Reflection So Far

My time at Digital Fluency Intensive has been just that.....intensive.

I have been shown many new tools, Apps, programmes. Some of them I have found incredibly useful and others I will never use in my classroom. It is a fast paced learning environment and at times I have struggled with this. My way of learning is quite visual as I am an artistic airy fairy type person who would rather work at a more slow pace where I can go over everything 2, 3 or 4 times so I have the hang of it. But in saying that Dorothy, Gerhard and Fiona who are running the course are more than happy to help you any time.

I really enjoyed the site making lessons. I have always felt quite intimidated by this and as I have a colleague who I work with in a shared space who loves creating sites and is quite happy to do this, I have left it up to her, while I do other creative things in our class. This will probably not change but I have helped my son create a site for his school project which made me feel confident about what I have learnt. 

We had an opportunity to look at other teachers sites and this was also useful. I saw some great ideas that I will talk to my colleague about implementing on to our site for next year. 
The teachers I am doing the course with are great to bounce ideas around with and I have enjoyed meeting new teachers from other schools.

We have talked a lot about Learn, Create, Share. This is the ethos of our cluster. This has helped me in my teaching as it makes me think about the lessons I am planning. Are they interesting? Are they going to engage my students? Are my students going to feel empowered, excited, and connected. As I am a creative person I usually like to start with the create side of things. I find this to be a great way to get my students hooked in to their their learning. It allows for great class discussions where new language can be introduced, new concepts taught, and great peer interaction where they get the chance to share their ideas and learn off each other. 

Apps like Toby have helped me to organise my groups so easily and made my planning for each group a breeze. This has been my favourite App so far. 

Looking forward to the last session this week where I hope to consolidate anything I am having problems with.

DFI BINGO!

Movement Art

During Term 3 Room 19 looked at our bodies and how they move when we dance, run, play sport, stretch, leap, bounce etc.  I was thrilled with the language the students were using in their writing and even in our small group discussions. I have been trying so hard all year to get them to open up and have the confidence to share their ideas with their peers. After each class discussion and before their writing I would write up some great descriptive language the students had come up with. I found if I repeated 3 to 4 words a day and used them all the time the students would remember and use the same words. So after many months of sitting in small groups and trying to get them to talk about their art and use sophisticated language its really as simple as choosing 1- 4 words and using these words as many times as possible in the next couple of days. I noticed these words were popping up in their writing, I would hear the students using these words when talking to their friends. It made me smile a lot. As always we start each activity by doing something creative and below are some examples of the students art for their Inquiry "Move Your Body".

First they had to get a friend to take their photo on their i-pad doing some sort of movement. After tracing out their image they sent it through to their drive where I could then print it out. Then they cut out just their body. Next they chose 3 different coloured pieces of paper and traced out their bodies. Then they cut these out. Finally they designed their background of abstract art and stuck down all their images. I was thrilled with the result.