Teaching about Ghana

Interested in learning more about Ghana?

Next week in unit of inquiry on Trade we are looking at cocoa production in Ghana and discussing Fair Trade. There is a great resource from the UK's Comic Relief fund cal

led 'PaPaPaa' which in Twi means, the best of the best. It's a great resource for anyone teaching either about Ghana or about cocoa production, Fair Trade or all of the above. Although the materials are 7 years old now, I still find them invaluable resources:

Another great resource if you are studying Ghana is:

www.akwaaba.wikispaces.com

This was made by my friend and our school's Library Media Specialist Tanja Galetti (you can follow her on Twitter @tgaletti). It includes some great resources for studying about textiles and beads in Ghana, as well as studying Twi names and phrases and a whole rake of other resources and ideas.

Another useful site if you are looking at Ghanaian Adinkra patterns is: www.adinkra.org

Here you can find out the meaning of different symbols and download the images.

Another useful site is Oxfam Cool Planet's Ghana Virtual Journey for finding out about Ghanaian food, arts and crafts and about other aspects of Ghanaian daily life.

Enjoy finding out more about this great country and its amazing cultural heritage.

iPad apps in 4th Grade

My students have been 'encouraging' me to share the apps we use in class with their parents so they can download them at home. Today I sent out some suggestions to parents and thought I would share them here of examples of apps 4th graders are using at our school:

Hungry Fish

Hungry Fish is a great game to practise addition number bonds. The number of levels also means that you can use it for your Grade 1 or your Grade 4 student to help them practise their number facts.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/motion-math-hungry-fish/id483049169?mt=8

Lattice Multiplication

In unit 5 we have been looking at different multiplication methods and this is an excellent way to practise the lattice method of multiplication and again there are a variety of levels to explore.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lattice-multiplication/id351024204?mt=8

Name that Number

Practice basic number and order of operations with this Every Day Math app. Everyday math have a number of apps, some of them free and some of them paid. Do a search for Everyday Math Beat the Calculator, Top It and Basball Multiplication are other ones we have used in class.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/everyday-mathematics-name/id414295469?mt=8

Make me Proud

This is an interactive storybook that you can edit and add your own voice. We will be using this app with our reading buddies in Grade 1 over the next few weeks.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/you-make-me-proud-iphone-edition/id483586124?mt=8

Book Creator

This is a highly user friendly book maker. You can take your own photos and film with your iPad and then straight away add them to a book. Add text, add speech and sounds and you have created your own interactive book which you can share.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/book-creator-for-ipad/id442378070?mt=8

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore

This interactive story app is my favourite app and the Grade 4 students love it too. We have shared this story on the IPad with our reading buddies and everyone loves it.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-fantastic-flying-books/id438052647?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Numberlys

Hot off the presses! This was just released on Friday and I just got to see it today. It is a long but very clever story about how letters of the alphabet came into being. Like ‘Morris’ it is half short movie/ half short film and is an excellent interactive app.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/numberlys/id491546935?mt=8

Toontastic

A very user friendly cartoon maker to make animated stories. The children have loved using this to create their own cartoons.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toontastic/id404693282?mt=8

'Nerd Ninja' coming 2012!

My biggest project this term is going to be Nerd Ninja! My Movie Making Cluster from last term wrote the script and started storyboarding. Now comes the filming! Clusters begin again on February 1st and production will start again in earnest! I'm currently researching filming tips, I've never made a movie before, and have found some good videos on Youtube about camera angles, filming techniques and lighting. I'll keep you informed of our progress. For now, here's the trailer to whet your appetite:

Reflecting on 2011

The highlights of 2011 were our Ellis Island Simulation and our Skype talk with the founder of International Peace Day, Jeremy Gilley.

As part of our PYP unit of inquiry on 'Moving On' about human migration, we used Ellis Island as a case study. So they could had empathy with immigrants, we created a simulation of Ellis Island Immigration Centre. The 4th Graders had to go through the different steps: leaving their baggage in the baggage hall, having medicals, taking the literacy and math tests. It was a wonderful experience as the participating immigration officials (teachers and grade 9 drama students) kept in role as they inspected the hopeful immigrants. Finally all immigrants were allowed to buy train tickets and head towards their new homes in America. It was the first time we had done this at LCS and it was a great learning experience. Here are some photos of the event:

Ellis Island 1911

The other big event of 2011 was our participation in The Global Peace Movie Project. Through my followers on Twitter I was invited to contribute a peace video to help celebrate Peace Day 2011. We linked this not only with LCS's celebration of Peace Day but also with our class work on Children's Rights. We discussed about where there were conflict hotspots in Africa and the children came up with a few. We then incorporated these in our short video clip.



Our participation in the video came to the attention of Peace One Day and they invited us to Skype with Jeremy Gilley, the founder of Peace One Day. This was such an exciting opportunity for our 4th graders and they were extremely excited to talk to this significant person.




You can also read about this on our LCS website

Welcome to dis ting!

Dis ting is pidgin English for, well, 'this thing' but is used to replace words or phrases , just like 'thingamajig' or a 'whatchamacallit'. It comes in very handy in conversation, trust me.

So with 'dis ting', I've decided to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, and actually become the dreaded 'b' word, a blogger. I will focus on my teaching and learning. I teach Grade 4 at Lincoln Community School in Accra, Ghana. Everyday I learn with my kids in class but this year I am also learning Bahasa Indonesian as I get ready to move to Indonesia at JIS in July. I am also learning about using iPads in teaching and learning in the Elementary School.

I'm blogging to keep a personal reflection for myself, to share my teaching experiences and resources and, by being a blogger, helping my students become bloggers too!