2015 August

August 22, 2015
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Hands On Maths – painting too!

Posted by | Mathematics, Montessori, PYP | No Comments

As you might be able to tell I have a new fascination with all things Montessori and rather than reading what other people say about it, I’ve gone to the original books by Maria Montessori herself (English versions translated from the Italian). Here a few learning resources I am purchasing this year for Maths.

Hands on learning with built in fail safe ensuring differentiation. Exciting!
The other side of Maths is painting and art. Last year I used Kandinsky’s Circle in a circle and Paul Klee’s Castle and Sun as a provocation toward thinking about 2D shapes. As the new year has now started I will wait till we cover the learning experiences and share them with you.
August 22, 2015
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Student-created animal documentary

Posted by | Action, iPad, PYP, Student Created Content, Technology | No Comments

 “I don’t really like writing,” said one of my particularly uninhibited students towards the end of last year, “no one ever sees it… it doesn’t seem very important.” At the ripe old age of 6 this student constantly surprises me and today she really hit the nail of the head. We are constantly giving our students work and tasks that have a acutely limited audience and little real world significance. For our second last unit of 14-15 school year we made an iBook of student created documentaries on animals they were interested in an attempt to combat this early elementary apathy.

Students worked with me in pairs or independently on their documentary. The first assessment of the project was to draw a picture of their animal making sure to include as many details as they could. Then after a short group discussion the students searched for information to answer a short list of generic questions the class had agreed on. The first few questions required simple responses while as the last two were more open ended, allowing for differentiation according to student ability. Students search for information within books from our school Learning Commons (collated by our Teacher Librarian) and also from a few websites with age appropriate content curated on a Pinterest Board I put together.

Students wrote answers to the questions and this became the second assessment of the project. Student then participated in a teacher conference about their ‘script’ and how they would divide it up for each group member when necessary etc.

Students then search Creative Commons images from Flickr.com to illustrate their script. We used the Typic app to brand each image with the Creative Commons logo and link to the image on Flickr.com.
Even though this took longer than I would of liked – the discussion around academic honesty and digital integrity was fantastic.

It is a little late but it is now published on the iTunes store, for free. We hope you like it and if you would like to leave any comments we would be very excited to receive them.

August 01, 2015
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Schoology Portfolios: Entry/Assessment Planning

Posted by | Schoology | No Comments

What goes into the PYP portfolio? This is very closely aligned to assessments.

Research:

Here is my current thinking:

Portfolios include summative assessments but also have to include documentation about the learning and thinking that is occurs up to this point (formative assessment). As part of my professional learning plan (our school calls them LEAD goals) I am researching and using pedagogical documentation practices to make student thinking visible. This means portfolio items will be both student and teacher created (but always student centred!) Sometimes entries will be individualised and other times will be reflective of whole class experience. Its also important to include student action. Planning must also be flexible so this is by no means set.

UPDATE: After speaking with my coordinator I am going to have this list as a suggested inclusions as the PYP portfolio only needs to have one sample homeroom teacher chose, one sample the student chose, and one sample from each of the specialists. (September 2015)

UOI 1: How We Express Ourselves

  • Literary Analysis: Main Elements and Plot Pyramid
    • Magical Garden of Claude Monet by Laurence Anholt
    • Camille and the Sunflowers by Laurence Anholt
    • The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson
    • The Gruffalo’s Child by Julia Donaldson
    • Zog by Julia Donaldson
  • Storytelling Analysis: Techniques and Plot Pyramid
    • Mook Mook the Owl by storyteller Anne E. Stewart (Australian)
    • The Crocodile by storyteller Anne E. Stewart (Australian)
    • Beer Rabbit by storyteller Diane Ferlatte (African American)
    • The Boy Who Wanted a Drum by storyteller Peter Chand (Indian)
    • 5 Little Brothers by storyteller Estrella Ratón Pérez (Spanish)
  • Writing Journal
  • Addition and Subtraction – Path to Abstraction
  • Number Sentence Story
  • Story Tower
  • Oral Storytelling Project

UOI 2: How the World Works

  • 2D & 3D Shapes tutorial
  • 2D Shapes in Art
  • 3D Shapes collaborative artwork
  • Simple Machines Photo Essay
  • Measuring Length
  • Science Journal
  • SImple Machines Marble Run
  • Unit Reflection

UOI 3: Where We are in Place and Time

  • Day 3 in Grade 1
  • Suitcase Mystery
  • Show and Share – artefact
  • Seasons: Book of Hours Calendar
  • Time: Telling the Time
  • Biography Reading Response
  • Family Crest
  • Family Timeline
  • Unit Reflection

UOI 4: Who We Are (in review)

  • Classroom Map
  • Day in the Life Story book
  • Skip Counting

UOI 5: Sharing the Planet (in review)

  • Addition and Subtraction tutorials
  • Animal Documentary
  • planning document
  • documentary
  • reflection document or audio of conversation

UOI 6: How We Organise Ourselves (in review)