Brilliant learning!

KLP certainly ruled the waves again last week! Our Numeracy lesson was electric!

We had been learning about fractions for a few sessions and I had discovered some gaps in certain childrens learning - they needed to do some more work on the basics of sharing our the fractions; my average ability children needed to consolidate their equivalent fractions learning and the higher achievers (having grasped everything I had taught them) certainly required extending!

Ok - the challenge arose!

I created a Learning Space using the VLE, assigned various things to the children, created visual hooks and a set of teaching and learning resources!

Warm up to maths through our KLP link to sing up and our Multiplicity song! Great - singing and moving to the beat - great brain gym! Oxygen flowing.

The lesson was all linked to our theme - 'Draw me in' with a sub section (so to speak) to the world cup!

fraction bingo - hyperlinked to internet!

working on a problem of fractions of coloured shorts in a box!

They were given an activity to do whilst I explained HA mission...

they all had work due that took them to an embedded interactive world map that gave them data they needed on the coutry they are learning about in the world cup! Children then chose data regarding the players in their team; they had to find the average weight of goalies, defenders, forwards etc. Great use of tables again! They all had netbooks to access this through their work due widget and carried out the maths with skill! complicated divisions meant the use of a calclator and sometimes rounding the answers.

My lower ability accessed a smart board mission through the Learning spaces, where they were creating pizzas for different members of the England squad. Sharing the ingredients out evenly and working out the fractions for each person wanting that pizza! Excellent interaction with the software and with themselves!

All children except one. progressed through the session! Not bad going! We were all 'well chuffed!'

At the end - of course - out came the flip cam - videoing the children explaining their learning and demoing - I wonder where that will go?????

Perfect APP evidence! E-portfolios eat your heart out!!!!

Job done!

TEACHING AWARDS

I am on cloud 9!!!!!!

Thanks to everyone for their support - I feel so privalidged and honoured to have won the Midlands BECTA award for Next Generation Learning. This is the way forward for teaching the future adults of our world. We need to give them the opportunities to succeed in a technological world; everywhere we go, everything we do in this day and age involves technology somewhere alonfg the line...and their jobs probably don't exist yet!

We owe it to them to provide opportunities for them to use technology to enhance their learning.

I feel very privalidged to be touching the lives of some of our digital natives in this way.

Just had to share this!!!

Half term hols - or so I thought!!!!
I was visiting a store to buy food for our hens this morning and spotted one of our families from school - a girl from my class!
After a chat, inside the store I find her brother - no how are you Miss...or anything like that!
Straight to the point...Miss I cna't get my user name and password to work on KLP!!!!!!
I thought that was priceless!!!!

So proud of my children!

Yesterday we were lucky enought to be visited by a Deputy Head from another Primary School who wanted to see how we are using KLP! My children really did me and themselves proud! They showed our visitor around our Interest spaces and how we use KLP to sujpport our learning across all curriculum areas in our creative curriculum, their e-potfolios, and all the web 2 technologies that we use through it! They were extremely articulate, full of confidence and totally enthusiastic about the love we share for our Learning Platform. they also explein with great passion about our web conferance earlier int he week with America!
WOOPPPEEE!!

Talking to America!

Our web conference yesterday with St Annes School, Charlotte, North Carolina was amazing!
We synchronised watches – 8.30am there; 1.30pm here!!!
We were soooo excited - don’t know who was worse – me or the children!
It was so fab – a great experience – we had prepared questions to ask our Global cousins, they had done the same – when we spotted that they had logged into the Conference room we almost collapsed with enthusiasm! They could see us and hear us – we could only hear them as they hadn’t organised their web cam very well! Nevertheless, what an absolutely super event!
We chatted, laughed, shared and learnt quite a bit about life over there and the similarities and differences between the schools! We even showed them our class pet – Heidi.
They break up for summer soon, but we are going to resume contact after the BIG holiday!!!
What a memorable occasion!
Can't wait to the next one!

BURTON MAIL ARTICLE - local press!

http://www.burtonmail.co.uk/News/Two-teachers-in-line-for-top-national-awards.htm

Eureka is a small Primary School in the south of Derbyshire; 5 learning
zones; 145 children. Early adopters of KLP, now well into our second year
and loving every minute of it. In our school, KLP is a driving force for our
creative curriculum where it engages all stakeholders. It is used daily
by staff effectively, for reasons as described in this case study.
Objective: to facilitate communication and collaboration between school staff, tapping into the potential of KLP to support teaching and learning through, offering opportunities to make resources and data available 24/7.


Objective: to facilitate communication and collaboration between school staff, tapping into the potential of KLP to support teaching and learning through, offering opportunities to make resources and data available 24/7.


Motivation
To reduce the paper shuffle; to ensure that all staff are informed at
all times; to keep a record of all decisions; documents and
discussions in a central area that is safe and accessible by all
necessary members at a time suitable for them; to provide an evidence
base for county advisory/Governors/Ofsted etc; to eventually reduce
workload…

Impact and Benefits
· Staff informed earlier about meetings and content of them
· Any absent staff can keep up to date
· All staff can contribute to discussions; even if they didn’t attend
the initial meeting
· Tracking data is at hand 24/7 – thus informing planning
· Policies available 24/7 - to make reference to as appropriate
· Discussions kept as an aid memoir to decisions made
· Once embedded, staff fully informed 24/7


Hints and Tips
Introduce one section at a time to avoid overload
Manage the change carefully – have a strategic plan in place
Little steps, make great gains…
Make sure that your Leadership team are fully engaged
Remember, this is a big change, but if you continue to do things
‘the old way’, the benefits will never be seen!

The video is to promote discussion and thought about the children’s use of technology – changed frequently to promote thought!

Document Library!
In the document library we have created folders in which to upload important documents that are used regularly to support teaching and learning, tracking of progress, policies as they are updated, information about groups…

Think of it as folders of information that may be required by any member of staff at any one time. Everything to hand, in one easily accessible place.

DAY BOOK!
We had always had a ‘paper’ day book, which needed to go if KLP was going to support staff communication! We trialed initially, with staff checking the NEWS daily, but this wasn’t too effective, but adding an announcement and changing the title to DAY BOOK – was a hit!

All staff can add any important information that needs to be shared for that or the following day.

STAFF MEETINGS!

We also use Work Spaces to tie together all of our staff meetings in one, easily accessible space.

All meetings are added to the calendar at the beginning of a term, by adding a repeating event; a Meeting Space then added.

This gives us the opportunity to add agendas, minutes and any other documents useful to the meeting.

Again, all together, in a centralized area that can be straightforwardly, added to by the person leading the meeting and accessed by all staff.

Web-links: safe and useful sites that staff have identified to support staff; sites linked with our school; anything else as appropriate.

ENGAGING PUPILS WIKI!
For all staff to share their ideas as to how they have engaged the pupils with KLP.

Next steps When we can do our own provisioning, set up a similar space for Governors. Hurdles Getting staff to log on initially… Once they are, and fully engaged with it, organization and communication can be thoroughly supported!