Category: Literacy

@manyvoices Twitter Project

Literacy, My class, TwitterPublished on2 Comments on @manyvoices Twitter Project

I am pleased to say that we are going to be contributing to this great little writing project from George Mayo. The @ManyVoices project is a collaborative, creative writing project using Twitter.

Each child writes part of the story sticking to the 140 character limit, once they are done another pupil picks up the authorial baton and continues the tale.

One of the best aspects of using Twitter for children to author creative writing is the character limit – those reluctant writers do not feel over-awed by a large blank page. The short paragraph they have to contribute is manageable and offers greater accessibility.

We are going to access the @manyvoices Twitter account and I will ask the children to work on a single laptop throughout the day next few days

The updates are copied onto a supportive wiki whereabouts you can read the whole story so far and follow along. George also explains:

The story concludes at the 140th entry. At that point, we collectively edit and revise our little Twitter story before publishing it as a small book through Lulu.com

I look forward to contributing over the next few days and I will post about how it goes. If you want to be involved I know that George is still looking for contributors – why not get in touch with him and get your kids to play their part.

Using Visuwords in the classroom

Literacy, My classPublished on7 Comments on Using Visuwords in the classroom

My favourite web based tool I am using in my classroom at the moment is Visuwords. It is a dictionary/thesaurus/etymology visualisation tool which uses Princeton University’s WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers. It works wonderfully with a SMARTBoard as you can move the nodes about and shift things around to help clarify a connection. There are many many applications for this in the classroom and here are just a few I have been pondering.

Define key vocabulary from learning objectives.
So you have shared with the children the learning objectives for the session and now you want to clarify any vocabulary they should/need to know. You could even have a link directly from that word to the site. For example you could explore the meaning of “significant” from the Y5 Literacy Framework objective:

  • Read and compare stories by significant children’s authors.

Search for the word and ask your children to explore what they can see, can we find any synonyms that will help us define it. Roll the mouse over a connected node to see a pop up definition. Relate it back to your objective – this would work well in a plenary session too.

Explore new vocabulary that you find.
I love exploring new vocabulary with my children. They see my enthusiasm and it becomes infectious, we have a Wow words board where they can put up interesting words they find in their reading books and elsewhere, this changes all the time. This week we were doing some work on an extract from A Christmas Carol and as we read it we noted some words we wanted to find out about. Ruddy, intimation, mourner. I ran the searches in Visuwords as a plenary.

Explore word derivation.
Visuwords does a great job of showing the children how interconnected words are and one part to explore is the derivation of vocabulary. The link you are looking for is the dashed line (you will see from this explained in the key) which shows the roots of the word you are exploring. Not quite as good as a full blown etymological dictionary but you can see the connections.

Play a word journey game.
This is a favourite in my classroom at the moment and is similar to a word association game. The children are given a starter word and they take it on a journey, thinking of a connected word and recording each step. You ask for where they ended up – “So you started with GIANT and ended up with FACTORY.” This sits nicely with Visuwords as you can expand the visual network by double clicking on a node. Run the search for “Fairytale” and see if you can get to “Fake” – lots of possibilities to explain and discuss these connections.

Experience the links between words.
There is a clear difference between the various links that are displayed and the graphical key below the map area explains these connections. There are 19 different types of links that may be displayed and I certainly wouldn’t expect to use them all or to ask my children to understand them. But the key links I would be interested in are: “is a word for”, “is similar to”, “derivation” and “opposes”. Try running a search for “style” for a broad map straight off the bat.

Visuwords screen shot

Show the depth and complexity of meaning.
Sticking with the results for “style” – you can very easily display how some words in the English language have a broad range of meanings and possible uses. So in these results you could highlight to the children how many different shades of meaning there are for this simple word. Another good example of this is the word “say” – very simple on the outset but if you run the search you will see it is complex in it’s meaning and usage.

Explore different word types.
Visuwords uses 4 colours to display the 4 main word groups. Green – verbs, Blue – Nouns, Orange – adjectives and Red – adverbs. This proves to be a very effective visual aid to writing as children can quickly generate adjectives from a search. So if you punch in “happy” there is displayed a wondrous tangle of synonyms the children could use in there writing. Of course they can roll over these and see the meaning of the new words if they wish. The combination of data and the way it is presented makes this a very powerful tool to support writing.

Discover more information than you expect to.
Do a search for “banana” and now double click “edible fruit” – Wow, all of sudden you and the children are exploring topic related information. From the original node you have the definition, the plant group it belongs to, other banana plant types. Following the other links you have this great web of edible fruit of which our initial search obviously belongs to. I just learned of breadfruit and jackfruit and pitahaya! Cool! I just did a quick search for “puma” and followed the “wildcat” node and you get a similar result. This could prove to be an interesting research tool if used in the correct manner.

Just enjoy it!
Dictionaries are never this much fun! There is something strangely hypnotic about the way the word nodes splurge outwards and the network stretches and skews. As connections are made, new pathways and relevance is shown. Drag the background screen around to move around the word map. Don’t forget the scalable version that can fill the browser window or to use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out as you work. The latter point is good to focus the children’s attention on one specific part of the map. See if the children can find a word with the most nodes, the most links!

It has been great exploring some of these ideas in more depth as I have been writing this post and consider this as an excellent addition to my online classroom toolkit.

What successful experiences of this tool have you or your colleagues had? How have you used it in your classroom? 

Using Diigo for narrative response

Literacy, My classPublished on4 Comments on Using Diigo for narrative response

As part of the new Primary Literacy Framework, we are covering narrative over the next four weeks and I must say it has been much clearer what we are doing in literacy due to the changes. I find them most welcome, gone are the days of chopping and changing all term.

Anyway one of the 12 strands is to “Engage with and respond to text.” Well today we used Diigo in a fantastic way that got the children doing exactly that!

Unfortunately I cannot link to the work we did as it had photos of the children and some text from published texts. So you get your visualisation juices going…bear with me…

Imagine a web page, I used a published Google Doc, with a table at the top of the page with the children’s photos and names in. Under the table is an opening to a story by a significant author and suitably chosen for the ability of the children in the group. Tomorrow a different group are doing this activity so a different story. As we are only looking at the opening hooks it is just a few paragraphs worth. Above the table of children’s names are some simple instructions such as:

Take your time to read the opening to the story below. Your job is to respond in two ways.
1 – Add a sticky note, using the Diigo toolbar, under your picture or name and  explain how you feel about this opening.
2 – Highlight some text and comment on part of the opening you enjoyed or want to talk about. Add you initials to your comments.

In my planning I had put down to work with this group as they completed the activity on individual laptops at their desks and it was a real success. The children clicked on Sticky Note in the Diigo toolbar and added a typed comment, they then went a step further and (after clicking refresh in IE to see their friends comments – a good tip!) added further comments to their friends Diigo stickies. They rolled over the sticky bubble icon and then rolled over the Actions menu at the top right. Then it is just a case of going to “Add Comment” and the children are engaging with not only the text but each others’ responses.

The other Year 5 class completed the same activity after playtime. Whereas the group in my class began with a webpage with no comments on, the other class were able to view (and comment on) ours and get started quite quickly. The children were, as before, motivated and really engaged with the task. Diigo as a tool is becoming very, very useful!

Here are some of the children comments on the text we looked at today using Diigo.

“Its a sad story when the girl and hugo dies at the end.(and i think that hugo should die because he didn’t let the girl have freedom so he disereves it.”

“on the part were hugo found out that the young girl escaped your body goes really cold for second with fear that something terrible is going to happen”

“It is a sad story because some body dies and the girl trys to get her freedom.”

Any guesses what the story is?

On Reflection 

  • This activity was easy to set up – it is basically a page of text, the key thing is to have the Diigo toolbar (and class account) ready to roll.
  • It can be done with a whole class using a computer suite for a literacy lesson, different children looking at different texts.
  • The texts could also be in the public domain and they do not need to be narrative even. If you are looking at persuasive text why not look at the Alton Towers site and get the children to add Sticky Notes with their comments about how persuasive the site is.
  • It could also be extended beyond popular fiction to include peer reviewing of children’s work they have published. (Lots to explore here I think)
  • We worked between classes separated by a corridor but there is no reason why schools from anywhere could collaborate in response to a story or text.
  • Given the right preparation and equipment I think this is a most manageable activity within a literacy independent session.
  • My children had looked at Sticky Notes before but never added them independently – they catch on very fast and coped without any problems.
  • Diigo with its “Highlight and Comment” tool can easily become a very useful online text annotation / response tool and I think I will keep using it.

I am pleased to welcome Diigo into my toolkit on a permanent contract 🙂 all these ideas have been simmering for a while now and it is excellent to have the opportunity to see the children engaging and responding to text in this unique way.

Videojug | Create a Graph | Good ol' Word

Laptops, Literacy, Maths, My classPublished on2 Comments on Videojug | Create a Graph | Good ol' Word

Videojug and the pursuit for folding glory!

Who is doing instructional writing? We have been covering this text type for a few weeks now and two weeks ago we used this site as part of reading and evaluating instructional text. I decided I wanted the children to compare 3 sets of instructions for the same thing and to rate the instructions I chose to look at a renowned video titled “How to fold a T-Shirt in 2 Seconds”. However I did not reveal the video until the class had tried to follow two different text instructions (no pictures). And yes I did take in a load of T-Shirts for the kids to use! Don’t worry by the end of the lesson you will have all of the neatly folded!

The two sets of written instructions were taken from the Videojug site – a written set accompanies most videos. The first set the kids used was one edited down to one paragraph, no numbers or bullets. They struggled, but the point is they are meant to. (T-shirts become messy at this point) Suddenly the children are talking about how difficult it is and saying that this feature or that feature is missing.

We then looked at the second set of instructions which are just the exact written set from the Videojug site – as you see it online. The children still struggled, even though there are far more reader friendly features. There was some mild folding success, but not much. We discussed as a class why this was and rated the instructions as before.

I then told the children to open the laptops they had on their tables and look at the video. I showed it on the SMARTBoard too. I suggested to pause the video as it played so the children could keep up. It’s good as it has a “You will need” section and clear numbered steps on the video. I would recommend getting the site preloaded if you are getting lots of machines to access it – also if you are working on a wireless network.

Bisect t shirt

There were lots of serendipitous moments and suddenly children were expertly folding the T-Shirts as if they had been working in a clothing boutique for the past 10 years! We then had a Fold Off, children folding as fast and accurately as they could. I even challenged the other year 5 teacher, Rick to a contest. Entering his class with his kids backing him, I struggled and lost my 2nd pinch as he made a beautiful fold to the rapture of his children’s voices, I skulked off and called for the return tie! 🙂

Create a Graph

A classic maths tool, Create a Graph is saved by about 850 other people on del.icio.us and is a wonderfully useful tool for your data handling work. It can of course be used as an excellent way to demonstrate the creation of graphs with a whole class but This week we used it as part of an independent activity in a maths lesson. The children had pulse rate monitors fitted and a laptop to access the site. They needed to record their pulse after 2 mins of resting and then again after 2 minutes of walking around the room. This was repeated for 10 minutes – we tried to predict the shape of the line graph and the children managed very well with the tool. An important aspect of the tool is the ability to add a minimum and maximum value to the graph, so that you can create a more balanced graph with greater detail. We also discussed why 0-30 would not be useful on a pulse rate axis!

Once the line graphs were created we exported them as PDF files and talked about them in the plenary of the session using the SMARTBoard. You also have the option to export/download the graph in other formats: SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) PNG (Portable Network Graphics) JPG (JPEG, Joint Photographic Experts Group) EMF (Enhanced Metafile Format) Can be imported into programs such as MS Word or MS PowerPoint, EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) Can be opened with graphics programs such as Adobe Illustrator or QuarkXPress. A good range of options to keep everyone happy!

I like the way that you can continually preview the graph as you enter data which allowed the children to spot errors as they built the graph. All in all a good apple!

Good Ol’ MS Word 

Now even though I have dabbled in blogs, wikis and online documents I still think there is great value in just some basic word processing skills. We are using the new MS Word on the class laptops and we have charged the children to write a set of instructions, a help document for the excellent Sploder game creator site. It has been great seeing the children bring to their work basic skills they have learned along the way and to develop some new ones. It has also brought us excellent opportunities to recap saving routines and simple image manipulation.

I know, and have experienced, the value of working on writing with other collaborators, with other children, other schools using new age writing tools. But in this instance I wanted to write without publishing along the way, I wanted the children to hone and master a single piece of work for a chosen audience without the outside world looking in. That’s not so bad is it? We have had some fantastic results, which you will no doubt see glimpses of here soon, and the children have been extremely motivated by the whole writing task.

Sharing a Google Spreadsheet in class

Google Docs, Laptops, Literacy, My class, SciencePublished on9 Comments on Sharing a Google Spreadsheet in class

Today was Day 1 in terms of our laptop use in the classroom and we hit the ground running, so to speak – just how I like it. I am sure you have had days like today, when it is a bit of a whirlwind from 8am right through to 4pm – where does the time go? Today the sands just seemed to slip through my fingers! Not to say it was one of the best days for a long time.

We now have 8 Toshiba laptops running happily in both of our Year 5 classes and today we kicked off with a simple word level activity in literacy. One group worked on Race to Ramses! a game about combining prefixes and suffixes to create new words. I have taught with laptops in the past but the new technology (laptops and WAPs) is just so much more reliable. And it is great seeing children completely engaged with one to one technology supporting their learning, I am so pleased to see it in the hands of the pupils – which is the whole point. You might think “web game, one group…not really setting the world alight” – but I suppose it is a culmination of a lot of work and to finally get things in front of children, reliable and solid feels like a big achievement.

Needless to say in the afternoon we swam into deeper waters and I’d like to think we pushed the envelope a bit…

The morning was successful and the children enjoyed working on their own machine and many children asked for the web address for the game – so we will have to get our del.icio.us account sorted or get them into their Google accounts soon!

In the afternoon we were looking at some science work we have begun regarding healthy living and exercise. Today we explored pulse rates and we used an online spreadsheet to share our results, hence the title of the post. (This work is similar to some online spreadsheet action we had last year with my Year 6 class) I decided to use a Google spreadsheet as I have been using the Docs application for a while (in fact I have a few grumbles about that – more soon) but you could have easily used EditGrid as an alternative – I set the sheet up so that all of the children’s names from both classes were present in the first column. Then 10 other columns were labelled, “Resting Pulse1, Resting Pulse 2…” It was in these cells that the kids added their resting pulse after counting for 30 seconds and doubling.

spread

I then accessed the same spreadsheet through my Google login on all 8 laptops per class that I put around the room – so in effect I logged in 16 times (plus my PC and SMARTBoard, so 17) to the same document from different locations. We talked a little about how to find our pulse and then asked the children to record 10 instances of their resting rate into the spreadsheet. It was great! With the live update feature we were able to see individual results popping up all over the place and even from next door in Rick’s class who were doing the same. Google Spreadsheets has an Auto Save option which makes life much easier and gives you the opportunity to see the live data. Not only did the hardware hold out fine, but accessing the spreadsheet was excellent – even with 17 simultaneous users on a single login. The children really enjoyed seeing each other’s work and it gave them a great overview of not only the class year group working together, but also to the sorts of data people were adding. Children from the other class were nipping across the corridor and questioning the validity of results from kids in my class.

The children had a tendency to sit with the laptop in front of them, in small groups rather than freely moving around the classroom and accessing any machine. But I suppose that is due to the nature of task.

Within the space of about 40 minutes, perhaps less, we collected approximately 600 individual results all in one place. No doubt they will be quicker next time. This method of data collection also allows us the ability to then manipulate the results afterwards, working out averages of the whole year group etc. I would highly recommend doing this if you have the reliable kit in your classroom, we have already said that it will be an excellent data entry method for our maths lessons on data handling.

It is now 12 hours since I started the day at school and I am just about coming up for air, no don’t worry I am not at school still! – but it is great to reflect here on these sorts of days. One to remember and I hope you might take some of these ideas and use it yourself.