Month: September 2008

Planning and Timetable Docs

Google, My classPublished on5 Comments on Planning and Timetable Docs

Last year it was in the Summer term that I finally got my act together and began using more cloud based computing and relying less and less on my memory stick. This year has started with barely a shred of paper in sight and I actually do not know where my memory stick is. I have been pleased to see that Google Docs is beginning to deal with imported Word files containing tables much better and so in this post I share a couple that I use.

The links I have provided to the docs should give you access to your own copy – what you see will be yours and not a shared or published version. If you have problems with the link I have added another link where the document is currently published online.

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Those of you in the English primary schools will appreciate the fact that we have new literacy and numeracy frameworks to work with and this is an example of a weekly literacy planning document that you could use.

You will of course have to remove the information that doesn’t apply and it is currently filled with a few days of planning from last week just to illustrate how it is used- this is the general style of planning we do for a week.

I like the fact that a digital document that remains as such can take advatage of the links that you can add. Once it is printed those links are dead.

Get your copy – Weekly literacy plan. If you have trouble with link you can view the document here.

Our timetable changes every week, as well as we accomodate different things going on in school we deal with staff absence, courses etc.  Rather than use an online calendar we use a simple weekly timetable that outlines what we are doing – this year we have also added links from the subjects to their respective planning documents too.

Get your copy – Weekly timetable. If you have trouble with link you can view the document here.

Rick my teaching colleague and I are using Google Docs to organise, author and share our planning for this year and it is already proving useful as we make changes during the week to planning. But the person you share it with will of course always have access to the most recent copy.I look forward to the further development of the template resource currently in it’s infancy within Google Docs so that I can make a template from my Docs home screen and generate further copies from that.

I hope you may find some of the Docs useful – let me know if they are and if you have any of your own to share.

Addressing the Balance: Multiflyer Times Tables Challenge

Maths, My classPublished on3 Comments on Addressing the Balance: Multiflyer Times Tables Challenge

I have written about Multiflyer before as it qualifies as one of my top 5 Times Tables resources. We begin the year with a test of the children’s multiplication knowledge to ascertain their strengths and where they need to focus their practice, we also like to be able to see how quick they are. Using Multiflyer we can do this all and have it marked within 15 minutes.

Previously we used to give the children a paper test of 100 multiplication facts, but timing did not come into it. Although it did when we had to manually check 3000 answers from the whole class! Using Multiflyer addresses the work life balance we all battle with.

Here is how we do it.

  1. Access the site and choose Practice from the options. 
  2. Select what you want to test the children on – we choose 1-10 from both sides.
  3. Ensure that the children choose to have the Table OFF otherwise they will be able to find the answers using a multiplication grid.
  4. Clicking START will display a practice question – ensure the children know what they need to do.

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  5. Remind them that they do not need to move the mouse and that the quickest method is to enter the answers and press enter on the keyboard.
  6. We give the children 15 minutes to answer as many questions as they can. We find that this gives us a really deep picture of their times tables ability.
  7. You might like to ask them to turn their volume down before they begin as the sound effects can be off putting for children trying to concentrate.
  8. When the children have had 15 minutes, or however long you have given them, ask them to click on End MISSION. 
  9. This will display a chart displaying how they got on. We ask them to choose PRINTABLE CHART from the top.

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  10. They enter their names and the date of the test and print if needed – this could be filed in their folders or with their other maths work.

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We use the information provided in the report in a number of ways. The individual tables results reveals to us the level of understanding for each one and so we can tell the children what they need to work on. This week I have told the children their own targets for practice, the weakest of all of the results.
The overall percentage is important but perhaps the most important is the number of questions answered correctly. We enter this into a spreadsheet and divide it into 900 (the number of 

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seconds in 15 minutes) This calculation provides us a per correct answer time in seconds – we can basically see how fast they can recall their tables. We will complete this every month and involve the children in tracking their own progress.
No marking means we can focus on the diagnostic side of helping the children improve the speed and accuracy of their times tables – I would urge you to take advantage of this resource or others like it to do the same. We completed the task with the children using the class laptops but it could be easily done over two sessions in a computer suite.
Not only will it help you address the balance but also stop you getting bogged down with marking and allow you to focus on helping the children improve.

A little help from my network…

TwitterPublished on5 Comments on A little help from my network…

A new term a new start and I kicked off the first few days of the term with an upper key stage 2 assembly on Thursday morning. I wanted to talk to the children about the prospects of a new term and what it meant to us all. Twitter was buzzing with well wishes as the US schools returned at the same time as most English schools, so I thought I would invite my network to help contribute to the assembly with their own thoughts about the new term and the new beginning we were all about to take.
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I asked for responses from my network a few hours before the assembly and then retweeted with a quarter of an hour or so to go and was so grateful, as I always am, to receive teachers thoughts from around the world. 

After talking in the assembly about new beginnings for some people in my own family, I invited the children to explain their feelings and reflections on the first few days of school. We discussed what they were looking forward to and any apprehensions they had.

With a global twist I shared the thoughts from my network on the beginning of a new term and what it meant to new people. I finished with Ian Usher’s reflection that a new term is “like a fresh piece of paper with nothing bad from last term written on it.” They really liked that thought and it ended the assembly on a positive hopeful note. Thanks to Ian and everyone who helped it was lovely to be able share your reflections in our assembly.

Why not ask for reflections on a topic or assembly subject from your own network and give the children a global perspective.

Classroom Cornerstones

My class, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated on7 Comments on Classroom Cornerstones

Tomorrow sees us begin our Autumn term here in Nottinghamshire, England – most of the English primary schools will be back by next week at least. I just wanted to explain the road ahead for me in terms of the ways I will be using technology in the classroom this year, my classroom cornerstones. These tools/ideas will be sticking around for the course of the year, either because they have become part of the fabric of how we support learning in the case of the first two, or they are areas I want to explore the potential in more depth, the latter two.

Group media collaboration tool: Voicethread – this has become such a great tool to use in supporting children with speaking and listening. Beyond the basic group collaboration, last year I saw children grow in confidence due to the protracted use of refined talk and voice recording in Voicethread. Children who would usually not utter a thing when in a whole class situation were more willing to contribute and speak in front of the class. There is a lot going on when a child decides to record a comment in a Voicethread, most importantly for me is the fact that they willingly and independently vet and refine what they say. We will be looking to consolidate the use of Voicethread in the classroom this year, especially in the use of peer feedback in the writing process.

Office 2.0: Google Apps/Docs – I carefully documented the steps we took last term to use Docs in the classroom and I have even had the opportunity to contribute to the Official Google Docs blog in a post about introducing online collaboration. We will continue to use Docs as a cornerstone technology in our classrooms this coming year. The classes we were with last year have moved onto Year 6 and I look forward to seeing their work with the tool continue and the teachers alongside them develop their knowledge and understanding of the technology. Last year we did not have the opportunity in the Autumn and Spring term to use Docs so we will have a whole bunch of new opportunities to utilise the tool to support learning in the best way. I am looking to use Google Forms more and to reach beyond the school in bigger international collaborative projects – please let me know if you have a similar age class using Docs.

Timeline tool: Mnemograph – Last year I stumbled upon this great timeline tool just as we were finishing our Ancient Egyptian unit. We will repeat this unit, beginning before Christmas and I am pleased to be working with Will and Michael from Mnemograph in some development of new features which will perhaps make it easier for a whole class to work with the tool. If you have not had an opportunity to see it in action I would strongly suggest you take a look – it is very useful for Ancient history as it is one of the few online timeline tools that allows you to go back that far. I am looking forward to unleashing my class on Mnemograph and putting it through it’s paces this year.

Class blog: ???? – I have yet to decide about the tool that we will use this year for our class blog. I know that it doesn’t matter a great deal and it is more about the content. 2 years ago we ran a class blog for the Year 6 class I was with and found we had problems remembering usernames and passwords and the whole process took too long. I have been exploring the use of Posterous – a blogging tool that just needs an email sending to a simple address and that is it. It deals really well with all of the media a classroom could possibly throw at it. Of course a Blogger account has a similar email address to send updates too – still undecided about the best way to go yet.

I think there is enough there to keep me out of trouble for the year to come (there is of course about 10 other things I didn’t mention) – what are you focusing on this year in your classroom? What will be new for you? What are you going to consolidate and explore in greater depth?