Thursday 18 April 2013

Putting the chop on misbehaviour: Class Dojo


Although I am a secondary teacher I have come across a great behviour tool for primary school teachers. Enter Class Dojo! Class Dojo gives you a visual representation of your class on your interactive whiteboard with each student represented by an avatar. No not your Sam Worthington blue like creature, but a little creature that looks more at home at Monsters Inc. This automatically appeals to the younger age groups.

As you can see below with my Hollywood class, there are green circles and red circles in the corners of some of the students. These green circles with the numbers represent positive demonstrations of beaviours such as creativity, great insight, hard work, helping others, participation and presentation. Then there are the red circles that represent demonstrations of negative behaviour such as disrespect, disruption, interrupting, late, no homework and out of chair. All done by a simple click of the student on the interactive whiteboard and choosing the behaviour demonstrated. Basic classroom expectations that can now be recorded for you to track and manage.

But that is not all this great tool can do! You can use this to mark attendance for your class and set up timers or even use it to select random students. But that’s not all. What is one of the hardest things when teaching?? I find keeping track and recording students behaviour to give a good insight for parents. Class Dojo allows you to enter parent’s emails that correspond with the student and a weekly report will be sent automatically. Parent – teacher contact conducted automatically and on a weekly basis. Done!

Overall I think Class Dojo is a great behaviour management tool and an even better tool for positive reinforcement. It gives the students an opportunity to see when they are doing well (and bad) and lets parents know as well.

www.classdojo.com


Thursday 11 April 2013

Math Tab - Show kids what mathematics is really about with computers

I recently watched a great video on TED called Teaching kids real mathematics with computers by Conrad Wolfram. Fantastic video that talks about letting computers do the calculating so it gives more time for kids to understand how math is present in the real world. This leads onto my new discovery of Math Tab (www.mathtab.com). This great website lets you create and view other created apps that do the calculation for you. Some might argue that this takes away the learning from the student, but if you are getting students to create the app, aren't they demonstrating their understanding? It allows more time for math interpretation of the world and less repetitive calculations in a notepad. So if you need to calculate anything from simple interest to comparing fuel costs, area under a curve to even the novelty of your age in dog years, have a go at Math Tab.


Differentiation with PowerPoint

Auditory learner, kinaesthetic learner, visual learner, gifted and talented, special needs students!! A normal classroom for most of us that requires us to use our differentiation skills. How do you cope? How do you create something that can cater for all these students, extend the students and get students learning in different styles outside their preferred style?? Although I think PowerPoint is a dying presentation software, it does have its purposes. Download my PowerPoint from my dropbox that looks at teaching straight line equations using differentiation. Enjoy!




Differentiation with PowerPoint (https://www.dropbox.com/s/bksyzrcxut0abvk/Differentiation%20with%20PowerPoint.ppt)

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Welcome to my blog!



ICT in teaching is the way of the future, but we face so many barriers as teachers to incorporate them into our classroom. This blog will be full of ideas of my own, ideas that I have been shown by others and sometime a combination of the both. The best thing I think about teaching is that we all have the same goal to help the students in our classroom. I’m happy for anyone to use my ideas whether they transform them to suit their class or use them as is. As the saying goes, “Why reinvent the wheel”. In the case of education, it is just being modified. I hope you enjoy the ideas I present and look forward to hearing other people's ideas on how they are leading ICT change in classroom.