Room 13's 2010 blog

So, school is over for 2011 and we’ve said goodbye to the 10 lovely Year 7′s from Room 13. Thursday night saw them all glammed up and looking fabulous! It was a wonderful night with very mixed emotions. I was very proud of them and they all spoke very well at the graduation, but I am sad to see them leave. There were a few tears on Friday – not mine, I just had something in my eye! I wish them all success at their various high schools, and I’m sure we’ll see some of them again. On a good note, I’m lucky enough to be keeping my lovely Year 6′s!

As I mentioned in the previous post our class blog has been shortlisted for the Edublogs Awards. As well as that we’ve also been included in the best 100 class blogs on this website. If you have a look there you’ll find we’re in some very good company!

We’ll continue with this blog next year with the new Room 13 students.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

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Wow! Our class blog has been nominated and shortlisted for the Edublogs Awards. That is quite an honour I think, and if you  have a look at the other class blogs shortlisted you’ll probably think so too. You can find them here on the Best Class Edublog 2010 page.

You can even vote for our class blog there if you feel so inclined!

Hi everyone.

Sorry I’m not there today, but I’m feeling pretty sick, and can hardly talk – stop laughing Kathleen!

Anyway, be nice to Kristen today, won’t you?

I want you to work on your 9 ‘o’ clock nursery news that you started the other day. If you weren’t there then you need to get into a group of 3 or 4 – don’t join existing groups as they’ll be too big. The Nursery rhyme news assignment is here. We’ll be sharing them next Monday or Tuesday.

You also need to practise your graduation speeches today. If you haven’t already printed yourself a copy you need to do it quickly this morning, as I have your originals here at home. You should know the order you’re in – basically it’s alphabetical from the roll. Emily & Millie, you can practise yours too, and then you can have another practice with Deb next week.

In the computer room this afternoon I want you to create the Pivot dance animation that some of you started Monday. The instructions are below. Instead of finding some creative commons music you could use the music track you made with Mrs S, as long as it is suitable for a dance.

You need to include:

• A stickman dancing sequence (about 1 minute long) created using Pivot
• A Christmas/Summer background (it needs to be Creative Commons licenced, so you can use compfight.)
  • hint: the program defaults to look for bmp files. Change the drop down menu to .jpg file types
• Pivot animations are imported into a movie program (You could use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie)
  • hint: when you are finished save your pivot animation as a .gif file, not a .piv file
• Titles, credits and music are added into the movie program to finish the dance video
  • Find a techno/electro CC song that has a strong beat  – look for creative commons music on our delicious account, or use the music you made with Mrs )
• Once the movies are made, we’re uploading them into our class Vimeo account so we can post them on our individual blogs

Here are some examples:

2009 Dance Off! from Jaki Braidwood on Vimeo.

2009 Dance Off! from Jaki Braidwood on Vimeo.

Hope you all have a good day.

It’s been a while since I updated our blog (as some of you pointed out today!). Time has run away with me and I’m way behind with a few things. Since my last post we’ve spent a week in Christchurch, New Zealand, which was a great experience for the 23 members of our NZ Performance Choir. The staff & Students at South Hornby School were very welcoming and it was a great opportunity for us to see how a school in another country works.

Anyway, since we returned the students in Room 13 have been very busy working on creating their own versions of Episode 5 of Inanimate Alice. There are 5 groups and they’ve been collaborating with each other via Edmodo. I’ve been very impressed with some of the collaboration that I’ve seen. Everyone has been engaged, and been able to analyse what makes a successful Inanimate Alice episode. We’ve looked at the characters, the storyline, the elements of the story, the structure of the text and the digital structure of the different episodes.

We’re now at the stage of evaluating the five episodes. So far we’ve seen three of them and I am so proud of the work these students have created. They’ve written compelling storylines, and included some really effective sounds and graphics. Along the way they’ve learned some new skills about creating digital stories in PwerPoint. I’m not a big user of PowerPoint and this is probably the first time we’ve used it in class all year but. I have to say, hte work the students have created has surpassed my expectations.

Some of the students will, no doubt, upload their episode to their blogs. I’m thinking of the best way to share all five of the episodes with parents and the wider community.

This term we’re going to be looking at a digital story called Inanimate Alice. This morning we read the text of the first episode called China and we came up with a lot of questions and wonderings. Then we watched the digital version of the story. Our next task now is to compare the two versions uisng a T-chart and/or a Venn diagram.

You can view the first episode here.

I know how much some of you are enjoying having your own blogs and how some of you are trying very hard to keep your blogs up-to-date. We’ve also talked in class about making your posts creative and interesting, and about making sure your comments you leave on other blogs are interesting too.

Well, Mrs Miller, in Sydney, has decided to set up a new blog called The Bloggers’ Cafe, where you can communicate and collaborate with other students around the world and, at the same time, improve on your blogging techniques. Sounds good, doesn’t it? I can arrange to allow you access to the computer room on Wednesday lunch times so that you can work on your blogs and visit others. I’ve added our class to the blog roll on The Bloggers’ Cafe, and other classes are being added too.

Have a look at the first post Ms Wyatt has written asking for your ideas on what you’d like to see happening there.

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Last Wednesday we had an Open Night at school. Our New Zealand Performance Choir performed for about half an hour and then all classrooms were open to visit for an hour. The classes all looked fantastic and were testament to the hard work of all of the teachers and students at our school. You could see mini-beast models, information reports, narratives, poetry, Aboriginal art, traditional weaving, slideshows of students’ work and their learning, the Pedal Prix car and videos, beading, a rabbit proof fence, film reviews, beans being grown, indigenous AFL profiles, biographies of indigenous people who’ve made a difference….. As you can tell we’ve been really busy!!!

Each classroom also had a question to be answered as our Across the Storybridge Quiz trail. There was a winner form each class, and the winner from Room 13 was…..(drum roll)…Millie! Well done everyone who had a go.

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They did it!!

Well, what a class of champions!! As I mentioned previously the students in Room 13 voted for “no talking” as their participation in the World Vision 40 hour famine. I know that may people, (I should probably include myself here), didn’t think that it could be done, but I’m pleased to announce that the day was a resounding success! We had a few frustrating moments when some had a bit of trouble getting others to understand them and, I must confess, I did tease them a little (only a little, honest ). But here’s a very impressive part – even when another teacher offered them chocolate if only they’d say please, not one of them gave in! How lucky am I to have such a great bunch of students!

We’re now looking at ways in which our class can sponsor a child through World Vision. One option is each student donating $1 per month. Another is that I sponsor a child and each term we fundraise to make an extra donation. We could may bring in our recyclable deposit containers and use the money from that.

Do you have any suggestions for us? We really want it to be sustainable so that next year’s class can continue with the commitment.

Last Monday we had a whole school event called HATSI (Hawthorndene Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander) Day. Each class did 6 different activities. We did traditional weaving with Margaret, Janice, Lorna & Rose. They were very patient as we learned how to weave with raffia and encouraged us a lot even when we made mistakes! Some students enjoyed it so much that we’ve decided to do some more in our classroom. We also did some beading with Stephanie using beads the same colour as the Aboriginal flag. Stephanie had come a long way to work with us at our school – she had to get up at 5.30 am as she had to catch a bus and a train!

Bindi, one of the parents at our school, showed us some traditional string games. Some of us were a bit confused to start with but we soon got the hang of it. It has now become a bit of a fad in our class (and others, so I’m told!) and everyone seems to have some wool on their desks. We watched a few videos on this website to help us learn some of the more complicated designs. Why don’t you have a look at them and try some out yourself? Let us know how you get on. We managed the Eiffel Tower, Cup & Saucer, and the Moth.

We also played some traditional Aboriginal outside games, helped by Jane, one of our School Services Officers. We had a lot of fun and we’re going to try some more as part of our PE program. You can find our=t more about these games here and here.

Michael, Oscar’s dad, taught us about the skin game. It was fascinating to learn about the different family and relationship setups in different Aboriginal groups.

After lunch we looked at some Aboriginal artefacts and read a book by Bob Randall with Aby, Oscar’s mum and did some traditional Torres Strait Islander dancing with Eddie. Eddie was very funny and we had a great time with him learning some dances.

Our school has decided to support the World Vision 40 hour famine this year. Some of the students in room 13 have already registered as individuals to take part in the 40 hour famine but we will also be participating as a class. Yesterday in our class meeting we brainstormed some of the things we could go without for the day next Friday. Some of the suggestions were:

• furniture
• technology
• electricity
• one arm
• one leg
• talking

We voted to come up with one of them. Now, those of you who know our class, and the students in room 13 will be amazed – and maybe a little dubious – about our chances of success when you hear that they voted for……..not talking for the day!! Yes, this is unbelievable, although some of them think I’ll have more trouble than they will All you parents out there, would you like us to make the challenge go until about 8 pm?

Tune in next week to see if we managed to meet the challenge. Some student will have to be excluded for 1 lesson as they have a New Zealand Performance Choir practice at 12 pm.

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