More changes afoot...

Wow - this week we went completely mad in Room 17!!  I am exhausted by trying to upload all of the fantastic work that the children are recording (in various ways) on the iPads, so I bit the bullet and spent some valuable time teaching them how to do it themselves - what a revolution!  Now most of them can record, publish, upload, download onto their wiki pages and write a comment if they want to.  Within days of introducing this concept, I am now only following 4 to 6 children up to help them out. Once again, I am impressed by the children's know-how, their independence and their willingness to help each other out.  (I have also put up explicit instructions, including passwords, for ease of reference.)
Yay, Room 17!!

We have been very enthusiastic on Edmodo, with fabulous comments and interactions coming through during the evening and weekend. Brilliant!

We have also been doing assignments, quizzes and polls on Edmodo, which are great and easy to keep track of who has completed what!  We are looking forward to connecting with our two Edmodo penpal groups overseas as they start their school year in the next couple of weeks!

Monday also saw us move most of the desks to the outside of the classroom and remove ownership of the desks, ie. no equipment stored on or around the desks.  The children are enjoying the extra space in the middle of the room, as well as the clusters of desks to sit at if the are working with or next to a friend.

Having been inspired by listening to how other classes and schools run, today we introduced the idea of setting their own timetable for elective periods.  They all had to schedule in maths, reading, writing, handwriting, computer time and speech-writing.  It took a little while to sort out the logistics of this, but we got it in the end and every child had their own timetable, which included mat time with me.  Once again, I was blown away by most of their self-management skills, their independence and their willingness to work in a way that was mindful of the others around them.  Tomorrow is Friday, so it will run a little differently, but we might do it all again on Monday, just for fun!