Using our iPads in Reading

Posted on February 11, 2017 by lisasporn

We are currently reading a Geronimo Stilton book as our class novel. Alice, one of our Year 2 girls, brought the novel in because she thought we’d enjoy reading a book from her book collection at home. Thanks Alice!

During our reading sessions we draw different images that are described in the book to help us create a mental image of what’s happening in the story. We often share our pictures afterwards during a gallery walk to see how other class members see the same description. This also supports our Daily 5 Reading CAFE strategies – creating a mental image. It’s a very important skill to develop as a reader.

We used the Seesaw app drawing tool to draw Geronimo Stilton entering a school for a presentation. He arrived there in a taxi and was very nervous during the taxi ride. He’s going to make a speech at the school and this is why he’s so nervous. Each student was asked to draw what they could picture in their minds and then use the microphone tool to give a verbal description of their picture. Then they posted this to their folder in Seesaw. We’ve had lots of positive feedback to our pictures already.

Here we are during the drawing process.

What did you think of our drawings?

Using iPads to Help our Learning

Posted on July 27, 2016 by lisasporn

Screen Shot 2016-07-27 at 8.00.04 pm

Our current unit of Inquiry is investigating how items are changed from raw/ unprocessed items to processed items, for example grapes can be changed to sultanas.

We challenged students in our class to try and create a presentation at home using the camera/photo app and Pic Collage to show the difference between raw/ unprocessed items and processed items.

Evie, Heidi and Charlotte loved sharing their presentations from their iPads onto the IWB via Airplay. They received lots of positive and constructive feedback from their classmates and did a great job presenting their understandings so confidently.

Evie sharing her presentation – this also showed her understanding of natural vs man made items.

Heidi showing her Pic Collage presentation.

Charlotte’s Pic collage presentation.

Little Bits and Dash and Dot

Posted on May 26, 2016 by lisasporn

We love to use technology to help us with our learning. We’ve begun using iPads from home (if you have one), as well as the school sets of iPads and we’ve been using Bee Bots, Bee Bot apps and Scratch Jnr. These programs teach us how to problem solve, program, sequence a set of instructions, estimate, collaborate and co-operate – as well as many other skills we need. Plus – it’s lots of fun!

This week we borrowed 10 Little Bits kits and Dot and Dash robots from Adelaide University. We have these amazing resources until the end of term and couldn’t wait to get started with experimenting with them.

The Little Bits have showed us how to use simple magnetic bricks to click them together and then connect to a power source to create a simple circuit. Now that we understand how they work we’re looking forward to using the Little Bits in models that we create.

Dash and Dot are robots that can be programmed using the Blockly app or use the Wonder app to control their movements. Mr Luke, our Deputy Principal, even visited to try and move Dash around the room.

We also used clip on digital microscopes on our iPads. We are exploring Ecosystems as our current Inquiry topic and went outside to explore our grasslands ecosystem. The clip on microscopes were a fantastic way to see living and non living items up close. We could see so much more detail through the microscopes and we took some great photos of them using our camera app.

What are your favourite types of technology to use? How do you use technology to support your learning?

Using technology to show our learning

Posted on October 25, 2015 by lisasporn

As a part of our Inquiry into Artefacts we’ve been investigating the changes different items have gone through over the years.

Our class members chose an object and created a timeline to show how and why an object has changed over time. They investigated changes in their chosen object, when the changes happened and how it improved or changed.
Some of the topics were:

swim suits
clothing
airplanes
computers
cars
surfboards
school

This process involved lots of new skills – we’ve used iPads to research the topic and find key dates and facts, we took screenshots of images that were free to use, learnt how to edit and crop an image and publish all of the relevant information and images in iBook Creator.

The students had to work really hard and this research was a lot more challenging than we thought it would be. They worked very hard int teams and shared the workload to create their books.

We shared our iBooks via airplay onto our interactive whiteboard so that the whole class could see our books and provide feedback.

iStop Motion Movies

Posted on September 16, 2012 by lisasporn

Here are some of the claymation iStop Motion Movies our class has created.

This is the first time we’ve had a go at trying to tell a narrative story in this format.

After our popcorn and viewing afternoon we reflected upon our movies – the quality of them and ways to improve them. We thought that for a first attempt our movies were pretty good. Each group told a story, we could easily see the characters and how they contributed to the story and the plasticene characters were well made.

We’ve decided to add music to add more interest, we need more screen shots to make our movies longer, we needed larger backgrounds so that we couldn’t see anything but the background (no movement or people in shots) – we think these changes will add far more detail to our stories and make them more interesting.

Here are some of the movies ( we’re having a few technical hiccups publishing some of them onto You Tube ).

Tell us what you thought of our movies. Can you give us any tips or tricks that might help us to improve our movies?

Have you tried claymation before? Did you use iStop Motion to record them

iStop Motion Movies

Posted on September 11, 2012 by lisasporn

Throughout this term we have been developing our narrative writing skills. We’ve looked at many different ways to write a detailed, interesting and exciting narrative story. We’ve looked very closely at the different features of a narrative story.

We’ve written stories and published them as word documents.

We’ve written digital stories using iPods and iPads using the app StoryKit. Some of these have been published on our English page.

Next we planned stories to use in a claymation creation. This planning is called storyboarding. Then we made our backgrounds (the setting), created the characters using plasticene and then filmed our stories using the iPad and the iStop Motion app. We’re publishing these onto our class You Tube channel. This is a private channel so only class members can see it.

To celebrate our stories we had a popcorn and movie afternoon. Each group took turns to tell us the outline of their story and then played their movie.

We thought it was wonderful to see how creative every group was. We gave each group some constructive feedback – what we thought worked well, what could have been improved and as a whole class talked about what we could do next time.

Here are some photos of our sharing session ( ok – lots of photos – they were too good to leave any out!!).

Have you used claymation to create movies?

Can you give any tips that we might be able to include next time?