‘Twas the night before Term 2, and all through my brain…
beautiful chaos via Pixabay CC0
I’m juggling the chaos, I hope not in vain:
- three Year 3 classes to start the new term: we will be exploring the idea “what brings a story to life?” this term, and we begin with sharing some memorable character descriptions and drawing portraits of them, before analysing what the elements of the descriptive text were
- two Year 5 classes tomorrow also (Mondays are busy) and we will be on the visual literacy bandwagon, exploring how illustrations and text can work together (or through contrast) to give more meaning to the story, and digging deeper into the story with higher order thinking tasks and predictions for the sequel
- 25% through Kuhlthau and Maniotes’ Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st century – I am feeling right at home with the background in constructivist theories of education – that’s where I started as a LOTE teacher, with Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development‘
- the Children’s Book Council of Australia shortlist for Book Week has been announced – I recognise lots of the picture books but not so many of the novels – obviously some browsing and buying to do!
- Copyright for Teachers – it’s a really important set of understandings and skills for teachers to have, but unfortunately many don’t know what they are supposed to reference or how to do so, so this term my colleague and I will be running some professional learning sessions for our staff on this topic – she has done all the hard work putting everything together into a presentation, and I am going along trying to provide the visual cues to support the not-very-scintillating legal info.
- plus I have no fewer than eight tabs open in my web browser (including this one), ranging across TLs as tech integrators, advice for students using social media, Kathy Schrock’s iPads4teaching, ECIS ICT committee blog, blog post about GAFE summits in NSW/ACT, fascinating post about working with a poem with 5/6y olds, and an interview with Shannon Miller!