Turning learning on its head

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Jon Bergmann's blog about flipped classrooms, his experiences and wealth of knowledge. I have found this exceptionally interesting - take a look! Turning Learning on its Head

Super Teacher Worksheets

I have recently spoiled myself with a Super Teacher Worksheet membership! This amazing resource tool is definitely going to make my life next year easier. There are many resources from maths worksheets and ideas to brain teasers and puzzles. It is really affordable (for under R 200 for the year) and their worksheets are of a really good quality.

I recommend STW for every Intermediate and Foundation Phase teacher. One of my mentor teacher always told me that, as teachers, we must be wise and "not reinvent the wheel". I think this website provides great additional resources for the classroom where educators can rather spend their creativity on classroom activities and exciting lessons rather than creating new worksheets when great ones are available.

Learning Style Poll

I have just learned how to add a poll to my blog. I am busy doing my mini dissertation on learning styles and would really like to know if you know your learning style.

An INCREDIBLE Me

As a confessed  Despicable Me addict I have decided to make my 1st term classroom theme all things despicable.

From my birthday calendar to my book corner I hope my blue and yellow, minion inspired room will brighten the days of my Grade 4s. During one of my endless hours on Pintrest I found this gorgeous poster that will definitely be our mantra for the term.

Think Maths

I am fascinated with helping my learners love maths as much as I do. I am a big believer in encouraging learners to play fun maths games online and make use of task cards and board/card games. I think that the more learning that is done through play, the more the love of learning grows. 

I also think that peer teaching and group work are excellent ways of making maths more exciting and allows learners to explore their own knowledge as well as learn from other learner's understanding.

However, I always think it is difficult to find fun and interesting maths sums to pose to the learners for them to grapple with individually. I found this wonderful example (on Pintrest) of flipping the problem around and getting the learners to pose the question.

 

funbrain.com

We all want our learners to be instilled with a love of learning. We know that children love to play. There are many websites that incorporate this love of playing with learning to help children enjoy learning.

One of these websites is funbrain.com  I find some websites difficult to navigate and I end up getting frustrated. funbrain.com is very easy to navigate and well organised into games for specific grades (kindergarten - Grade 8), for both language learning and mathematics.

The learners are able to move through various levels in the games and each game is appropriate for the age and grade of the learners. It is often difficult to find good online educational games for learners after Grade 3, so funbrain.com is a useful site for a large variety of grades and levels.

de Bono's Six Thinking Hats

As I mentioned in my last post I have become very interested in meta cognition. During my final practical I used de Bono's six thinking hats as part of my Home Language listening and speaking lesson for Grade 4 learners. I was worried that the lesson may be quite advanced, but their maturity really astounded me.

I made the hats out of cardboard and attached sticks to them so the learners could use them in a fun, interactive way.  Here is a photo of them:

As you can see they have the colour, name and a few key words on them to help the learners understand that the hat represents and how to use it to think about their thinking. 

For my lesson, I started by explaining each hat and giving examples of how to use each one. We then sat in a circle and each learner had a turn to roll a story dice and use a hat to dive into their thinking about the specific object on the dice. Their class teacher and I were amazed with the responses. The one little girl who has had a very difficult time with her parents and has finally started living with her wonderful grandparents described the emotion of the picture of a house as, "a place that I can go to that  makes me feel warm, safe and loved" (it put tears in our eyes). I then gave them unprepared oral topics and they had a minute to prepare their orals and then speak to the class using as many hats as they could. Unprepared orals are a challenging and intimidating aspect of language for many Grade 4s and I was blown away with the substance and maturity of the orals. What a wonderful lesson!!!