Vanishing Rainforests Conference

Two weeks ago, our five 4th Grade classes participated in a Vanishing Rainforests conference at JIS. We held the conference to give the students an authentic experience, researching and presenting research to fellow ‘experts’ in the same field.

 To prepare for the conference, children had to choose between 9 topics related to the destruction of the Rainforest: Palm Oil, Global Warming, Pasture land for cattle, Soybean Production, Mining, Rainforest Products, Rainforest Peoples, Endangered Animals and Logging. I created a website to help give them some guidance with their research Vanishing Rainforests. 

After researching and taking notes in pairs, the children wrote an individual report. They then had to work with their partner to turn this in to a presentation for the conference, wit most of the opting to use Keynote to make their presentation. The conference opened with this video made from video footage supplied by one of our JIS teachers who also works for integratedconservation.org and by Marcey Bailey, one of our 4th grade teachers, and photos she took on her recent trip to see the orangutans in Kalimantan.


   



The conference participants then broke off into 11 groups to present their research topic to their small group, all of whom had different presentation topics. Question and answer sessions were held at the end of each presentation. When all the groups were finished the participants were able to go to the hospitality room and enjoy a cup of tea or juice. The students loved this and you could see they throughly enjoyed the 'refreshments' part if the conference - don't we all?

  In the afternoon the conference delegates broke off into groups with others who had been researching the same topic e.g. all the people who had been researching Palm Oil production got together. These groups discussed solutions to their rainforest problem. They brainstormed ideas and then chose their top 2 and created an action plan for how they were going to work towards solving the problem. A spokesperson from each group then fed back to the whole group back in the theatre. 

The conference was ended with a Rainforest buffet of assorted tropical fruits and chocolate. The children reflected on the conference and blogged about it.


 Here is an example of one of the presentations. When creating their presentation, it was a great way to introduce Creative Commons images and we directed them to use www.photopin.com for images.

Overall the conference was a great success. it took a lot of work for the students to research their projects, put together their presentations and practise them, but it was worth it. The students learned lots of new skills: using Keynote and finding Creative Common images and refined some 'old' skills including researching, note taking, presenting in front of an audience. They had to collaborate on the presentations and be effective communicators when attending the conference. All in all it was an authentic way for them to practise these skills and get to share their ideas with other 4th grade classes.  

A Lifelong Learner: Learning Bahasa Indonesia

I arrived in Indonesia back in July to work at JIS, Jakarta International School. My first unit with my new Grade 4 class was 'Learning to Learn ' about exploring our passions. This was a great opportunity to share with my students my passion for learning languages (sadly a passion that doesn't equate to skill) and discuss how I intended to try and learn Bahasa Indonesia. In our unit we talked about thinking about how we became skilled at something and how we can transfer these skills to other areas. We talked about how 'practise makes perfect' and about our learning styles. I shared with them how I am a kinasthetic learner and how I need to make sense of my learning by creating something. So here are a few ways I explored learning Bahasa Indonesia and creating different products to help me, utilising different technologies along the way. 




Even before coming to Indonesia I downloaded free podcasts from Learning Indonesian from iTunes. I have found this very useful, especially if you start at 1.00 minute  and skip the repetitive intro!


I downloaded an app Indonesian Flashcards. Firstly I downloaded the basic version but later downloaded the full version. This has different activities to read, write and hear the different word lists they have.

Once in Jakarta, I engaged a tutor to come to my house twice a week. Pak Paul goes through a text book with me and we practice basic conversational Bahasa and basic grammar.

Our school very generously gives us money to help us learn the local language. As such I spent my October break in Yogyajakarta, attending language Colorado Language School I spent four hours a day having 1:1 lessons with the ever friendly and patient Ibu Eni and Ibu Elia. Even when I carelessly sprained my ankle at Prambanan Temple the lesson continued and they were kind enough to come to my hotel room to continue the lessons. I would recomend this school highly as the teachers were excellent and I felt we covered a lot. Despite 4 hours of 1:1 lessons the time flew.

Coming back to Jakarta I should have dived in to practising with everyone I meet but sadly I didn't. I don't know if it's my British reserve or my lack of self-confidence that stopped me from doing this. I think a bit of both.

So I continued practising with the theory at least.  To help me understand Indonesian grammar further I used a strategy I learned from Real  Spelling and made matrices in Word with the root words. As you can see from this matrix for the root word <beli>, different prefixes and suffixes can be added to it. `the matrix has to be read from left to right and every suffix can not be used all the time. Still these matrices are to help me remember the root word and think about the word families and help me expand my vocabulary by creating other words from the root word, e..g.  beli = buy, membeli = buy, membelikan = buy for, dibeli = be bought,  terbeli = bought etc. 

I also made mindmaps using Mindmeister.com to help me remember some of the vocabulary and how it's connected.

I also wanted to create some simple flashcards, as I know how a ring bound stack of words on cardboard helped me increase my Japanese vocabulary when I was learning that. I wanted an app that I could use on both my iPhone and iPad and that I would be able to share resources with others. Flashcards best suited my needs. I downloaded the free version but soon ran out of space and upgraded to the Student version with the capacity of 500 cards for each deck you create. You can download pre-made cards from Quizlet etc. or share yours which I thought might be useful for other friends learning Bahasa.   I uploaded all the vocabulary I had learned on my course and can now easily flip through these on my phone when I'm stuck in Jakarta traffic! 



Trying to utilise social media to help me learn I I also joined Learning Indonesian's Facebook page and followed Bahasa Indonesia on Twitter. 



So now, I just have to get out there and learn Indonesian the old fashioned way, and talk to people!  I do feel that learning something completely new really helps give me empathy for my students and lets me understand the trials and tribulations they go through. Just like the my Grade 4 students, I know what I have to do to improve myself and reach my goal, so now, I just have to give it a shot!

Movie Making Cluster: Making Nerd Ninja

Making Movies: Nerd Ninja

It never ceases to amaze me what Grade 4 and 5s can do. In 2011/2012 the L.C.S. Movie Making Cluster (part of weekly Enrichment Clusters) wrote and filmed their own movie, Nerd Ninja. Here is the trailer they made for the movie. 

First of all, the ten Grade 4 and 5 year students, brainstormed ideas for a movie and comedy was chosen. They then started thinking up ideas for the film and the students suggested a movie about a nerd ninja.  As they were wrangling with the story line, and trying to get ideas for the script, we had mini lessons on movie making techniques, storyboarding and filming.

They used Celtx to write out the script and after sharing our ideas for the plot took different scenes to write. The script writing process took six hour and a half long sessions. This is what the 4th and 5th graders came up with:

Nerd Ninja Screenplay

In February , when clusters started gain, they reviewed the script and made some changes and then had a read through and then started filming!

Here are some photos of the process: 

After many weeks of filming, including during the Easter holidays, and in an after school activity, we finally finished filming in April. Originally, I had hoped that the students would edit the film but alas we ran out of time and I ended up editing the film. I learnt a lot about using iMovie 11 and though it took hours, it was a very rewarding experience. It's far from perfect but for a first time effort to 'produce' a film I was pleased with my efforts. 

 Here is the finished product, I hope you enjoy it.

The Movie

To show the film we held a premiere in the school. Here are some photos of the prestigious event:

Premiere of Nerd Ninja

I think you'll agree, it's amazing what nine and ten year olds can do! It was a lot of work for all of us, but we all agreed it was worth it. 

Math Apps for the IPad

                                                                                                                                                      Equivalent Fractions

At LCS, we use Everyday Mathematics program from the University of Chicago as part of our maths program. With this Equivalent fractions, you have to find fractions that are equivalent. The more you get right in a row, the more bonus points you get. As with all the Everyday Mathematics apps, it gives you instructions on how to play the game.

Baseball Multiplication

                                                                                                                  

             

This game is to practise your rapid recall of multiplication facts by getting through the bases.

Divisibility Dash

This Everyday Mathematics app is a bit harder and is to test your division facts. Can you spot the multiples of the target number. 

Fast Facts Multiplication

This math app works on the iPhone and iPad and can be used to practise your multiplication facts.

Motion Math

This is a visually stunning app to practise your understanding of fractions, decimals and percentages. There are 3 different levels. You have to move your iPad from side to side to help place the bouncing ball in the right part of the rod, depending on the fraction/decimal/percentage given.

Motion Math Zoom

This is another app from Motion Math. This app is testing your number sense and your understanding of place value. Again there are a variety of levels for you to choose from. You can practise whole numbers, decimals and negative numbers.

Motion Math Hungry Fish

Hungry fish is a great game for those students who need to brush up on their maths facts. If your goal is have rapid recall of maths facts, then this is the app for you. You can practise different types of  number bonds. The number of levels means this is an app that different grade levels can use to help you learn your facts. 

Recreating Ellis Island

On April 17th 2012, forty-five grade 4 LCS students turned the clock back 100 years. Dressed as 1912 European migrants, the students disembarked the HMS Lincoln at Ellis Island Immigration Centre, also known to us as the school’s VPAC/NPAT performing areas. Like the original immigrants, our migrants had to go through various tests before they were allowed to enter America. We had set up various centres, based on how Ellis Island centre was set up. (See Scholastic’s great interactive site for more information on Ellis Island: http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration/tour/)

The ‘migrants’ first had to stop at the Baggage Room and leave their baggage. After registering they then had to walk the stairs and have the 1 minute physical where someone watched them walk up the stairs to see if they had a limp. Some of the tests included literacy and numeracy tests, head lice check, physical examination and questions about family background. This was an excellent migration simulation and many of the students said afterwards that migrants ‘really suffered’. They really got a first hand experience of how intimidating it was to have to go through all the tests required by Ellis Island. (Our immigration inspectors were very strict and as many said ‘very mean’).

Before the simulation, the grade 4 students had done background research about the historical events of the time from their country of origin and had created scrapbooks of diary entries from their fictional migrant character. They also came dressed as a 1912 migrant (see photo slideshow) and had to bring baggage with items that they would really have brought with them to America.

Despite the arduous tests, and the heavy downpour, all the migrants successfully entered America. We reflected after the simulation on looking at the perspectives of the immigration officers and trying to understand why they had to be strict and see the situation from their point of view. The children also had a write another diary entry for their scrapbook about what it was like going through Ellis Island. One of our students wrote on the class website: "I loved Ellis island. 'Twas a wonderful real life experience when we lived and went through the real steps people went through 100 year ago when migrating to America".


This was an excellent learning engagement for our students. As a teacher, It took a lot of time to prepare but it was extremely rewarding as I'm sure it's one they will remember for a very long time and they really got to know what empathy means, first hand.

Here are some photos from the day:

The Educators Network (TEN) Reading Workshop

The Educators Network (TEN) Reading Workshop took place last Saturday, March 31st, at Lincoln Community School, Accra, Ghana. Seven reading workshops were given by ten presenters, see below, for 140 teachers from local Ghanaian schools.

The theme of the workshop was, 'Reading: The Key Element in Academic Achievement'. I chose to present a workshop on Literature Circles, as was told this is not something that is usually done in Ghanaian schools and might be of interest to teachers of Upper Elementary and Middle School teachers.

In preparation for the workshop I made two videos of my class which I showed during the day.

I asked my class why we did Literature Circles? This is what they said:

Here is a glimpse of some of my students taking part in Literature Circles/Book Clubs:

Here is the presentation I gave during the workshop and some of the resources I handed out:

Literature Circles

View more presentations from Miss Pickles.

Educators network literature Circles 2012

View more documents from Miss Pickles.

Here are some scenes from the day!

Many thanks to Naami Oddoye and Sylvia Ampofo who organised this excellent event. The feedback from the participants was very encouraging and hopefully the Educators Network will be able to put on more workshops over the coming months for local teachers.

iBooks Author

I have just started scraping the surface of the new app for MacBooks: iBooks Author. Last week my students finished their narrative writing project and published their work in Word. I then used iBooks Author to convert these stories into iBooks for iPad. It was easy to do as there is a handy 'Chapters from Pages or Word document' option in Insert that allows you to change your Word or Pages doc into an iPad book with one click. It even copies over the pictures too.

You then have to make small alterations, you can add a title page, as I did below, and copy and paste, drop or insert a picture. What you're left with then is a beautiful looking story book that you can open on your iPad using iBooks. You can also email it directly from iBooks Author and send your iBook to your readers all over the world! You could also set up an account and publish it to the iTunes store if you were so inclined.

My next step as a teacher is to try and make a resource book, not a textbook, for my students to use during their units of inquiry so that will be my next project!

A Grade 4 student reading her iBook on the iPad to her Grade 1 reading buddy.

For more information on the potential of creating your own iBooks using iBook Author have a look at:

http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author

Watch this very helpful video on how to use iBooks Author and unleash its potential!

Speed Book Talking

Based on the idea of 'speed dating', Grade 4s did 'Speed Book Talking' in the library today. Each student had to choose one of their favourite books and had one minute only to recommend that book, or sell it, to their class mates. We formed two circles and students in the inner circle had to face their classmates in the outer circle. The students in the inner circle were the ones who started reviewing their books. After one minute everyone in the outer circle moved one place clockwise to hear a new book be reviewed. After everyone in the outer circle and heard all the reviews, they then swapped roles and became the reviewers.

The event was highly successful as most rushed to borrow the books that had been recommended. Some of the most popular books were, 'Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume' by Jeff Smith, 'Crocodile Tears' by Anthony Horowitz and 'From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler' by E. L. Konigsberg. Here are the 22 books that were reviewed today:

This was a great activity for getting students to recommend books to one another in a lively and highly motivating way!

Thanks @tgaletti for hosting us!

World Read Aloud Day

Today at LCS, we celebrated World Read Aloud Day. Our fabulous librarian,

Tanja Galetti (@tgaletti) arranged for all the Elementary School to be read stories from around the world. She also set up Skype sessions with schools in Romania, Spain to have teachers in those schools read aloud to the pre school classes. Our former Principal, now at JIS, Indonesia, also read to her former students via Skype.

Along with these activities my students enjoyed hearing more of The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke, one of my favourite read alouds. They also read aloud to their Grade 1 reading buddies. All in all a fabulous day of reading!

Commoncraft Videos with G4

As part of our PYP unit on 'Money Makes the World Go Round', my Grade 4s made Commoncraft videos. The central idea was "Marketplaces depend on the ability to provide goods and services which can be exchanged." My Grade 4 partner and I, wanted to expose the students to real news stories about factors that can affect the availability of goods. We found several news stories and simplified them for our Grade 4 students. Students explored such topics as how the Japanese earthquake and tsunami affected the production of the iPad2; how the post election conflict in The Ivory Coast affected cocoa production in 2011 and how Florida's orange crisis is making the price of orange juice rise.

To help us how to understand Commoncraft videos we watched this Behind the Scenes of a Commoncraft Video, (skip to 50 seconds to start!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgIE9aQly9k

We also watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCl1zoxs3Zo which was a very useful guide.

The students had to write a script and create accompanying pictures to explain how different factors were affecting the availability of a product. We were so impressed with the results. The video below is one 3 of my EAL (English as an additional language) students made about how the availability of oranges is affecting the supply and price of orange juice.

Throughout this project which we probably spent 3 hours on in total, the students were all 100% engaged. They worked cooperatively and proved themselves to be thinkers in working out how to show and narrate their report. The students all said they throughly enjoyed the process and would choose to use it again as a means of presentation.

The Hypnotic Effect of Real Spelling

2006 was the first time I heard about Real Spelling. In October 2006 a colleague and I from Lincoln Community School, Accra, attended a residential course on Real Spelling, and soon after our school adopted this inquiry based teaching approach to spelling. We had professional development from Real Spelling and from Pete Bowers from WordWorksKingston.

This week three teachers lead workshops on Real Spelling as part of out teacher Growth and Goals sessions at LCS. This, along with my students' inquiry into the word hypnotic this week, lead me to write this post and share with you my children's theories along with my theories, to find out the word sum of hypnotic and to share with you the kind of inquiry Real Spelling can lead to.

During my students' book club discussion, I overheard them talking about the word sum of hypnotic. They came up with some theories but this particular trio didn’t really know what the next steps were. So, we brought it to the class when the Book Club was over and asked for their theories.

Straight away the children were able to say it was a Greek word because of the medial y.

Two of my Real Spellers informed me that 'Hypnos' was a Greek God. Being quite ignorant about Greek Gods this was news to me, but great news! The boys suggested it comes from a base word meaning to sleep. and said that being hypnotised is like being asleep.

They came up with some theories such as hype +note +ic as they justified that –ic was a suffix and they thought that hype might be a base element used in hype + not +ic and the free base element hype, although they couldn’t make a connection between that and ‘sleep’.

We originally came up with some theories that it was:

hyp +no +tic hypn+o +tic hype +not +ic

One of my EAL students suggested that yes, o could be the connecting vowel.

Sadly the children and I ran out of time for our discussion and we were still no near having hard evidence to support our theories.

I then did what a girl’s got to do. I Skyped Real Spelling.

Real Spelling then subtly suggested :

There's evidence from hypnic and hypnoid.

I then asked whether -tic is a suffix as well as –ic and suggested that in gene +tic, -tic seems to be but struggled to come up with other ideas.

Real Spelling then suggested that I look at mesmerise.

He told me that was an eponym, which I didn’t know and found it very interesting reading about Mr Mesmer and his mesmorising animal magnetism!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Mesmer

So I put the letter string ‘otic’ into the word searcher ( an extremely useful tool for fidning evidence for your theories: http://www.neilramsden.co.uk/spelling/searcher/index.html

and came up with the following list: erotic, exotic, quixotic, chaotic.

Once I started investigating www.etymonline.com I put in chaotic and it conformed my earlier theories about the relationship between erotic, chaotic and exotic . All of these come from Greek bases and all of which seem to have –otic as one otic or 2 , ote + ic suffixes.

eros +tic and maybe the s became assimilated over time, as did the s in chaos + tic exo +tic

So maybe it is hypno + tic and –tic is a suffix usually added to Greek bases?

Real Spelling had already given me the suggestion that and were words so that seems to clarify that the base word is definitely coming from the Greek word to sleep.

-otic	-osis	-oticism
hypnotic	hypnosis	hypnotism
erotic		eroticism
exotic		exoticism
biotic	biosis
osmotic	osmosis
neurotic	neurosis
psychotic	psychosis

But then, what about hypnotize? I know that -ize and its British counterpart -ise are suffixes but - tize? When I looked up more words in the hypn word family I also realized that not all the words had an o following the base e.g. hypnotherapy, apart from hypnagogic , so either the o is a connecting vowel, or part of a suffix, it is definitely not part of the base element.

Or is it hypn + ote + ize?

Hypn + osis and hypn + otic don’t allow for hypnotize or hypnotherapy or hypnotism.

Although various online dictionaries tell me that –otic is a Greek adjectival suffix, I still can’t see how that leads us to hypnotise, unless that is a back formation from hypnosis so I have 2 options for hypnotize and hypnotic and I think that hypnotherapy must have a connecting vowel, as does hypnagogic

hypn (sleep)	ote	Ize Ic Ism ist	s
	otic osis otize
	o	therape	y ist

So I sent my theories off to Real Spelling and this is what I got back:

Here you need to understand Greek and Latin word structure, and what constitutes the productive ‘stem’ that is the root of English elements. Such resources as Etymonline assume that you know such thing. You can get an idea of it from a comment in the Word Study film on the spelling of lens (the title is ‘A Mess of Pottage’) that you can view here in the Real Spelling Gallery. The passage in question begins at the 3 minute 50 seconds mark

I had to admit, I still didn’t understand! So I sheepishly admitted that I didn’t and got this reply:

“I don't give answers, as you know - I comment on reasoning and treatment of evidence! The question - and its development - is more important than the answer.

That said, your own investigation took you, as illustrated in your matrix, to these possibilities.

All these are morphologically coherent and consistent; they do imply the existence of a suffix <-ote>. We need to clinch, it, though, by finding at least one attested spelling in which it is actually final - by definition, prefixes CAN be (not "are") final in a word construction. So I do a word search and - yoopeee! - I unearth that shares a base with and the splendid . The suffix <-ose> is attested.

All that's left is this:

It looks as if it might actually be since I do know the suffix <-is>. I need to find an attested occurrence, then, of <-ose>. As yet, however, I haven't managed to find one so my holding position until I do must be to treat -osis as a unitary suffix.”

So the search continues but at least I know the suffixe –ote! It was a long investigation but I learned and relearned a lot on the way. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

Find out more about Real Spelling and this inquiry approach at:

www.realspelling.com and www.wordworkskingston.com

I am also putting together some resources for my school’s Real Spelling learning community too but it is very much a work in progress:

www.realspellinglcs.wikispaces.com