes from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

One day Nature and Kahurangi came to school with the same shoes. They both noticed and from this a discussion was formed. We started to think about another word we could use instead of 'same.' Kahurangi came up with 'identical.' And so a song was developed! Another unknown word taken into the known!

The zookeeper and the birdhouse!

IMG 0018 from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

IMG 0029 from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

Another example of building stories into song to help understand and remember how technology was used at the Zoo. Here are two examples showing their understanding of how a pulley was used in the bird enclosure. This then linked into writing allowing the learners to recall what they wanted to write.

Writing changes...

Our writing has finally taken another step. Now that some groups have more control (fine motor and letter formation) we have gone from writing (rather large) high frequency words on an Explain Everything blank sheet, to writing our story during Guided Writing time. Today we focussed on hearing and recording sounds, locating unknowns and the 'old chestnut' finger spaces. The girls in this group were then able to save their work into their writing folder on Teacher Dashboard.

Fiafia

The adage 'slow and steady' has been at the forefront of any of our decisions and so far has proved to be advantageous to both the teachers and learners. Last week, the day after Fiafia, we were all exhausted so decided to up our game and throw together two learning skills the children had been working on separately. With a bit of scaffolding the children were asked to draw and record their experience from the previous night. The whole class know how to use the drawing tools on Explain Everything and the recording button so put them together and we have a wonderfully illustrated story!

fia fia oalii from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

nature fia fia from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

Number pictures

Here is one way we have used Explain Everything for maths. This can be used in all maths stages. To make sure the children are on task we have a 'number' checklist they must complete. Today Francis was asked to show his understanding of the number 5. He put 5 insects on to his 10 square, took a photo, re-sized it, saved it in Explain Everything, re-positioned the picture and then wrote the number 5 using his stylus!

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!