The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

YouTube video uploaded by lunarartadventure

What a mesmerising and enchanting app for the iPad!  A real bargain at £2.99.  Just had to share and can’t wait to show my class on Monday….

End of our African adventure (for now)

The last few weeks have been hectic to say the least but after dipping our toe into the world of games based learning with My Word Coach, we proceeded onto Wild African Safari. As mentioned in previous posts, we have covered a lot of ground (not just across the Serengeti National Park) but also with our literacy and ICT. At the beginning I was hoping to get the more reluctant writers engaged but as I have just finished marking their writing, I have found that my class has really enjoyed this topic and produced some lovely pieces of writing (I just wish I had begun earlier in order to have expanded even further across the curriculum). I will definitely do this again next year!! Even though this particular game has come to an end, I am looking forward to sharing my conclusions and ideas with colleagues in the project and beyond. I look forward to being involved in using Wild Earth African Safari and Another Code R with Year 6 after Christmas. If you have used any of the Wii games in your classrooms, I would love to hear from you, either comment below or tweet me at @nickynewbury.

Wild Earth African Safari – Day 3

Up in a helicopter, rising above the Serengeti National Park!  It’s great to have a completely different perspective of the savannah and its animals.  The children are learning about new animals and ask to go and look them up so they know what to look for – the hydrax is a tricky one to find…  Note taking skills are being used to great effect so far.  We recap at the beginning of the session by looking at the previous assignment and the photographs we took.  This ensures that no vital facts are missed.  The hope is to complete a fact file on some of the animals and a diary entry of their first day ‘on safari’.   Positional and directional language has improved due to the fact that other children are helping those using the controls.

‘This is SO cool…’ was the response of a reluctant writer who grabbed a pen and a dictionary (to find out about the animals) and wrote right to the very end!!

Wild Earth African Safari – Day 2

The excitement continued and all the tasks were assigned to the different groups.  The sense of urgency was more today because the children realised that they had to get ALL the primary photographs or they would fail the assignment.  Today was definitely better regarding the Wii controls, no motion sickness from anyone today!!!!  However. there was one bone of contention – the frog!  The children spent ages looking for one frog and the compass took them in the direction of the grazing giraffe herd and rhino.  Perhaps the funniest part was when they were looking along the ground and water’s edge for the elusive frog when somebody called out to look up and in doing so came face to face with the rhino.  We all jumped back together then collapsed into fits of laughter at what we had done.  Finally all 30 photographs that were required had been taken and another assignment was completed – phew!  Not sure what animals will be in focus tomorrow??  But, I can’t wait…

Wild Earth African Safari

After a big build up yesterday, today was the launch of our new adventure into the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania via the Wii game Wild Earth African Safari.  The children had viewed some YouTube videos yesterday to which they wrote an accompanying persuasive blurb.  It was somewhat ironic that as we ventured into the African landscape, it began sleeting outside!!  We talked about the landscape and  animals that would live there and why which built up nicely to today’s exciting safari.  All was going really well but unfortunately one of the children felt sick (and then was promptly sick – not sure if it was the motion sickness from the game or a bug??)  Once that was sorted, onwards we went, exploring the landscape and taking notes from the information given on the screen.  The children did a valiant job of taking the required photographs in their role of photojournalist/jeep driver.  Much excitement was had by way of children calling out instructions,  directions and whilst taking notes about the elephants together with operating the controller and num chuck!  They have learnt several things from today, to use more subtle movements regarding the controller, teamwork and co-operation and how to jump a mile when faced with a lion!!!!!  (It was almost like watching a 3D film as they all jumped backwards….)  Assignment 2 awaits us tomorrow where the focussed animals are giraffes.  Fingers crossed that there are no more dashes to the sink!!!!

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…

Read Kiddo Read

Thanks to Simon for the heads up on this site, where lots of literacy lovelies are to be found.  It’s from the Devon Literacy Team Blog who have recently posted reviews of  6 of the Best Websites for Keeping Teachers up to Date with Books.  It has a link to James Patterson’s site called Read Kiddo Read – worth a look…

http://www.readkiddoread.com/home

Rocketman animation

A superb animation posted by olojac on YouTube about the characters in a book coming to life – been around a while but worth reminding people it’s there…

Handwriting font

I’ve had a go and done one for our cursive style – snag is I had to pay $9.95!  

Mr Thorne does phonics

Over 200 videos to enhance phonics.  Click  on main title above to take you to his site.