Monday, November 23, 2009

Our Reflections

Monday, September 14, 2009

Monday, August 3, 2009

Pesky Gets in Trouble

Pesky the Troublemaker

Pesky the Possum

Pesky comes Home from School

Pesky the Mischief

Pesky Adventures

Loud Possum

Escaping Possums

Pesky The Bad Possum

Pesky Saves The Day!

Pesky's Paintings

Our Movies

In Room 3 we spent the last few weeks of term 2 finishing off our movies, fortunately a number of us did (the rest of the class will be finishing them during this term). Making the movies was a great opportunity for us to be using our newly developed kid pix art skills and practicing using an effective story telling voice when creating our own Pesky the Possum narratives. Each student worked hard to follow the steps toward creating a published quick time movie of their story involving our character Pesky the Possum. I was very excited by the different and interesting stories involving Pesky.

The process the students in the class followed ...
- was to write a story involving the character Pesky the Possum.
- Then have it turned into a story board matching part of their story to a draft picture they would
create in Kid Pix.
- Next they created their kid pix illustrations one at a time. Each picture had to exported as a
jpeg to a folder. Once they had completed all their illustrations they imported the jpegs into
imovie.
- Now the students sequenced their pictures and added voice to tell their story.
-When they felt finished they were to reflect on the movie so far by completing a PMI chart. (A
PMI chart involves the students looking at the Pluses, Minuses and Ideas they have to make
the movie even better).
-Following their reflection the students made changes they thought were necessary to make the
movie better.
- Next they shared the movie with the class. (Some students made more changes after sharing
their movie with the class.)
- Finally they had it turned into a quick time movie.

Following this blog entry I will be uploading the finished students quick time movies.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Our Reflections...

We are very proud of our first movie in Room 3.
We have been looking closely at our kidpic art skills and voice when speaking to an audience over the past weeks. This first movie provids a great platform for each student to look at what they are doing well and what they would like to work on. Each student has completed a PMI of their kidpix picture and their speech when talking to an audience and identified ways they would improve it for next time.
Reading through the reflections was fantastic! The students were able to explain clearly someway they could make improvements for the viewer and listener.
This gives us a great place to start when we begin to make our own individual movies and any time we are speaking to an audience.

Monday, May 25, 2009

OH NO! Possum Trouble!

On Sunday afternoon Pesky and Miss S came into school so Miss S could do some jobs around the class before she went to play hockey. Unfortunately time went by so quickly Miss S was in a rush to her hockey game and forgot to take Pesky with her. So Pesky the Possum had a sleepover at school and this is what we found this morning...



What a mess! Miss S was not impressed by the mess but agreed with the children it was her fault for leaving him at school and it was rather funny.
Pesky the Possum is now asleep up on the top of the big bookshelf in Room 3.



While we were packing up the mess we began to wonder what Pesky must have got up to last night so we wrote about what we thought Pesky the Possum got up to in Room 3. And we created our own Pesky the Possum pictures using Kidpics. Then we used GarageBand to podcast our thoughts. Soon Miss S will have put it all together so we can share our thoughts about what Pesky the Possum got up to last night with you.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Our newest character in Room 3




This is Pesky the Possum the newest character to join the Room 3 Learning Team.

Over the week we have been finding out about possums,
- what they look like,
- how they behaviour,
- their personality and
- some interesting white hat facts about the possum.
We watched lots of YouTube videos people had made about their experiences with the curious possum. We also read lots of information about the New Zealand possum in books and off the internet. So now we feel like we know heaps about the possum and hope that our cute new friend proves to be no trouble.

Here is the brainstorm of what we know created in kidspiration.


Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Step two...

Wow the first few weeks of this term have gone by in a blur.
I have been busy planning and laying some ground work with my class over the past few weeks. Here's a quick overview;
Week One: Just settling back into school for an exciting new term.

Week Two: I have a very productive release day catching up on the other E-Fellow online, sorting out student permission forms and looking at the baseline writing data of the students.

Week Three and it's all go!
This week I dived into writing up my action plan for the rest of the term and gathering resources. I also had a lovely visit from Michael (CORE Education) on the Wednesday to look at things so far.
The Room 3 Learning Team also began looking at how authors and illustrators show what the characters in their stories look like, feel and act. Our favourite book this week was The Best Loved Bear by Diana Noonan. The English Exemplars provided a great base to plan from.

It has been a great experience engaging the student with the text and looking at what the text and illustrations are telling us about the character. I am looking forward to developing a character of our own, as a class, next week.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

One small step or a Giant Leap???

Today I have started this blog as the first small step of my 2009 E-Fellow journey.
I am here in Christchurch with my fellow e-fellows, on the last of our three day adventure, writing up an action plan for my personal inquiry into a literacy and ICT inquiry.
My inquiry will start next term with The Room 3 Learning Team.