Further extending Oral Language with EE

After an amazing Fia Fia performance last night we decided we wanted to use that as a writing motivation for today.  After discussing what we wanted to do we decided to start with a pair-share of our experiences from the night followed by the students using Explain Everything to make a drawing of their performance and us capturing their thoughts by typing up individual stories.

Michelle suggested that instead of us typing up the stories, we used Explain Everything to capture their stories by each student talking about their picture as they completed the drawing - this is the first time we have done this, and we would need to demonstrate the activity to the class.  Using the Airplay function we were able to do this and I drew a picture of me on stage, talking about my drawing as I did it and adding detail.  I modelled turning the recording off while I thought about what I was going to draw next.  When I had completed the picture we were able to replay the recording and the students could see the picture being drawn with the voice-over explaining what I was drawing.

The students then went to their own individual iPads and began the activity.  I noticed a few things:

• Many of the students copied what I had drawn (eg the stage, lights, costume) and used similar language to what I had used - I'm sure as we do this activity more often they will begin to experiment with their own thoughts and language
• Some students didn't record as they did their drawing, however, with teacher prompting they were happy to record a story to go with their picture.
• Many students were extremely keen to use the AirPlay and watch their work on the big TV
• Teacher Dashboard is great to review the students videos later and assess what each child has done

As this was the first time we've attempted this activity I was extremely pleased with the results and would like to follow up with another session of doing the same thing before the holidays in order for this learning to be embedded.

Check out some of the samples from today's session:

Oral Language .... to the fore!

Earlier this week I participated in a school wide Professional Development session led by Dr Jannie van Hees, around creating a Conversational Classroom - something Michelle and I are focused on doing with our 1:1 iPad trial.

Today we had two instances where this conversation was extremely rich, and to me it showed how far the students have already come!  Firstly, we have having some major school building developments occurring around the school and as part of these developments two of our classrooms are being lifted, and moved to another section of the school.  This process enthralled the students when we took them out to see a classroom up on hydraulics, waiting to be moved via truck later tonight.  Using a photographic lead in to encourage students to think about what was happening, we used the pair/share technique to have all students actively thinking and sharing their ideas before taking the students (with their iPads of course, so they could take their own photographs!) out to view the building site!

On returning to our classroom, the following class story was constructed:
The hydraulics pushed the classroom up!  Now the trailer can fit underneath.

Later in the day, during a maths session learning the number "after", students were extremely keen to use video (rather than a photo) to document their learning, particularly when they were encouraged to use their oral language skills to explain what they were doing.  This sample from Phoenix, is one of her first attempts at using video to document her learning, and shows how comfortable the students are becoming with Oral Language and their iPads.