The beginning!!

Well it is week 3 and I am back into the swing of things. It took my body of couple of weeks to realise that there was no nana naps in the afternoon or snack food when ever I wanted!!
My class is interesting. I forget that you have to go back to the beginning and start all over again. I had one parent come in after day 2 and ask me if I was going to be grumpy all year! lol. I said "No not all year. Just until they remember what my expectations are in class!" Ha and I thought I was being nice!! WAIT till they see me really GRUMPY!
We started of this year (day 1) with reflections. I have set one of my homework note books up as a reflective journal. Each day (at the moment) the children have to write a reflection on what they enjoyed today, what they have learned today, and how they felt about this new learning. Most of the children got the language right after 3 days. Some children as always needed that extra support. Now that most of the class are able to do this we have moved onto writing a reflection, what are the next steps with our learning and what are two possible success indicators. I know that I will have to continually go over this with the children but hopefull it will make e-Portfolio reflections a lot more meaningful!
Today was the first of some release.
I worked with the Y4, Y5 & Y6 DigiKids.
We went over our Archives page, was this linked, did it have a table on the page and were our 2009 photos on it. We worked together on how to do all of this and the children went away feeling confident that they would be able to hlep their peers with this.
30 minutes went so fast!!!
Hopefully the Y6 children are going to come back with some ideas on what they want to cover during DigiKids time.

The End is Near

Well it has been a very busy, challengening and event filled year! I have truly enjoyed working with like-minded educators in the eastNet Cluster. I have learnt so many new things and have been able to take a lot of new ideas back to my classroom.
I am looking forward to working with 2 other great I.C.T Lead teachers next year to further develop eLearning in our school.
Now with the holidays approaching and the sun shining I am at a bit of a cross roads. My laptop has to go back for repairs and I am wondering if I am going to be lost without it or rather enjoy not having it. At least I will have an authentic excuse as to why I will have done no school work during the holidays!

Reflections

No not the kind you see in the mirror! I have spent quite a bit of time with the children who have not been making reflections on their goals for their ePort Folios the last couple of weeks. It made me realise that I didn't do a very good job at the beginnng of the year because these children didn't know how to write reflections!
We sat down and had a lot of discussion about what we could write. Using the templates that we got from AS the children were able to write what they had done but they were still having difficulity with what NEXT! More discussion and trying to get them to relate it back to their initial goal was a mission. But some children have got it and now hopefully there will be a ripple effect in my room.
Goal for myself next year: spend quite a bit of time on reflective writing and next steps!

Cluster Share

Last week we had our eastNet Cluster share afternoon. This was a chance for all 5 school to get up and show off the work that the amazing teachers and children have been doing. Lead Teachers at Elm Park were asked to show case the work that we have been doing. We decided on making a wiki where each team would have a page to upload examples of work. When I asked my team if they had any work that they would like to share they all looked at me with complete shock. I think they were a little bit apprehensive about putting their work up for display. In the end I just went and looked at their e-Port folios and took some work that their children had done.
This is the first time that I had ever worked with wiki's and I found it quite easy.
I was totally blown away by what schools had shared. It was great to see the journey that school were on. It was very exciting to see principal's also excitied about what their staff were doing.

1 to go!

I'm going to start off with a nice little song that I just can't seem to get out of my head! How to order McDonald's Pasifika style! NICE!
I am on the downward run! These last 2 weeks seem to have dragged on! I think because we had our rugby finals on a Tuesday the rest of the week seemed to take forever. After the last 2 very busy days we have had, I am quite looking forward to a nice cold drink!
We have some teachers from Tawa visiting this week. Had different groups showing keynote, slide.com, flickr, mathletics and wordle. Kids really enjoyed doing the various activities. The trouble was getting them off to begin literacy activities!
My lovely little JC is now gaining more confidence in loggin onto the computer. She now remembers where her username and password are hidden in my draw and when it is her turn, she is able to find it and log in. She is doing really well at Mathletics (although she needs to have a lot of the questions read to her!) Hope she remembers all this after spending 3 weeks in Malaysia.

eastNet Cluster meeting.

My head is swimming!!! So much to take in.
We started off by completing a PinWheel. (Belinda, you need to put all of these onto our wiki so we can start using them in class.) The topic of the conversation was 1 Web2 tool or new idea that is being used in class. Picturetrail.com is one that I need to look at. Very similar to slide.com apparently. Peer Coaching was interesting. Very similar to Peer Mediation process. Found it difficult to discuss a scenario using the handout. We decided to put the handout down and use our initiative!
Presentation Zen. Might just have to borrow the book off you!
It was good to be able to discuss ideas with the team for our afternoon share.
Digistore was ok. Still need to sit down and have a go!

Half way there!

Look at that! The last time I updated my blog was Week 2! Yes my iCal alarm is stil working but I have been on holiday!!! Sitting in the pool drinking cocktails in Fiji! And now I'm back at work and its too cold to show off my tan! While we were in Fiji we managed to Skype our classes. Aaron wanted to show off in the swimming pool to his friends. But we had very bad lines and was not able to go on video!
My class are all up to date with their goals on their ePortfolios! Each child has done their literacy and their numeracy! I have started to post comments and am going to try and get more completed this weekend.
eastNet Cluster day next week so I will update blog then!