12 connections

Recently I went to a workshop with Autism guru Sue Larkey. It was really exciting and inspiring and I am looking forward to trying out some of her ideas and techniques – not only with Autistic kids, but with some of the other kids in the class as she has some great management ideas and ways to get kids more on-task and engaged in their learning. If she’s ever in your area I would encourage you to go along to her workshops.

This year I have a class exciting and energetic Year One and Two students and I am looking forward to seeing what they are going to do. There are still so many things left undone from last year that I still have not given up on and hope to achieve this year. I plan to explore the possibilities offered by our interactive whiteboard more fully than the simple dabblings of last year. . .

This week we took part in Play Day. The local kindy and childcare kids, as well as kids from the local Lutheran school, all came to visit us. There were lots of things to do – we played cricket, got wrapped up in a parachute, kicked soccer balls and footies, played on our big foam blocks and made things at the kindy. Eveyone had a great time, as you can see.

Thanks to everyone who put it together and made it such a success.

Here are some pictures by Ashleigh, Kane, Katana, Liam and Evan of the nursery rhyme we wrote about Mr. Mac and his goat.

Well, as usual, it seems that it is just far easier than I thought and I was looking for something more complex that need be. So, now podcasts are downloadable mp3’s via a link, or listenable in the flash player. And it seems there’s a little link just over there, -> where you can subscribe to the RSS feed.

Too easy.

Mr. Mac has a goat – Billy the Kid. This week it came to visit in our classroom. Everyone loved the goat. Of course it wee’d all over the classroom, but there were plenty of willing volunteers to clean it up. It ate a lot of paper and even tried to eat some of our library books!

 Our class wrote this nursery rhyme:

Mr. Mac had a goat,

Its hair was black and brown

He took it for a walk into town

And there they met a clown.

This term we took some photos with the school’s digital cameras. Students learned how to frame shots and how to delete ones they didn’t want. At the end of the term we held an exhibition in the school/community library. The students looked through the photos they had taken and selected two which were printed and exhibited.

It was quite interesting to see which photos they selected – often they selected them because it was a photo of their friend/s. Have to say, I found this a little frustrating as there were often other photos they’d taken which I considered to be much better, artistically – but I had to let them choose by themselves.

On the day of the exhibit we mounted the printed photos on card and then put them on little stands. The students had a great time setting up the exhibition. We also had a visitors’ book and it was wonderful to read the comments afterwards.

A big thanks to our library staff who let us have the exhibition, and to all those who came a long.

(P.S. – as soon as I can figure it out I’ll get a gallery up with the photos that were in the exhibition.)

I’m still trying to figure out how to get the RSS feed working, and how to upload podcasts so that they appear as downloadable links or, better yet, a subscribable feed. Either I’m too dense to work it out, or it is so simple I’m overlooking it. Either way, I hope to get it figured out soon. For now, if you want to listen to the podcast, you’ll have to do it via the embeded flash player.

Ok. So I am a bit excited. Today we recorded our very first podcast. It is a recording of our morning talk for today and was done with the built-in mic of my laptop, so the audio is not the best. Also, the kids were really excited about doing the fact that it was being recorded and so there is a lot of shouting and general chatter in the background. Because we didn’t have a proper mic, and some of the kids spoke pretty quietly, it can be hard to hear at times. There more we do of these the better we’ll get at it, though. However, for a very first go I reckon it isn’t too bad. You can grab it from our podcasts page.

Well, we started this last week. I wrote out the music in dots on large sheets of paper, gave each student a percussion instrument and put them into groups – a bass drum group, a snare group and a hi-hat group. Then I ran through the rhythm for each group and had them practice it. Then we did it all together. I won’t say it was a complete disaster, but the word cacophony comes to mind. Anyhow, we will persevere.