Making Shapes within Explain Everything

This resource supports teachers and pupils with iPads using Explain Everything as a tool for learning. It is essential for children to learn these skills in order for them to become independent learners. Children learn to draw shapes using the shape tool. They learn to select a shape,colour the shape and manipulate the shape by pinching it to make it bigger/smaller.


 

Taking Photo's within Explain Everything

Taking photo's on your iPad is one of the first things I would teach my children. Along with the Kawa of Care for iPads children in my class started taking photo's in the first week of starting school. Taking photo's can be used in all parts of the curriculum. For example: When doing a reading activity children can can a photo of their favourite part of the story and write about it or/and they can take a photo of text and circle all the capital letters. Take photo's is a powerful tool to show/record evidence of their learning.


 

Teaching as Inquiry Focus for 2017

 Welcome to 2017.

I am looking forward to a great year ahead. I strongly believe that every student can learn given the time and opportunity. Together we can accomplish something amazing.

This year our school wide focus is Maths. After analysing the data from last year, meeting with parents and using my own teacher judgement I have identified a target group of children who are struggling to count sequentially from 1 to 5. They have difficulty understanding, for example: What 4 looks like or what it means. I am wondering about starting from the concrete and slowly moving toward the abstract using lots of  concrete materials. Based on my previous practice I know the the difference using the iPad to record their learning or show evidence of their learning has been valuable. I need to under how best to design learning including the use of iPads to best support these learners. My next steps will be spend some time researching effective maths pedagogy and making connections to the affordances of the technology and Learn, Create, Share.

Image Attribution:

       https://pixabay.com/en/numbers.

Focussing Inquiry Hypothesise

Through further focussing my inquiry I am fairly confident that my hypothesise data showed children struggled to count from 1-5. After further focus my hunch is that children have not experienced learning, they have limited vocabulary, limited language to say back to me, limited vocabulary and ability to connect language and concepts and most importantly they lack the confidence to share their ideas.

Focussing Inquiry Reflection

This year I have older Year One children, many of them started school last year. The children that I am looking at as my priority learners started school in June, August and late November 2016. My reflection on focussing inquiry is based on their JAM data that was done in November 2016. The data showed that children were working on, developing one to one matching for numbers 1-10 using mathematical equipment. They had difficulty identifying numbers from 1-5 and were inconsistent with their counting. I had conversations with their past teachers, their parents at meet the teacher and used my OTJ from my group lessons to gather evidence about there progress.

Looking at all this evidence and information I think that the problem is that they have difficulty understanding numbers and their value. They may identify the number 2 by rote learning but cannot show using equipment what 2 looks like what does 2 mean.

Therefore I have decided to target these children and work on sequential counting, developing one to one matching for numbers 1-5 then 1-10 using a variety of resources starting from the concrete and slowly moving to the abstract.

Inquiry Focus: End of Term 3

During the term we have been learning about retelling the story in our own words focussing on the beginning, middle and end of the story. This video clip shows what we have been doing thus far.
 
Inquiry-Reading Term 3 from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

Reading

Inquiry Focus Term 2 July from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.