Carolyn+-+Waterloo

 Carolyn @ Waterloo I am teaching a year 3/4 composite class this year so there are a variety of abilities in my class. Currently the children have separate computer sessions with our ICT co ordinator as the Year 4's already have the skills that the Year 3's need to learn. __My goals for this year are__:
 * Continue to make excel games pages that link to termly maths topics and make these available for others in the syndicate and cluster to access.
 * Learn how to put maths games pages onto a wiki.
 * Utilise my classroom computer so learning is meaningful and integrated.
 * Use at least one idea from the 2007 Ulearn conference in my class and share with my syndicate/whole school.

Hi Carolyn, We all appreciated you sharing your excellent links sheets at the cluster meeting. These are a good set of goals for yourself. Ulearn is quite far forward in the year. Maybe you could also consider a similar goal in terms of taking an idea from the Expo? Keep up the good work. Sorry, I meant from Ulearn 2007 :) Have lots of ideas, just need to choose one and trial it.... I am really looking forward to both of my workshops at the July EXPO and will want to put one into practice in the class.

July 08 update: Our topic for term 2 was Body Odyssey and we were focussing on Systems. I was able to integrate ICT into the classroom programme and felt that I met my goal of utilising the class computer. We did alot of research as we followed an inquiry model and so i had made a Body Odyssey excel doc to go with my language, topic, ICT and Maori subjects as they were all integrated. It worked really well. In the computer suite we published research into word documents and I wanted my year 4's to create a powerpoint to show their research but we ended up running out of time. My kids were awesome with bringing resources in linked to the topic. I got loads of animal bones from a farm which we used for observational drawings and to take photos that were later used with the projector for art lessons.    This idea with a word document reallly inspired some ideas for the classroom computer and I made a template for the Skeletal system where the kids had to drag names of the bones into the correct place to assemble the skeleton. They also had to rotate a few bones. My aim was to get them to do their own one but once again, we ran out of time. Another Year 4 class had a go at it. <span style="COLOR: rgb(6,147,14); FONT-FAMILY: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive"> 7/7/08: Expo reflection: Thank you Stu for the workshop on blogging, it's definately something I will persist with and talk to my syndicate about giving it a go for Term 3 or 4. Thank you Suzie for showing me how to link flickr to classroom ICT tasks, I can definately see myself making motivatinal posters and experimenting with some of the many ideas you gave us. This is another tool that I will definately introduce my syndicate to. Rachel Boyd is so motiviating, I am really enthusiastic about starting a class blog and hope to get onto it during these holidays.

<span style="COLOR: rgb(255,3,0); FONT-FAMILY: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive">Great to see you reflecting on the EXPO and blogging can be a really powerful way to give the kids writing a wider audience. Let me know your blog address and I will get my kids to go on and comment! You could add on your motivational posters and get kids to comment on them as a starter. Nigel@Korokoro Well, we are waiting for the school website before we start a blog and enthusiasm is beginning to lessen as we are getting into the term and seem bogged down with other stuff.... But i would like to look at your class blog to get some ideas for when we do get onto it. Have had a look at some Muritai ones...