Use Dance Party for your next Hour of Code - it is great fun!

Although we do Coding lessons at school every two week with our Grades 1 - 7 classes, we always love to end the term with an Hour of Code, and obtain a certificate. We were delighted to find that Dance Party was available as an Hour of Code session. 

What is the Hour of Code? 

The Hour of Code is a one-hour tutorial designed for all ages in over 45 languages. It is run in 180 countries from 7 - 12  December - although one can do it any time, like we do.  There are loads of different options to choose from based on your students' age https://hourofcode.com/za/learnThe Hour of Code is a global movement to introduce people of all ages to computer programming in a fun way, and it certainly achieves that. The students are awarded a certificate once they have completed their Hour of Code. Our students love it.

Here is a photo of the Grade 4s who loved using Dance Party for their Hour of Code at the end of this term.

 

I blurred our learners' faces using https://www2.lunapic.com/editor/?action=blu

The Grade 2s - 7s participated in World Read Aloud Day 2022

  

Today was World Read Aloud Day and we celebrated this in my Grade 2 – 7 ICT classes at school with Nali’bali. We downloaded Nal'ibali's #WRAD story,  A Party in the Park, on our Chromebooks, and we all read together in unison. Then we discussed the story in the form of an oral book review. The children loved it. 

Nal'ibali aimed to get 1 million families to pledge their family to read aloud the Nal'ibali special story on World Read Aloud Day 2022 - 2 February. If only parents could realise and embrace the importance of regular reading in brain development – if only they could see the big picture about this. They would then definitely make reading aloud to children a daily priority!

The importance of reading aloud to children

Here are some useful quotes from articles and studies about the importance of reading aloud to children: 

“Reading regularly with young children stimulates optimal patterns of brain development, which helps build strong pathways in the brain and in turn builds language, literacy, and social-emotional skills that can have life-long health benefits.”
- from '‘Reading to young children develops their brains.'   https://bit.ly/3KYQnxr 

"A child care provider reads to a toddler. And in a matter of seconds, thousands of cells in these children’s growing brains respond. Some brain cells are ‘turned on,’ triggered by this particular experience. Many existing connections among brain cells are strengthened. At the same time, new brain cells are formed, adding a bit more definition and complexity to the intricate circuitry that will remain largely in place for the rest of these children’s lives.

Therefore, the more adults read aloud to their children, the larger their vocabularies will grow and the more they will know and understand about the world and their place in it, assisting their cognitive development and perception." (An excerpt from a study on toddlers’ cognitive development as a result of being read aloud to) - Quoted from:  https://www.all4kids.org/news/blog/the-importance-of-reading-to-your-children/

As we come out of the Pandemic, let's prioritise reading aloud to children in order to develop their reading skills. The long-term benefits are immeasurable.

Using Canva to create animated posters in Grade 4

Canva is a fantastic tool for learning. A picture is worth a 1000 words and my students are continually inspired by all the beautiful designs in Canva  I am using Canva in different ways  with my Grade 4 class of 9 and 10 year olds.  

In the lesson described below I wanted to get them familiar with animation so I thought we should make a poster. There are several ways to use animation in Canva, but I thought we would start with the simplest way – “Find an animated image and make it your own.”

The task

I asked my class to think about an important event that was coming up in their lives in the next week or two, find an animated image that they liked, and then change the image accordingly to make it a personal poster. One girl was going horse-riding and was very excited about this event. Two were attending birthday parties. One was getting a new puppy. And so the list continued... The class loved what they discovered in Canva.

Here are four examples of what the class came up with:

     

I am really hoping that I will be able to get the Canva for Education free account for teachers (Canva is available for free globally to all educational institutions and qualified teachers with proof of teaching certification). Then I will make use of some of these tips from the video below with my Grade 4 class in one of their upcoming lessons.

The Grade 4s wrote and illustrated lovely stories using Google Slides

I wanted the class to practise their story-writing skills digitally. A great application for story-writing is Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint. We used Google Slides. The story templates came from the wonderful site: Communications4All:  
http://www.communication4all.co.uk/http/StoryMaker.htm

How did we go about the lesson? 

1. First we looked at the story map image also found on the Communication4All website http://bit.ly/2P9lU71. I wanted the students to be aware that a good story always has a problem in it that needs to be solved. 

2. Then I wrote a story called 'The Fairy and the Three Wishes' along with the class using one of the templates from the  Communication4All website.  We followed the steps of the Story Map. This was to show the class how it was done,  and to let them see the finished example. We read through this story together. 

The Fairy and the Three Wishes by Fiobea

   

 3. The students then chose our individual stories from the Communication4All website. The students wrote their stories and illustrated them. They turned them in using Google Classroom so that I could take a look at them.

Here are some of the finished examples 

 Kalben ‘The Pirates of the Ocean’

   

The Superhero Who Saved The Day by Lilnas

  

The Three Pirates by Isasim

Holiday writing task for Grade 4 using Microsoft Word

This is a cross post from the SchoolNet blog which I also write for.

In the first week back after the holidays I asked the Grade 4 class to write a short text about their holiday.  Instead of using one of the usual applications for this I decided to use a Microsoft Word template from the fabulous site Oakdome which was in the form of a phone.  We had a short oral session first and then we went to our computers to write in the Microsoft Word template.

The task
Describe, in around 200 words or less, one or two events from your summer holiday. You'll do this as though it is a phone message so although your report back has a beginning, a middle and an end you won't use paragraphs. Add an image related to your story.

Two student examples

Evaluation
The students loved using this template.