Spark and Task

On the first day back we had our Spark  -which consisted of a 25 minute assembly. We the staff had fun in the process. The play "Are We there Yet?" had the children responding...after all how often do you see the staff acting out a scene that they could identify with ?!!!!!!!!!!

All the staff dressed up as if they were going on a summer holiday and yes sang "We're all going on a Summer holiday" Darryl put together a clever slide show that had the children wondering....

One day on we are having our staff meeting on Spark and Task. Such a wide range of strategies have been employed by the staff. Sharing is an integral part to ensuring that we all get the most out of the process.

We did a PMI to reflect on the Spark - this will really help us when it comes time to planning our next unit. One thing that bothered me was that we left the support staff out. Letters were sent to our key relievers last term inviting them to the Spark launch. It was fortunate that we realised our mistake and we were able to invite them to be part of this. I believe if our Strive model is to be successful then we need to work hard to bring everyone on board.

We did an activity to develop questioning skills . Staff were introduced to fat and skinny questions.

We recognise the need to upskill our questioning skills and in turn our teaching strategies to enhance questioning skills.

Watch this space!!!!!!!!!

uLearn 2008

Some of the workshops have provided some great websites that may help you with your Inquiry:

• circave.com and dipity.com for timelines
• bubblecomment.com...this is an interesting one where you can actualy put a bubble (your face and you speaking!!!) on the student's working...quite an effective way of comunicating with your students
• You may like to check some of these otheres out glogster.com    wix.com     voicethread.com     weebly.com    slide.com    bliptv    teachertube.com     clustrmap    boomp3.com   daftdoggy.com    vocaroo.com - yes theree is a heap there but some great tools there

I have also gone on to some other great websites - 

Bucklands Beach has done some great work on eportfolios

eisforlearning.wikispaces.com  

fendalton openair school

Tony ryan website - has all his thinking keys there....lots of free downloads

Yes so much....you may like to browse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So much to take in

ulearn08

Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach - spoke about Building a community of practice - the best ones  are the ones that are co=owned  -it is about sharing....we need to move away from imposed norms...co-creative... isn't that we are aspiring for? We have started with a model and what we want now is for people to be taking ownership. There are four distinct stages

1. Sharing ...

2 .cooperate

3. collaborate

4. act collectively for change

I can see strong parallels to what we are trying to achieve at North. At each stage we need to build heaps of opportunities for sharing.

Our timeline allows for this. We have linked the timeline to our staff meeting overview ... I believe this is where I can show strong leadership and perhaps keep us all sane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!