I used this video clip today with my Year 5/6 class to focus on description. We read descriptions of Professor Trelawney’s classroom (Harry Potter) and the Hobbit Hole (The Hobbit) and identified what helped the reader to visualise the scene in their head.
We then watched the clip and collected vocabulary relating to the three sections (Outside the wardrobe, Inside the wardrobe, Beyond the wardrobe). I also collected a few useful sentence openers (e.g. As Lucy opened the wardrobe door,…) and modelled how these could be used.
The children then wrote a description of what Lucy saw. Some chose to focus on one aspect of the scene, while others wrote about all three aspects.
The children were so excited by the task that they had lots of sentences to share and even my low ability group (writing at 2a/3c) were able to use some of the modelled openers to write complex sentences.
In the plenary, I asked each child to choose their best sentence and write it on a strip of paper to be displayed on our working wall.
The idea is quite similar to the Theme Park sim games available.
I used the idea last year, but my class quickly got bored with the repetitive calculations needed. So I’ve written a spreadsheet to automatically calculate profits, etc.
I’m going to make them do the first few days of calculations using a calculator, then introduce them to the spreadsheet and show them how this makes the task much quicker and easier. I’ll also introduce the idea of being able to easily change items and look at the effect this has. It’s written so that the children only have to input numbers into the green cells, some of which have drop-down boxes.
I’m hoping to then move on to writing some simpler spreadsheets, which is something we haven’t really covered yet in ICT.
You’ll need a copy of the book (ideally enough for the children to have copies to refer to during their work). I managed to persuade the school to buy 30 copies of the book last year:
I’ve written before about how I used the short animation ‘Bert‘. There’s also an interesting post in the ‘ICT Inspirations’ blog about how he used this with his class to develop talk into writing. And another one about using it to develop a digital story book.
However, just to confuse everyone who’d just got to grips with the Primary Framework website, they’ve redesigned the Standards site (and made it very difficult to find anything), so the updated section, with Level 1 grids, is here: http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/node/20683
http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/maths/mathsA5.htm – In the ‘New Primary Framework’ section, there is an Excel version of the APP guidelines (‘Asessing Pupil Progress Recording System’). This will be particularly helpful if you are trying to assess all pupils in your class using APP.
Teacher’s TV has a video showing a Year 5 teacher assessing writing using APP and attending moderation meetings: http://www.teachers.tv/video/29809. This might be helpful for staff meetings.
One useful idea that came out of the last training I attended was to use small coloured stickers to label evidence in pupil’s books. Have a set of numbered stickers for each child that you are assessing, and stick in book when evidence is shown. Then write the corresponding number on the APP grid. This will be useful for me as Maths Leader as it will enable me to moderate and monitor judgements by looking at the evidence that teachers are using.
I’m finding my class really difficult to manage in the afternoons – they have poor listening skills and often don’t co-operate well with each other. But yesterday afternoon I managed to find a lesson that kept them engaged all afternoon.
Earlier in the week, I had asked them to arrange themselves in groups of 3. I then gave each group a different planet to research, using websites that I had identified and a list of prompt questions for them to answer. They all managed to find most of the required information, using at least 3 different websites each.
Yesterday, we used the laptops to create presentations about the planets. To avoid arguments over working on the laptop, they also had to create a large poster on sugar paper and I specified which members of each group would be working on the laptop and the poster (then swapped every 15 minutes). This also meant that they had to work together when they swapped to ensure continuity. Working on the laptops meant that they didn’t have the distraction of looking for pictures on the internet.
The children enjoyed the lesson, co-operated well with each other and all produced a piece of work that they are proud of and keen to share with others.
Definitely an idea to use again with different content!
I just had to mention these tubs of objects from TTS. Unfortunately I don’t teach young enough children, so there’s no way I could convince my school to buy these, but there must be all sorts of uses for these collections of objects!
I’m sure they had some for French as well, but I can’t find them on the website. They had a tub for each letter of the alphabet and words written under the lid in French, then the equivalent objects to put back into the correct tub!
I do love small objects – I think I missed out on having a proper dolls house when I was young!!
This is my medium term planning from the last time I taught a topic on the Victorians. Its not complete, but we didn’t actually get through all the activities on there.
