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!!! 

Brain Bucks

After doing an assignment on meta cognition, I have become quite intrigued with getting learners to really think and explain their thinking. I found these Brain Bucks and thought they could be useful in the classroom to encourage learners to think and show/explain their thinking.

So, if a learner displays meta cognitive thinking they receive a Brain Buck. These Brain Bucks can then be collected and at the end of the term the learners can see how much they really thought about their thinking  and they can cash their Brain Bucks in for a special thinking reward.

 I think Brain Bucks will have a special place in my classroom!

Teacher's Prayer

Such a special little poem for us teachers - one we should read everyday!! I thought I would share. 

Reading Corner

I love reading, especially children's books. There's something truly remarkable about the feeling a good Roald Dahl, Dr. Seuss or Enid Blyton book can give you. I can't wait to have a little nook in my class that will allow my learners to be carried away into the magical lands that their books will take them. 

So because of this, I've been searching for ideas for my book corner for my class next year and I saw one (on Pintrist of course) inspired by the Minions from Despicable Me.... and fell in love.