Reflection corner

 

This is my lent reflection corner that was mostly contructed by my wonderful LSA. All the classes in the school have reflection corners. This is an important part to the classroom as we are a Church of England school, the importance of fostering these values is paramount to the running of our our school daily life. We say a prayer before lunch and at the end of the day. Our daily collective worship altogether in the hall helps to create a unity in the school and a caring environment. 

My reflection corner works really well for the age group that I teach, there are chairs for quiet reflection, past prayers displayed on the prayer tree and extra blank leaves for the children to write new ones for things on their minds. This helps on many levels, helping our children to think more about the wider world and environment, as well as their relationship with family, friends and themselves. Some children feel they can not talk to anyone directly, so it helps to write it down. 

Other features include; the guided subject we are thinking about ( in this case in the photo it's lent), also the cross with a coloured ribbon which indicates what part of the waiting cycle we are at. We also have on display The Lords Prayer, a bible, some books about worship and a poster of our school's 'family'. These are fictional characters to represent all the different religions of children that attend our school. It helps support the unity that we try to foster and understanding of other faiths. It also helps to support inclusion for children of other faiths to write prayers for themselves, that otherwise they may not of felt they could do.

I think next year I will try to update this area of my classroom more often as it is central to the values and thinking skills that our school tries to promote.

Language of the month

I found this idea from a Primary schools website.

They chose to do this as a whole school initiative, but we do it for year 2. 

This is the Japanese display:

And the Spanish display:

The idea is that we cover a different language every month; try new food, learn about other countries' customs and traditions and possibly get guest speakers in.

The children love this lesson and so do I; it gives me the scope to be completely creative with my planning and link in other skills that the children need to learn.

In addition to this both classes have pen pals. I have set up a link with a Polish school, more to come about this subject so watch this space! 

A

XxX

Spelling

My first LSA made this at the start of last year and its been so useful, I didn't take it down until the end of the year! I love the idea of using a play on words and using little soup bowls with the letters and sounds phonemes inside them. I also think the little touch of dotting spoons round the display was also very cute. 

I need a fresh new display this year, but I really loved this display and wanted to pay homage to it.

:)

Audacity

Audacity is an audio editing program which is completely free to download. It allows you to record simple tracks or more complex multi track recordings. It is an extremely effective as a program and it simple to use. In our primary school, we use Audacity to edit interviews for our school radio and to edit songs to re mix them. The children that utilise this program for the radio are typically year 5 (aged 9 and 10).

Even if you don't have special radio microphones, I find audacity simple enough to use in the class. I usually record straight on to the audio track, but it is also just as easy to record a podcast on a portable USB microphone and import the track on to the editor. 

Once you have the track you can then listen and highlight the parts you don't want and then delete them. Depending on the quality of the initial recording this might take some time, but is always good practise to do to get a professional sounding recording. 

The next step is to export your finished file and save it to the folder or area that you would like as an MP3 file. This enables it to be in a format that can be played on most media players, such as VLC, windows media player, QuickTime and iTunes. 

It took me a little while to figure out the controls and I definitely have not seen all it can do. It is a very clever and useful program. It's user friendly and perfect for primary school level children.

Thanks

Aimée

Raspberry Pi

 

I really can't wait until the summer when I have time to buy and set up a Raspberry Pi. I think they're brilliant and definitely think that are an exciting way to help kids in to electronics and programing. For more discussion read The Geek Gurl diaries (www.geekgurldiaries.co.uk ).

Top ten gadgets 2013

In the style of the geek gurl diaries, I'm going to tell you my top ten gadgets.

10. My gorilla flexible tripod. - a great tripod, versatile and fits lots of devices.

9. My school laptop. - for working at home.

8. My GHDs- hair straighteners which are BRILLIANT.

7. Play station 3.- it has a blue ray player, you can download movies and games, you can watch catchup tv on it and there are other movie channel programs. I really recommend this for the graphic, I used to be a big Wii fan but have been converted as the novelty of the motion sensors in the Wii controller wore off. 

6. Breo watch- I shamefully bought this from a gadget shop, but in my defence, it was very cheap ( I got mine for £4.00) it's really light and because it's mostly made of a natural rubber material, it doesn't irritate my skin like a lot of metal watches do.

5. Easy speak- I use this for podcasts nearly everyday with my class for the school radio. They are simple to use and hold quite a few sound bytes. Perfect for small interviews or reports to wrap up your lesson with.

4. Digital camera- I bought this as I kept feeling bad about taking the school camera home, and although I usually use my phone to take photos when I'm out, I can't take photos in my class to record practical activities to put on the VLE (virtual learning environment) as using a phone is a safeguarding issue. I really like mine and love the case I got for it. It works as a hd camera and I hope to make a few videos for my YouTube channel that actually have some value soon.

3. Netbook- I have a small netbook, it's great for quick search and typing documents quite quickly. I would love a chrome book, but that will have to come after a new computer. 

2. Tablet- In my case, I have bought an iPad mini. I love it and can tell the difference between this and the retina display iPad. It has the same memory capacity and can use all the same apps. I got mine for blogging, surfing the Internet, as an E reader, and for the educational apps for my class- the new augmented reality apps are amazing to use as a writing stimulus and the phonics apps.

1. Smart phone- Mine is a iPhone 4. I haven't missed Siri and its perfect for what I use it for- Facebook, twitter, FaceTime, Internet, calls, emails and text. The maps app is extremely useful too. All in all I love this the best as its like a more portable tablet.

That's all from me.

Over and out.