Exploring Learning

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow If ever I read a book that advocates the teaching of code to school kids, this is it! All teenagers need to read this to think about the implications of technology - about how it helps but more importantly, WHO it helps. It paints a dark portrait of a not-too-distant future in America, where our every move is tracked and analysed . BUT it also shows how those who can get beneath the surface of computers, can change the world. Computers are not new anymore - but the facade that we see masks what is really going on. Children need to be able to go behind the facade that presents our interface as beautiful and learn to control and manipulate it. The future is not about those who can use a computer because let's face it, two years olds can do that. The future is about children who can get behind the pretty and into the nitty gritty. Many educators are coming around to this notion and lots of us are introducing basic code into our classrooms ...

The end of term is always fraught, but we just received news that our new positions have fallen through. This is stressful to say the least; not having a place to live, move to, job, school for my kids - it's hard. However, I am hoping that, and believing in, the adage that everything happens for a reason. I am also hoping for some good news and something positive to come out of this incredibly difficult twelve months. As if to foreshadow this, on the same say I receive this devastating news, I am also nominated for teacher of the month . Is this the edge of a silver lining? It smacked of irony - but at the same time, did help a little.

Year 8 have been working on a unit about customs and traditions around the world. Final Preparations on the Exhibition The unit stems from the novel Ties That Bind, Ties That Break  by Lensey Namioka, set in China in 1911, about a young girl who fights the tradition of foot binding. China In addition to reading and talking about the issues raised in the novel, learners have also worked collaboratively to research customs and traditions of a country of their own choosing. In teams, they decided on a country and set off to find out about it in order to produce an exhibition at the end. The unit has covered essential information literacy skills as learners explored strategies about how to search for information, as well as how to evaluate the information they found. They also explored how they best take notes, and how to use and reference the information they find. Mexico In order to present their information clearly, learners also looked at how to use ...

Creating an interactive book using iBook Author, Makey Makey and Scratch. In January, I wrote a post about a unit I was planning that would explore the Future of Fiction with my Year 7s. We have just come to the end of this great unit, and the work they have produced is amazing. Creating a story to record on iMotion This post outlines what we did and what the learners achieved. It also links to the learning site that I built to deliver this unit, which was successful in teaching not only story elements, storyboarding, drafting and creating, but also problem solving and critical thinking. Our aim was to try to re-tell a story using a technological tool, to see if we think technology can help tell a story. Ultimately, we  were trying to decide  where we think the future of fiction might be going. We began by learning about the elements of stories and then used the classic book  Where the Wild Things Are to learn about the story m...

To practise  the great work we have done lately on figurative language , I decided to use the website Build Your Wild Self hosted by New York Zoos and Aquariums. Learners had to create a Wild Self from the myriad possibilities of the selector tool. They then had to write a detailed description that would allow someone else to try to recreate the avatar they had designed. This meant they had to employ their newly polished descriptive writing skills. Once they had written their descriptions, learners were put into pairs to read out their descriptions. Their partner had to draw what they heard and then compare to the original to see how well the descriptions had been written. I enjoyed the cries of, "I used a simile Miss!" when they were drafting their descriptions and the results were incredible. The accuracy of the representations is testament to how well my learners are developing as writers from the opportunity Spilling Ink gives them to explore and play...

Sometimes, with all the best will in the world, and even with eons of research and hours of planning, the best lessons are the spontaneous ones. The ones that serendipitously arise from teachable moments. I experienced such as occasion over the past week. Laurie Halse Anderson, The Impossible Knife of Memory My Year 8s are learning about different cultures and traditions around the world. Underpinning the unit is the novel T ies That Bind, Ties That Break by Lensey Namioke, which concerns foot binding in China at the beginning of the twentieth century. From this, I teach note-taking and search strategies, while groups learn to research customs and traditions of a country of their choice. The culmination of the project is an exhibition of their findings. A new teacher joined our team part way through this unit. She wanted to have a piece of writing to gauge her class's needs. So, as part of the novel study, we built in personal account writing. I devel...

The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson It might be safe to say that I inhaled this book and its incredibly crafted story, breathing out the smoke of words I digested and chewed over, coating my classroom in metaphors both grotesque and moving. This novel was the first of the Book a Month Challenge myself and my PLN established on Twitter, and I enjoyed this novel both as a reader and as a teacher. My learners noticed my reading it around the corridors; parents stopped me in the car park to ask what I was reading and to make sure I didn't walk into anything. An intriguing and moving novel about an intense father-daughter relationship of trauma and heartache, Amazon describes it as "Laurie Halse Anderson at her finest: compelling, surprising, and impossible to put down" - I guess I cannot disagree. I have taken and used many passages to teach figurative language as the writing demonstrates metaphor and personification in a complex yet access...