Global School Play Day 2019 #GSPD2019 in Room 7!

Global School Play Day 2019, aka #GSPD2019, was scheduled for Wednesday February the 6th... Waitangi Day in New Zealand, a public holiday.... so many classes participating from NZ did the Play Day on Thursday the 7th of February.  And so did Room 7.

I talked with my students several times about this leading up to the day.  We discussed the sorts of things they could bring and I emailed and sent a Seesaw message to the parents about the day too.  During the day I took photos to tweet to the #GSPD2019 hashtag and to Seesaw home to parents.

On the day we had four key words for the day: kindness, sharing, creativity and fun.  The children were also asked to respect the toys, especially the toys they were using that did not belong to them personally.

The only expectation in regards to the toys was not to bring any devices or electronic games.  Students could bring a game that had batteries if it was integral to the game, such as Operation for example.

Thankfully, no one brought any devices.  But one child brought a karaoke microphone.  And I can confirm that it projects sound quite impressively.

Other cool things the students brought with them included:

• blankets/sheets to make forts
• stuffed toys and dolls
• bubbles
• cars
• slime

I also had my classroom toys available, such as the Lego, blocks, garage and cars, trains, wooden magnetic games, water play, maths equipment like dominoes, kitchen play, shop play.... so much for the students to do.

    

Above and to the right you can see the students getting creative with Lego.  The Lego is very popular in Room 7, especially during wet playtimes.

Last year I was experimenting with Lego challenges for Literacy and Creativity.  I intend to use Lego this year for students to demonstrate their thinking in mathematics as well.

Some of my Lego is actual Lego, but I am eternally grateful to have supplemented some of it with the 'Play' brand from the Warehouse.  It just makes it that much more plentiful for the children to play with.  I was also able to source a Lego table via Facebook Marketplace last year which the children really like to use.

I always put the Lego books in with the Lego to give them ideas, but they are getting a bit munted.  So I may need to start putting them into a clearfile so they have more longevity.

Below the children are playing with their stuffed toys and my shop and kitchen toys.

One of the girls brought bubbles with her.  She and two other girls had a lot of fun playing outside our class in the area our caretaker fenced off with rope and fencing standards for our outdoor play area.

These children below were having a lot of fun with their stuffed toys and the shop and kitchen toys.

 It was very interesting for me to watch the children.  Things I took note of were:

• who different people played with
• what toys they gravitated to
• where in the class they played
• their co-operation skills
• their creativity
• their ability to problem solve.

One example of problem solving was building a blanket fort.  They worked together to make a big fort and figured out how to use the furniture to secure their blankets to make it stay in place.

      

And as you can see above, there was some major engineering and building works happening within the blanket fort too.

But not everyone used their blankets to make a covered fort.  Others used their blankets to mark their play territory within the classroom.

Some of the children enjoyed using the construction set with the screws and nuts to get creative....

I guess it doesn't take a genius to figure out slime would make an appearance at the Play Day...

It was nice to see our outside play area used for some good old fashioned handstands.

And a bit of Nerf gun warfare too.

The maths equipment was also popular.  The students in my class like to make domino trails to set off.

The cars and the garage were also a popular item and it's great to see the girls playing cars too.  Although at one stage they had the garage lined with stuffed toys and I was too slow to get a photo!

My magnetic toys got a good work out on the day too.  And the children creatively used their own toys in with the Lego to create what they wanted.

   

Over all I found the Global School Play Day to be a success.  We played from 9:30 through until 12:30 and the children worked well together.  Disagreements were few and I only had to remind people three times to share.  No one was bored and they were creative in their play.  I personally found the day quite relaxing, and I put it down to the fact that Room 7 is now a Year 3/4 class.

Most children brought toys with them from home, but some forgot.  But that was ok because sharing was one of our key words for the day and there was also plenty of classroom toys to play with.

Because it was in Week 2 of our school year, it was a great way for the students to build relationships, as I kept some children from last year, but the balance came from two other classrooms, one was completely new to the school and one was returning to the school after a year away.

Before the end of the day, I asked the students to give me some feedback about the day.  The overwhelming feed back was it was fun, that they got to play with other people and toys, making things was fun, being creative was fun and they made new friends.

I am now looking forward to #GSPD2020!

ULearn18: Breakout Seven - Capturing learning with Seesaw

This year my school started using Seesaw schoolwide and the fully paid up version too. Seesaw is pretty much a daily reality in my classroom. 

The children have used it to record themselves reading and performing poetry and posting pictures of their Invitation to Create creations during Reading Tumble.  I've used it to post pictures and videos of the students working and learning in the class.  It is a great way to send private messages to all or individual parents.  Parents are responding to the photos, videos and recordings.

But I still think I can learn some other ways to use it. So I signed up to the Breakout
Capturing learning with Seesaw with Stephanie Kitto at ULearn18.

Here is the abstract:
In this hands-on workshop teachers will learn how to use Seesaw, a student-driven digital portfolio that empowers students to independently capture and share their learning. Teachers will explore Seesaw’s built-in tools, which give students the flexibility to document and reflect on their learning, in a way that suits them. We will look at the parent communication tool that allows for the seamless sharing of work and helps to build strong home-school partnerships. This session is for teachers who are new to Seesaw and not yet participating in Seesaw for Schools.

Please install the Seesaw class app on your smartphone / tablet / iPad device and bring your device to the session. You do not need to create a Seesaw account before the session.

Stephanie began by showing some examples of how her class uses Seesaw to work independently:

• learning sight words
• practicing reading
• explaining how they solved a maths problem

She then showed us about how to use "Activities", where you can set tasks for students to respond to.  I tried this last term and failed miserably, and now I know why.  I never taught my students to use the green button on each activity that says "Add" to add their response to the Activity.  Doh!

Our first Activity was to do the "Get to Know You" activity.

When we had arrived we did this drawing activity, so I took a photo with my laptop camera of the work and uploaded it to Seesaw and then recorded the response.  This is when I really understood about using the Add function in Activities rather than just adding it to my folder.

Stephanie then came around with Smarties.  I was hungry and ate mine prettly much straight away until I realised we had to use them for an Activity.  By then, this was the only maths problem I could really make.

But I couldn't take this photo with my laptop, I had to use my phone and that caused all sorts of issues getting it onto my computer so I could upload it on to Seesaw.  But I figured it out.

And so I eventually added it as my response to the Activity.

Here are some examples of what others did in the workshop:

We also took photos of ourselves, uploaded them to Seesaw, and then used the Copy & Edit feature to "modernise" the photo with the drawing tools.  Sadly, I forgot to screen shot that.

So how have I used this learning?

When I got back to school I did this Activity:

Some children forgot to go to the Activities label and click on the Add button.  So this was a valuable time to teach this to them.

Eventually we got there though.  One child has been absent since the start of term so has not responded and another has been ill and catching up on other work, so I need to chase her up this week because her picture is going to be epic.

But this is another epic pic and you can see from the graphic underneath that she has recorded her story.

We've been catching up on a lot of artwork started or planned for last term.  So I then put this Activity up for them to talk about it and explain to their parents.

As you can see, one child still has not returned to school and another has been away for all the second week sick.  You can also see there is one child's response still waiting for "teacher approval".  Teacher approval means that you can vett all the content the children put up.  It allows you to ensure it is appropriate, reflects the learning, and it creates teaching points.

We have also been using it more for maths to explain what we are learning.  It's meant I've been able to dive into the thinking by the children as well and pick up who understands and who is lost in the mathematical sea.

So where to from here?

Stephanie talked to us about the copy and edit function, and this last week I talked to the Seesaw Ambassador at my school about this.  So that will probably be my next teaching point with the students.  

I'm also going to dive into the Activities shared by other teachers and try them out.

And then I will find a new thing I have to learn to do with this.

Invitation to Create - a new addition to my Reading Tumble

This year is my first full year teaching juniors with having a Year 2/3 class.  It has meant I've had to adjust and modify my programmes to cater for the fact these children are so much younger than I've had previously.

One idea that could my eye on Pinterest is "invitation to create" and the Reggio Emilio activity "loose parts play" and "tinker trays".  See these screen shots from Pinterest below to see some of the inspiration.

So I decided to combine these ideas into my version of Invitation to Create for my Reading Tumble.  The purpose was for the students to be creative and challenged.  To learn more about how the Reading Tumble works, click here to go to the post where I explicitly explain how it works.

The next fun part of collecting items that can be reused for different projects and mixed and matched.  And every teacher knows that your first port of call are $2 shops.... and I am trawling through them all!

I already had straws and coloured ice block sticks and match sticks and colourful buttons, but I went hunting for more buttons, coloured glass beads and stones and bottle lids.

The first challenge I set my students was for Anzac Day, to make poppies.

On the lid I stuck these instructions.  The children are also challenged to post their creations on Seesaw (which our school has gone all out on this year) so there is a record of their creations.  Below are some examples of the photos posted on Seesaw by the children with their interpretation of an Anzac poppy.

I've also decided this can be used for my Maths Tumble.  So the first challenge is to create algebraic patterns.  I'll blog about the maths aspect in another blog later in the year.

To give them a space to create within, I went to The Warehouse and purchased A4 photo frames at $2 each.  I removed the glass and replaced it with stiff black paper to be the backdrop.

Then I had to sell it to the students.  It was not a hard sell.  The children love this activity and the parents have responded with lovely comments on the Seesaw posts to their creativity.

After six days of doing the Reading Tumble rotations I did decide to change the challenge though.  Sticking to the Anzac theme, I asked them to do soldier medals.... but many are confused with medals from the Commonwealth Games... so we've had a few interesting pictures.

I also changed some of the materials in there.... but this is what it looks like when children don't put things back in an orderly fashion!!

And here are their interpretations of an Anzac medal....

As we moved into our Matariki theme, I changed the challenge to a planet.

And here are the children's interpretations of their own planet....

And then it changed to a constellation of stars.  And this was their interpretations of their own invented constellations and them copying one off the wall....

What I really love about this activity is that I can change materials in and out, the materials can be used in a variety of ways, they can create many new masterpieces but the materials can be repeatedly used and it unlocks their creativity.  I've also learned to not have it too often, otherwise the novelty wears off, so it is one of fifteen slots in my Tumble and I need to change the theme after they have all had two attempts at the challenge.

For this term (and maybe into the next) I have already brainstormed some Invitation To Create activities as you can see below:

And here is one I am planning for maths to incorporate our Lego into learning.

I will blog about how these challenges have gone later in the year to evaluate the whole of Invitation To Create in my Reading Tumble.