The Street Wk 1 – 6 Brockwell Junior School

Before our next meeting I thought I would give you a quick round-up of what has been happening on ‘The Street’. I have broken each week down into the stimulus, how the children worked, the end product and an example from our blogs.

Week 1
Stimulus – Sound file
Working style – Individual
Product – Description (setting)
Example – http://kidblog.org/5S2014-2015/tag/daniel/page/2/

Week 2
Stimulus – Work from Y3AD
Working style – Paired and individual
Product – Play script (simple)
Example – http://kidblog.org/5S2014-2015/4ab6011f-3625-4624-986b-47ea83dd159a/bird-robbery-on-the-street/

Week 3
Stimulus – 100th Anniversary of The Street (competition judged by Brian Moses)
Working style – Individual
Product – Haiku poem
Example – http://kidblog.org/5B2014-2015/60251e04-69a8-4498-a58e-8c0dba8c5ed0/the-cold-morning-3/

Week 4
Stimulus – Estate agent brochure / rightmove.co.uk / Images of houses
Working style – Small group
Product – Persuasive text
Example – http://kidblog.org/5B2014-2015/16e56fa2-09a6-4c29-aa8f-4d4a45ff1b50/no-99-the-street-detatched-seaside-cottage-for-sale-500000/

Week 5
Stimulus – Property description (see Wk 4)
Working style – Small group / paired
Product – Description (character)
Example – http://kidblog.org/5B2014-2015/d411c932-2869-463a-8dc8-cba4c0f97ce0/the-thompsons-farther/

Week 6
Stimulus – Peer review of character description (see Wk 5)
Working style – Paired
Product – Improved character description
Example – http://kidblog.org/5B2014-2015/a69358be-efdb-40b7-adbe-8e61f8370203/a-lovely-terrace-house-for-sale/

Additional
I have complied the character and property descriptions into one document.
http://kidblog.org/5B2014-2015/dfdc55c7-e2c2-43fd-b073-02b551d61c27/the-street-characters-and-property-using-slate/

Augmented Reality to inspire writing.

In year 4 we are attempting to blog our entries for the BBC 500 words challenge. We have been discussing strategies to help us be more creative and unlock our imaginations. One thing that was successful this week was using augmented reality to spark our ideas. We used StARz and ColAR Mix for this.

Take a look at the blog to see how we got on.

Alien Invasion

http://kidblog.org/MissLenthallsClass/4913958e-ca83-4ba4-b198-c9575d081075/origins-500-words/

Dragon and Mystery house AR

http://kidblog.org/MissLenthallsClass/4913958e-ca83-4ba4-b198-c9575d081075/augmented-reality/

Thanks

Dan

School Blogs

Rather than hand pick an example of our projects this year, I have decided to share our class blogs which have many examples of using technology to enhance children’s work.

Brockwell Blogs

http://www.brockwell-jun.derbyshire.sch.uk/blog-2/page/2/

Year 6 and Year 4 Blogs

http://kidblog.org/MrsCrutchleysClass-2/

http://kidblog.org/MissLenthallsClass/

Mr Parkinson ICT blog (This is a fantastic blog and a great example for anyone using iPad in the classroom.)

http://mrparkinsonict.blogspot.co.uk/

Enjoy!

Poetry and Twitter

In a series of cross curricular lesson (Literacy and History), Year 5 had been learning about World War 1. As a final piece of work the children were asked to write an acrostic poem incorporating all their knowledge about the subject. When these had been written and (up-leveled) improved the iPad was used as a presentation tool. These were printed out and glued into Topic books giving them a very limited audience. To rectify this I tweeted Wilf Scolding – an actor in the BBC 1 drama ‘The Passing Bells’. I have embedded the tweets below.

This simple act of share increased the audience for the piece of work and allowed the student to make contact with somebody who may understand some of the conditions in World war 1.

I believe this activity achieves the following requirements in the new National Curriculum.

English – KS 1 and 2

Pupils should be taught to:

• develop positive attitudes towards and stamina for writing by:
  • writing poetry

Computing – KS2

Pupils should be taught to:

• understand computer networks including the internet; how they can provide multiple services, such as the world wide web; and the opportunities they offer for communication and collaboration
• select, use and combine a variety of software (including internet services) on a range of digital devices to design and create a range of programs, systems and content that accomplish given goals, including collecting, analysing, evaluating and presenting data and information

Sharing practice

We’re interested in how literacy provision in schools can include new digital media in ways that reflect contemporary practices in everyday life. A small invited group of enthusiastic local teachers have started meeting with colleagues from the Sheffield Institute of Education to share, discuss and develop ideas and practice. At our meeting on Thursday 9th October, we looked at the impact of the new literacy curriculum, focusing particularly on how this is being interpreted through the Sheffield STAT assessment and planning tool. We went on to think about the curriculum spaces now available for working with digital media, and shared ideas about using quad blogging in school, creative uses of Twitter and Skype and various other apps. We’ll be using this blog to share examples of our practice and thinking.

The beginning…

This is the first post on the FCL blog (if that’s what it’s called). Here we’ll be posting on the development of a project co-ordinated by Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant at the Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University which brings together teachers and academics interested in new developments in the literacy curriculum.