Barbara+-+Muritai

This is your space to put your goals for the use of ICT in teaching and learning. You can give everyone updates on how you are going throughout the year. At the end of the year, you can upload a short presentation showing the results of your work to this page. Have fun with this space!

Hi I'm Barbara Ryan I'll be starting up a New Entrant class in Room 1 around the start of Term 3. Until then I'm working a four day week moving around the school between New Entrants and Year 8. On Thursdays and Fridays I will be teaching the next New Entrant class due to start in March so a part of my goal will involve organising interactive and achievable ICT activities at the Year 1 level.

21/4 Hi Barbara, I hope the year is going well for you and that you are still experimenting with your new blog :-) If you have a chance to play through all the games and links in this year group space, I am sure that you will find great interactive games.

media type="custom" key="618879" Hi Barbara. How is the new class going? What is your focus for ICT this term with your class? Stu

31/7 Room 1 has been up and running for 2 weeks now. I have 9 children and will increase to about 18 by the end of the Term. I have started a class blog and this is proving a real hit!

I have our blog open on my laptop each morning and the children love to see themselves and talk about the activities shown! I was inspired at the EXPO by some sets of first day at school photos so we have been working as a class to photograph and make slideshows of each new child's first day. The children love deciding what to photograph and having a go at taking a photograph themselves! A personal goal for ICT for me will be to update our blog regularly with a short slideshow of the first day at school for each new entrant. A goal for the children will be to learn to use a digital camera to record and show learning. The Letterland ABC programme is a big focus in Room 1. We have it on our pod of laptops and I am using it to enhance the children's understanding of alphabet letters and sounds. I would like to use Letterland in my action research - final details yet to be confirmed. Cheers Barbara

21/9 My class blog has turned out to be an amazing success! A great personal goal for me! All my new entrants since the beginning of Term 3 now have their own slideshow of their first day at school! Some weeks it has been a bit of a mission as we have to preview the photos,choose the ones we want and I upload them within a couple of days of each child starting! One week we had 3 new students! Feedback from parents has been amazing to say the least. They love being able to share their child's first school day and many log on every couple of days from then on.Grandparents have contacted me too, saying what a joy it has been to see their grandchildren enjoying school life so much! It's a real buzz! I have observed the class for 8 weeks now and have identified a group of children coming in with very low letter/sound knowledge. During our ICT sessions with the apple laptops I have focussed on ways to increase this and have begun observing and recording their progress using the alphabet activity section of the Letterland ABC DVD. I will continue with this next Term as laptop sessions have often coincided with other non negotiable school activites over the past few weeks - Kapahaka, Milo cricket, World of Maths and school production practices - but such is life in a busy classroom! I must say though that my one frustration is that my one classroom computer is not capable of having Letterland installed on it!

1/11 Class blogging is going very well! Lots of positive comments. My Action Research is an enjoyable but frustrating process at present. I am continuing to work with my group of 6 students to increase their letter sound knowledge using the Letterland ABC alphabet activities computer programme. I can see progress but getting access to the pod laptops on a regular basis is proving tricky!

20/11 All still going well but time running out ! Success for my group of 6 letter/sound strugglers! All except 1 now know all the alphabet lerter names and sounds. Letterland, especially the interactive CDrom has held their interest.

Great work Barbara- sounds like Letterland was the key! Have you tried the Starfall website? that has some great resources and should work on your classroom computer- it is at http://www.starfall.com/ and has lots of letter based activities that could be tied into Letterland- maybe a bit late in the term for that though! have a great christmas! Nigel