Week+10

Today the children began their personal recount - about blue day.The children really do enjoy videoing each other and always are engaged and interested. ||  ||   || I was away today - looking after my daughter who has the flu. Time to reflect on the role commenting has on literacy development. I see it as an important tool in developing reflective learners and I would like to work on developing this further next term. Part of the problem is that we need to balance the needs of children drawing their illustrations for their publishing with the need to have children commenting on the blog. At the moment the system is a little problematic in that when we assign 2 of the 3 computers for the children to write comments they spend a long time constructing their comment reflecting the fact that their typing skills are not fine tuned. Some days very few children manage to complete a comment and we get behind in the children drawing illustrations for thier published work. I have thought about setting a timer but that just doesn't seem right - reflective comments do take time and this coupled with their emerging typing skills - I need to give them the time to work through the process.
 * == Week 10 == ||  ||
 * __**Monday**__
 * **__Tuesday__**

On the whole the children are able to write comments giving feedback to each other but only a few have written comments to reflect on their own work or to add on to their texts - I would like to promote this next term by introducing a tracking/ incentive system. ||  ||  || Rebekah a child in our class has been away this term sailing to Tonga with her family. We have read about her adventures on their family blog. Today we got news that the family had had to be rescued by a French warship. I read the article to the children they sat their stunned to think of 'our' Rebekah sailing off in the family yacht and coming home on a warship. We then goggled images - to view the warship Rebekah was coming home in.
 * __**Wednesday**__

||  ||

=**I had to smile when one of the children commented - Rebekah will be able to write a really good story. Yep another added a really good personal recount.** = || Returning to an activity we had done at the beginning of our inquiry today the children wrote a definition for water. These definitions clearly show how much knowledge and understanding they have acquired over the term. Teaching can be so rewarding.
 * __**Thursday**__

The class is full of questions and comments about Rekekah. Today we read another article on line and a watched a video clip of the family. We saw huge cameras as we watched the clip and decided that we would probably see Rebakah on the news - we were right. ||  ||  || Its the last day of Term 2 - where has the time gone.
 * __**Friday**__

Rebakah arrived home yesterday and sat on the mat with us all this morning. A lot of the children had watched the news last night and today they got to ask Rebakah all those questions they had. As the children set off to finish writing their water definitions Rekekah asked if she could draw the yacht on Kidpix. She did. Watching her work made me reflect on how far the rest of the class had come in the term - the ease at which they are familiar with the KidPix programme and the detail they put into their work. Rebakah will take time to acquire the skills the rest of the class have gained over the term.

We had a singing assembly at the end of the day where selected teachers were released. I was one of those. I seized the opportunity to do some last minute recording using imovie. I am now using imovie HD instead of garage band to record voice (after the latest update on garage band made uploading podcasts to the blog more problematic.) I will attempt to get some of these recordings up during the holiday break. Using imovie as a tool to publish is a lot faster than publishing with keynote. This being so I have introduced another system in the classroom. One side of the classroom - work is hung up ready for recording with the flip video while on the other side of the classroom the work is hung up in a clear file ready for recording using imovie. In this way the children are quite clear about what tool will be used to publish and they know that they have to read their work to at least 2 people - one of whom must be their literacy buddy ready for recording later in the week. ||  ||

As we parted for the holidays we looked at the stats of the various countries that have visited our classroom blog. || • Simple and child friendly systems assist in the smooth running of a project like this. • Children need time to complete quality comments. • As a teacher I need to think of ways to encourage and support children writing a variety of comments on the blog. • The benefits of this way of publishing keep encouraging me to find solutions to any problems I encounter - it has become a part of the way I teach. ||
 * As the week draws to a close – I ponder and acknowledge the following