Games Based Learning

Over the past few weeks my class (Year 5) have been playing My Word Coach on the Wii during Guided Reading and writing sessions.  They have worked in their guided groups at improving their vocabulary and spelling.  By getting more proficient at the game (i.e. more successes) this unlocks further games for them to play.  The game cleverly picks up that they are improving and makes the words a little more challenging.  I have to say that my children are really enjoying it! (Only two don’t have a Wii at home!!)  They are learning and improving their word skills without really knowing that they are doing it because it is in a format they recognise – a game!!  One of the best things that has come from this has been the collaboration and team work that the children have had to employ in order to become more successful.  This is only the beginning for Bowood Class as we plan to use other games across various areas of the curriculum to reinforce and consolidate  learning.  Watch this space…

Primary School Teaching

A new  site was tweeted to me, called Primary School Teaching! Resources for ALL key stages especially Foundation Stage!!! Songs, lessons,teaching resources, self registration pictures, IWB activities plus much much more…

All new upgrade to Textease

Following the ICT conference yesterday, I realised that we currently have a very old version of Textease but the good news is that we were advised that we could freely upgrade to the newest version which has more options, better photo banks, animation, sound recorders, timeline and ideasmap together with many of the earlier problems ironed out.  Look for Lightbox in the programs menu as this is now what it comes under.  By linking to the site http://www.textease.com/resources/ will give you video demos, walkthroughs and top tips for all its applications.

Tom Barrett’s blog

Tom Barrett is a teacher who believes in inspiring and engaging learners with (and without) great educational technology.  His blog is brilliant and in particular this link will give you more than enough ideas to bring some of these ideas into your classroom. http://edte.ch/blog/interesting-ways/ They range from spelling ideas (hot topic at mo), ways to make yours a sparkly classroom (without the use of glitter), supporting writing, using google and wordles (a favourite).

Then if you like http://www.wordle.net/ where it makes the words bigger the more frequently they are used (you can cut and paste text or get the children to use it as a database of ideas).  Doug Dickinson retold an anecdote that went along the lines of teachers cutting and pasting a child’s report to make sure they didn’t use a particular word too often.  You will LOVE Tagxedo http://www.tagxedo.com/which is wordle but resulting in a shape that relates to the content.  Use the templates provided or your own!

Lots of lovelies!

Been to the Wilts ICT Conference today and picked up loads of great ideas to use back in the classroom.  Found out that Google has so much to offer, for instance, if you type say, 234*321+345/997 into the search bar then press return it will tell you the answer.  The search bar is it’s own calculator, simple!

Gadwin http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/ is a free piece of software that captures your screen and then automatically saves it in a file called Printscreens for later use, so many screenshots could be taken and stored rather than the normal way of print screen, opening a word document and clicking paste etc etc – quick, easy and more efficient.

Copyright free photographs are vital and by accessing them from this site http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/flickrCC/index.php allow pictures which have a CC (or Creative Commons) licence to be used for educational purposes without infringing copyright.  Attribution to the author is given which is also good practice for children to realise that using photos, music etc without permission is taken very seriously.

What a super site for UKS2 – http://www.millionfutures.org.uk is just a lovely concept!  A question is posed and around the question are paper aeroplanes with answers, ideas and opinions.  Hover over each plane to see what has been written by earlier visitors to the site, then write one of your own and send it and it turns red so you can locate it.

Another free download called http://www.wartoft.nu/software/sebran/ which has lots of words and letter games.  What is particularly fab is that once downloaded, click sebran in the bottom left hand corner and you can change the language you are using – brill!!

More soon…

Need ambient music?

This site has a range of music to suit a variety of themes -have a look!



http://moodturn.com/