Twitter In A Year 1 Classroom
This week I have started to use Twitter in my Year 1 class. Twitter is a great way to engage children with, and give them a reason for writing. This term was chosen as we currently have 10 eggs in the year group as we wait for them to hatch.
Setting goals.
As with any new practises, and especially when introducing technology it is important to know before you start why you are doing it and what the desired outcomes are. I purposely choose my year group and a relatively simple goal. This being the first venture onto Twitter for the school I wanted to almost guarantee success.
Our goal was to increase desire to write. We wanted to use Twitter to provide a purpose for their writing and ensuring that the have an engaging stimulus, which having eggs in the classroom to hatch certainly was. I’ll write a post about that when we have finished the topic.
Setting up Twitter.
Starting out is really simple, I set up an account on Twitter you can sign up here, something short is good. I went for @RLPSyr1
What a protected twitter stream looks like.
Once the account is setup it’s pretty much all done. After seeking advice from my follwers on Twitter I opted to make our class tweets protected. This isn’t ideal as it is a barrier to followers (especially non-tweeting parents) but it does mean a layer if security and control over what could appear on the screen in the classroom. It was mainly our followers advatars that caused me concern in the begining we had a couple of followers with pictures that I wanted to block. During class use I use a view that just shows our tweets by zooming into the page (200% on my screen), this helps eliminate these problems.
How we use it.
To integrate it into my classroom practice was the key to success. At convient points in the lesson, especially plenaries, and mid-lesson mini plenaries I have been asking children to think of a full sentence to explain what we have learnt in the lesson. I’ve also been getting children to write a sentence about their observations of the eggs. Children have also been encouraged to write a sentence or two when they notice something about the eggs/chicks, for example when another had hatched.
How did it go?
Well, both of these strategies have worked. A week in and my children are wanting to write on Twitter. They come up to me and say “I know what we can write on Twitter” then speak in full, interesting sentences. Interestingly I’ve noticed boys are very keen to suggest a sentence, far more than they normally are, say in shared writing. The short nature of the writing has helped, in a class with high EAL I’m constantly looking for ways to engage and remove the fear from writing – twitter seems to be helping with this.
What next?
The obvious next step is to start using it more in other lessons, this would help develop home-school links which would be a great gain and one that would certainly speed up the adoption of it across the school.
Follow me on Twitter, or follow my class.
Image: cc ShawnCampbellChoosing a Child at Random
The Problem:
It’s a very regular event in my classroom that a child will need to be selected to do something. Often this is a task that isn’t child / level specific so anyone would be suitable. I don’t notice that I can end up choosing the same child more often than some others. But more than, or worse than this, is that some children think that it can’ t be them. This isn’t the case, and I certainly don’t want to look like it could be so I wanted to find something that is transparent and obviously fair to the children. (By fair I really mean, not influenced by me. Some will always think it isn’t fair if they are not picked!)
The Solution:
My solution is to use a name picker/selector, call it what you will. This one from classtools.net is really easy to set up. Just type in (or better still cut and paste) a class list into the box and the rest is done for you.
There are two styles to choose from:
- Typewriter – Where the child’s name comes up one letter at a time.
- Fruit Machine – Where the names rotate and it slows and then settles on one child’s name
To get a new name just click on the Fruit Machine button again. Or Typewriter to try the other way, couldnt be simpler, although it would be cooler if you could pull the lever!
Bonus:
This is also a great tool for “No-Hand-Up Questions” no-one knows who will be answering so everyone is engaged. To differentiate, choose the name first then ask the question, posing a question at a suitable level. I’ve seen no-hands questioning fail beacuse teachers fall into the old habit of asking a question then looking for someone to answer it.
Here I’m showing you the Fruit Machine one, but both are worth a look:
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Going though my Google Reader I found a short article from Londonist outlining the scam. More detail can be found in this BBC News article.
Basically schools have been receiving and paying fake invoices for adverts placed in the Yellow Pages, though the bills were to pay Yellow Pages 24. The schools were requested to either send a cheque to a W1 London PO Box or off to Germany.
I thought it would be worth pointing out – though I haven’t worked in a school that pays out bills without checking the validity of the invoices they receive , this goes to show that you can never be too careful. If you receive an invoice for Yellow Pages and a little double checking would be worthwhile!
Photo Credit: metrostation
Been Away for A While
After finishing my contract in Bangkok I went traveling. I am currently in Bangkok again visiting some friends before making it home in time for Christmas.
This time-out from working has given me plenty of opportunity for thought and I’ll be posting some of these better, more interesting thoughts and ideas over the next few weeks.
If all goes well this will include some lesson ideas and resources I have gathered during my trip.
M&Ms As A Starting Point In Art
Today we had a parent come in to do some art with our children. He is a keen amateur artist/photographer and has been wanting to come in and help us do something with the kids for a while now.
He has just returned from a trip to the North of Thailand where there was a ghost festival. He showed the children photographs of the masks that they wore and pictures that he had painted and line drawings, all of which were of a high standard.
It is how he started though that really caught my imagination. Considering he hadn’t worked with such young children before (Reception age) he did very well, keeping their interest and choosing tasks that were appropriate.
He started by asking the children if they wanted to see some magic? Of course they all wanted to and were instantly excited. He made the empty plate become full of M&Ms – just by opening the bag. Some of the children got the joke and thought it was funny and the rest just thought it was magic! He moved on to ask each of the children to choose one… this was the way in. After each child had a colour he asked one to come to the front. The child had to tell him what colour they had and what it reminded them of, then others with the same colour had to suggest other items / objects that were either that colour or they thought of when looking at that colour.
This really got the children thinking about colour and grabbed their imagination, we moved on to talk about portraits and things but I’ll certainly be trying this as an introduction next time I do an art lesson focused on colour.