Explain Everything and Google Drive from Lois Smethurst on Vimeo.

I’ve created a lesson plan in Skype in the Classroom to find classrooms who are willing to collaborate by being “interviewed” by students in my school who are creating content for their radio scripts. So far I’ve had one successful contact with a school in New Zealand but I’m hoping for more.

Time zones and mismatched holidays make it difficult to collaborate in real time so I’m thinking that I might try some asynchronous interviews using a tool like VoiceThread. This is still in the planning phase so stayed tuned for updates.

This gave us an opportunity to see how the ipad could be used to enhance, transform and improve the opportunities for learning by students. It was also an opportunity to explore the type of apps that we found most useful. The ipads in our school are shared with students in grades one – five so the apps are varied in levels  but focus on students using them to make and create as much as possible.

The screens shots below show:

• the Home screen with some of the most important/useful apps (eg Tiny Tap, Google Drive)
• the folders which are organised according to use or subject (eg apps to Present or for Maths)
• what is inside each folder – the free apps that we will use this year.

We will be adding some paid apps once we have our Volume Purchase Program is in place.

If you think I’ve missed something that could be added to the free apps please let me know in the comments below.

Often the year starts with students writing to teachers and vice versa so that teachers and students get to know one another. This post is to include some ideas about how and what to write when you introduce yourself. The finished autobiography can be used in the Tagxedo activity in the post below.

For students at my school this is a piece of writing that they will revisit when they write the script for their live radio show on The Berwick Lodge Student Hour, on 97.7FM Casey Radio and your students might find it helpful for other purposes as well.

Write it from 3rd Person Perspective -

Biographies are written as if someone else is telling your story. Paragraph 1 starts with the student’s name, second paragraph starts with he/she and the third paragraph starts with name again.

Make it interesting

Include some of the following (brainstorm with your students) – Interests, passions, hobbies, skills, pets,  favourites, clubs, groups, sporting teams that you are part of, great life experiences, awards, family background (if appropriate), and or a funny anecdote if you have one.

The autobiography can be short but a piece of writing with more words will work better in the Tagxedo image if you are going to complete that activity too. I think students should aim for 3 – 5 paragraphs. This is a great opportunity to reinforce the concept that a paragraph has a topic sentence that is followed by supporting sentences.

Be wary of writing an autobiography that is a  list. Lists are boring but by adding more information each topic can become a proper insight into the student’s life and personality. Have them tell a story by choosing the most interesting things about their lives rather than  tell every little detail.

Protect Your Online Privacy

Don’t include too much personal information i.e. date of birth, street address, private family business, lists of friends – as this is going to be published online.

Resources

The following are some resources that could help motivate students with their writing and give them some good ideas.

BioCube - suggested lesson plan is to have one student interview the other to introduce them to the class using the cubes they have made.

Scholastic example and possible starting web

BioPoem this could be a great way to warm up to the more formal writing

Assessment

I’ve chosen some outcomes for assessment based on Grade 4, 5 &6 that I think are relevant but not exclusive. These are “AusVels” based on the Australian National Curriculum Standards for English in Writing.

Grade 4

• form the possessive by adding just the apostrophe to regular  plural  nouns  ending  in ‘s’  
• develop agreed criteria for text structure and language features to edit own and  others’  work 

Grade 5

• plan, draft and publish a range of texts appropriate to purpose and audience, choosing and experimenting with text structures, language features, images or digital resources

Grade 6

•  plan, draft and publish a range of imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, selecting aspects of subject matter and particular language, visual, and audio features to convey information and ideas 
• use of a range of strategies to edit for meaning, for example removing repetition, refining ideas, reordering sentences and adding or substituting words for impact

This is a similar “Getting to Know You” activity as my previous post except this time using an ipad and the WordFoto app.

Process

1. Introduce the students to the idea of the WordFoto so that they understand what they are working toward. Ideally use a photo of yourself with words that describe you that will also be part of the class blog as an example.
2. The students can take their photo on the ipad and crop it to the size that will work best.
3. They choose 10 words that describe’s them and add them to the word section.WordFoto only allows 10 words (at least in the free version that I was using).
4. Choose a style that they like best – there were 8 styles to choose from. They can also fine tune some of the settings.
5. Once finished the Wordfoto image can be saved to the Photo Library or emailed.
6. The final step would be to use one of the blogging apps, Edublogs for example to post the image to the class blog.