Category: Curriculum

Newseum

LiteracyPublished onLeave a Comment on Newseum

Just thought I would add this as I have been on about teaching newspapers in class. Newseum is a fantastic site giving access to over 500 international newspaper front pages. Click on “Today’s Front Pages” and you can view them all either as a list or as a map which I have done with my class.

271504932 e56589eafe

Great for exploring the features of journalistic style and newspaper language features. As a class we even looked at a Russian front page and identified the same language features (Headline, strapline, caption etc) as an English version. This helped (I think…) the kids to understand the universality of the features of a newspaper.

The site though also has some excellent resources for social studies and I will be using the D-Day news feature (pictured above is the front page of the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph) to help provide a source of historical information when we study WW2 in our history. The front pages can be zoomed into in the flash feature and explored really easily.

Leaf Colour in the UK

Google Earth, My class, SciencePublished onLeave a Comment on Leaf Colour in the UK

I discovered this neat little network link Google Earth file via Frank on the Google Earth Blog. I think it will be a useful teaching aid for Science.

ukautumn

It shows the leaf colour of major forests in and around the UK, the information is gathered from the Forestry Commission sites and transposed into Google Earth. The colours will change as the Autumn season progresses.

In class we are soon to be looking at life processes in Science so I will be keeping an eye on this one. I thought I might take a snapshot of Google Earth with this network link on, like the image above and watch it in a Flickr slideshow with the fade on or in Picasa with similar fading settings to illustrate to the kids the changing colours of this time of year.

Download the Google Earth file here >> google earth linkLeaf Colour in the UK

Newspaper clipping generator

Literacy, My classPublished on2 Comments on Newspaper clipping generator

On Thursday night I came across this simple web based tool from David Muir’s post about it – luckily for me I was teaching my class about newspapers last week so I used it on Friday in my literacy lesson. If you have read our class blog you will have noticed we have been doing Dracula as a class text – the kids love it! – and on Thursday and Friday we looked at an event in the story and planned a newspaper article on it. As a class we generated a piece of writing and I typed it into the newspaper clipping generator – the children thought it was great!

269531293 0e88664003

We packed lots in today…

Google Earth, IWB, Mapping, Maths, My class, SMARTboardsPublished onLeave a Comment on We packed lots in today…

It has been a busy day for ICT in my classroom today – ususally is on a Tuesday as we have our time over in the ICT suite. Anyway I will try and explain everything we did.

Google Earth – Where are we today?
Did this slightly differently today as I explained to the children I had found the location of some people who had commented on our class blog. So I started looking down on the earth from afar and very slowly zoomed into Sydney and Canada respectively. We then looked closely at Sydney and loaded a 3D model of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge – we even zoomed onto the bridge and panned along it, on the model there are even tiny cars and bikes – I said to the kids it was a good way to start the day – driving along Sydney Harbour Bridge!
Mayomi
Used this great visual mindmapping tool/site today to explore what we had learned so far in our 2D Shape work. Really simple to use when combined with a IWB and wireless keyboard which I used today.

265942734 84dd4d5f6a

Unfortunately there is no way to embed the map into your own site which would be great so I am going to explore whether I can hack some code to embed the mindmap into a wikispace.

RSS / Newsfeeds for Headlines
Just mentioned this today as we have been looking at newspapers and a journalistic style in our work. I had seen something on a blog before about it, but I just explained what RSS is and how we can get newsfeeds really easily. I think that it is very important to explore how different literacy and news is today – not just broadsheets and tabloids anymore, but a more fluid style of news that is much more personalised.

I just used the “Latest Headlines” bookmark on my Firefox toolbar to show them, we then just guessed from the headline what the news story was about.

Also briefly looked at Headline History which is cracking site I hope to use agin this year.

Quikmaps and our class Wikispace
I was a really happy bunny this afternoon as I knew that I had set my children a challenge, and they rose to it so well! Basically my Year 6 children had made a Quikmap (see previous post about the activity), powered by Google Maps, and then embedded the map into our class wikispace. It looks great! Take a look over on the history pages on our Wikispace. Scroll down and wait for the maps to load – don’t forget to click on the placemarks to see the work the children have done and why it is under History.
It also helped me to understand some of the practical problems that occur when you have lots of concurrent authors of the same space. Look out for some details soon.

Extension activity in Maths today

Google Earth, Literacy, Maths, My classPublished onLeave a Comment on Extension activity in Maths today

Further to our work on Mina’s journey using Google Earth – I asked some children who had completed the standard addition sums in their maths books to calculate the different distances of Mina’s travels. They used the measure tool in GE 4 to plot her journey from major city to major city – they then applied the addition strategies to work out her total approximate distance.