Another day with kids modelling to me - I think I'm going to be redundant soon! Which is a good thing i suppose...Carol's Year 3 & 4 kids were showing me how they were using StoryBook Weaver for their creative writing. They showed me that by assembling a landscape, characters & objects from the reasonably extensive (though pretty Americanised galleries) they could write their imaginative stories. None of them had an idea for a story before they started (maybe they would if they were more familiar with the programme features) but used what they found in the programme to build their ideas from. There was certainly no writers block with this group. Some reviews of StoryBook Weaver talk about it being 'time-tested' - been around for years & still going so therefore must be good... and especially helpful for reluctant writers. This was a pretty switched on group anyway so it would be good to observe some of our more struggling students at work. Affordable educational pricing for network licences too - can be found on TKI Software for Learning (link above)
It was good to catch up with Michael's class to view their final product - A Digital Class Year Book - that we were working on last week. This would be a really great project for any Year 8 leavers class - something beyond the traditional school photo - to create together, share with their school community & keep as a dynamic lasting memory.
Carol & I spent the afternoon planning Junior School visits for next term. We want to take all our Yr 1 - 3 teachers away to visit other classrooms - our areas of focus are effective use of ICT, inquiry learning, thinking skills and innovative classroom ideas. It is no easy task to identify schools within easy reach that are doing this - though we have put our feelers out to the wider network & waiting for some feedback - watch this space!
Categories: StJosephs
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