Literacy « J Pod -Grovedale West Primary School

Term 1 Discovery Learning came to a wonderful conclusion on Friday

by Your Friendly J Pod Teachers

Our term 1 Discovery learning came to a wonderful conclusion on the last Friday of term as our students worked in their collaborative teams to present their episode of the ‘Mojo’ growth mindset films to explain to their audience what it meant to be in the learning dip and how to get out to the learning dip with the power of ‘I CANT DO THIS YET!”

click her to watch the DIP episode

The students had worked together in the week to use all their skills developed during the term to collaborate in developing characters, making puppets, creating scripts and story boards and using their drama skills to bring to life their characters. This whole process was a great way to reinforce and use their skills and also was yet another way to help the students understand the important message of maintaining a growth mindset in all they do, especially when learning new or challenging things.

We were very impressed with the students collaboration, creativity and growth mindset skills as they brought to a conclusion the ‘Challenging’ work of the term.

We can’t wait to see what challenges and learning our term 2 discovery learning will bring to the Jpod.

We hope you enjoy the photos below of the students in action on Friday.

GREAT WORK JPOD STUDENTS!

Discovery Learning J Pod Communication (eg. newsletters) Literacy

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Publishing writing to create enthusiasm and motivation to write

by Your Friendly J Pod Teachers

We hope you are all enjoying your holidays.

The Jpod students finished last term by putting all their writing skills together to produce a piece of published writing for a real audience. Writing for an audience is what ‘real’ writers and authors do and its important for students to see that their writing can inform and entertain others, together with the other many reasons that we learn to write to help us with communication in our lives.

There were different forms of publishing used in the Jpod, with some students making real books about their favorite things and animals.

Other students used our iPads to create electronic books using ‘book creator’, which is a great app for making digital books that can capture, images, text and sound. As part of the writing process the students had to edit and correct their work, re-draft and re-work pictures and text so that their finished work was the best it could be.

The students electronic books have been but together into a movie format for sharing on the blog and we hope that you enjoy the students work.

As you will see they had been exploring the effect punctuation can have on our writing and this all came from a very entertaining picture story book which suggests that ‘Punctuation can Save lives’….

‘Let’s eat Grandma!” having a very different meaning to ” Let’s eat, Grandma!”.

We hope you enjoy the students innovations on this concept and their fantastic illustrations created to match their texts.

To help the students with their amazing drawings, the students first used the iPads to watch other ‘how to draw videos’ with artists drawing and instructing the students how to improve their drawing skills -this is another great way in which students can use technology to help them in their learning.

Literacy

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Getting very excited about the Games Expo…..

by Your Friendly J Pod Teachers

Much collaboration, creativity and critical thinking has been happening in the Jpod over the last few weeks as the students continue their preparations for our games expo next term on Friday 21st October.

THE BIG NEWS is that the schools we approached and invited to the Expo have all replied with excitement about our project. They were excited to be included in the authentic learning opportunity and have all offered to be involved in the project. So far, we have 98 prep, grade 1 and grade 2 students from Grovedale PS confirmed to visit on the morning of the Expo. Nazareth PS can’t come that day but they may come on another day so that their students can be involved. Finally, we might have students from a bit farther afield (from Anakie) visiting on the Expo day.

Our students are looking forward to having students to play their games and to have the opportunity to get feedback about their games and also to teach and inspire other students to have a go at making and developing their own games.

Over the last few weeks our students have been involved in the tricky phase of exploring their game types in more detail, planning and testing game ideas, reflecting on this and then re-working their plans and beginning to create and make heir games. They are working either in small groups or partners, so as they plan and reflect they are also developing their communication and collaboration skills, making decisions with others in their groups and seeking feedback from other students in the Jpod to enhance and help develop their plans and game ideas.

TESTING ACTIVE GAMES

All of the work we have done this year about collaboration and growth mindset have been invaluable to the students as the projects they are engaged in are certainly challenging both in terms of the new skills they are learning and the ability to work with others.

We are also seeing lots of the students creative skills in action and their willingness and ability to think critically and improve their games is also clearly evident.

TESTING AND DEVELOPING CARD GAMES

Developing games is something children do from a very young age in an informal way as they play with their friends, but the challenge of developing a game like a board game or card game that others will be able to play with clear instructions and aims involves students to think carefully and critically about how other will interact and understand their game.

CREATIVITY IN OUR BOARD GAMES

The students who have taken on the challenge to make Electronic games have been introduced to the concept and skills involved in CODING (or computer programming).

WHAT IS CODING? Coding is essentially writing logical instructions that a computer can follow so that a game or program will work as it is intended to. It is a new type of literacy. Just as writing helps you organize your thoughts and express ideas, the same is true for Coding, which in the past was considered too difficult for younger children. We have been using simple App’s with the students to introduce and teach them coding skills through ‘Block Coding’.

As students interact with these Apps they learn how to solve problems and use the device to express themselves, rather than just interact with it. The students are using and developing their maths and language skills in meaningful and motivational ways, which is why Coding is now forming part of the Victorian primary school curriculum.

We have been using ‘Light Bot’ and ‘Junior Scratch’ with the students to help them develop their games. They are both free App’s to download and we would recommend them for use at home to support what we are working on in the classroom. The students have been learning the skills of coding and what is possible and they are now planning and storyboarding their games (much like they would plan a sequenced story narrative) which they will next seek to create by coding the game to do what they want it to do. The best way to understand this further would be to download Junior Scratch to a device at home and ask your child to show you what they can do with it…or failing that….come to our games Expo to learn all about it!

DEVELOPING STORYBOARDS FOR ELECTRONIC GAMES

We hope all the students and families have a restful holiday and we look forward to seeing everyone back refreshed and ready for an exciting Term 4.

Discovery Learning Literacy Numeracy

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Collecting Data to help with our learning..can you help us?

by Your Friendly J Pod Teachers

The Jpod Games Expo is coming…..

You may have heard that J Pod students have been busy playing games during Discovery time – this is all for good reason as students are developing their perception of what a good game is and have been asked to analyse, evaluate and compare the features of different types of games. This has led to the students wanted to put their learning to good use and ‘create’ a new game for someone else to play.

In thinking about who they might design games for, the students thought it would be great to invite the GWPS community to try out their games and also to invite some grade 1/2 students from nearby local schools to come to GWPS to play their games, to both entertain them with the games and also to get some feedback on the games they will be creating. Why not have a ‘Games Expo’ the students thought but this time with other schools invited!!!

After using Google Maps to research and recording the distance of nearby schools, students have collaboratively designed a survey of questions using an online monkey survey to send to the other local schools. What a great use of their numeracy skills; reading and interpreting maps, measuring time and distance and developing questions to collect data.

They have also been using their Literacy skills too, drafting a persuasive letter explaining how they would like the other students to come to the Games Expo, giving them directions to walk to our school and asking them to complete the online survey. In drafting their letters the students had to think carefully about what to include in their text and also to revise and redraft their letters first in their books and then on loose paper that can be posted to the other schools.

Some students have used book creator to create electronic letters to send.

Without wanting to give too much away, our students have been given the option to choose their preferred game type they would like to create, including board games, card games, active games and electronic games. All the games will need the students to use their literacy and numeracy skills, critical thinking skills, communication skills, collaboration skills and have the character to take on a challenging project. The electronic games creation will also lead to the students exploring ‘coding’ skills as they develop the mathematical and literacy skills involved in understanding how electronic games and apps are created.

We are now in the beginning stages of researching further our chosen game type and together with our survey response questions we will begin the design and creation process. It’s a tricky challenge but the students are up for the challenge and its yet another great way to build their ‘growth mindset’.

We are planning our Expo for Friday 21st October, so make sure you pencil in the Expo date as it is sure to be a fun, fantastic, exciting event for all ages!

We would also love your feedback on what you enjoy when playing a game and would love for anyone reading this blog post to complete our Jpod online Monkey survey (it only takes a few minutes).

These are the students questions, which were developed collaboratively with input from all the Jpod students. As we collect the data it will be great to look at this and analyze our results with the students, in that way they can hopefully design the sorts of games that audience members at the Expo would like to play. They will also be able to develop their numeracy skills in collecting, reading and interpreting data in a real and authentic way. The survey can be accessed by clicking on the following link or using the QR code if you would prefer.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NSS3ZC9

We hope you can help and that you will be able to come and try out some of our games when they are ready.

Discovery Learning J Pod Communication (eg. newsletters) Literacy Numeracy

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Homophones rule!!

by Your Friendly J Pod Teachers

Some of the Jpod students have been finding out about Homophones during their recent Letters and Sounds and spelling sessions.

We started investigating homophones by reading the Gene Barretta book “Dear Deer’ together. This led to lots of interesting research and learning by the students, finding out about homophones (words that sound the same but are usually spelt differently and have different meanings, like hair and hare. We also found out about other words called homographs where words are spelt the same but pronounced differently with different meanings like, ‘Wind’ and ‘wind’ (the watch).

The students were inspired to create their own book of homophones. Each student has worked collaboratively with a partner to create an interesting homophone page which they have then illustrated and we published together as an electronic classbook book using ‘Book Creator’

We hope you enjoy listening to the Jpod homophone book.

We wondered what Gene Barretta might think of our book?

We would love to know what you think of our book and for you to share an interesting pair of homophones that you can think of?

Literacy

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Kids teaching Kids!- letters and sounds learning shared with the grade 3/4’s –

by Your Friendly J Pod Teachers

Some of the Jpod students have been learning about some pretty complex aspects of spelling and punctuation over the last few weeks during their Letters and Sounds sessions. They have been exploring some of the patterns we notice when forming plurals of words (e.g. adding ‘s’ ‘es’ and ‘ies’ to the end of words),how to use contractions properly (e.g. I’ve and we’ve) and when to use the apostrophe for possession (e.g. the cat’s bell).

Inorder to help consolidate their learning ,the students have worked together in small groups to make books that help explain what they have learnt to other students. They used an App called ‘Book Creator’ on the iPad to make their books and the app has the ability to save their books as a video for sharing digitally. The books were able to contain recorded voices together with the pictures and words.

The students enjoyed taking their books up to the 3/4 students this week to read them to them in the hope that they could help them with their learning and understanding of these tricky aspects of spelling. The Jpod students really enjoyed sharing their books and the 3/4 students were able to give them student feedback about them.

Two 3/4 students commented that ‘although they did already know about the spelling rules the books were written in simple way that helped them understand the topic better’, which was great feedback to get and made the process of making the books all the more worthwhile. The power of kids teaching kids is not to be underestimated!

The books are published below for you to enjoy:

What do you think of the students’ books?

Learning Focuses Literacy

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Term 1, Learning for the coming week 3..

by Your Friendly J Pod Teachers

Welcome to week 3 in the Jpod.

Here is a brief overview of our learning foci for the week ahead.

READING

With CAFE routines established this week’s CAFE focus will be on ‘Getting our Knowledge ready for reading’, by connecting with the text, making predictions and using SEE THINK WONDER.

We hope you enjoy the first of our CAFE instructional videos below which hopefully helps explains this very important strategy for readers. We also hope this video will give you some help with ways to tune in your children to their reading and to discuss their reading with them to help develop their comprehension skills.

This week will also see students begin their small group guided reading workshops.

Students have 1-2 of these workshops in a very small group with a teacher every week, which allows teachers to explicitly coach and support students with the next steps needed with their personal reading goals.

WRITING

Writing this week will focus around drawing labelled plans and writing about ideas for how we might develop our new outdoor classroom space. Students will also refresh their letter formation skills and writing fluency.

MATHS

Maths will focus on counting and mental strategies that students can use to help them with their addition and counting. For example, estimation, counting on, using known number facts, doubles and bridging to ten.

DISCOVERY

Continuing on from last week the focus will remain on developing students Collaboration skills through working in groups on creative projects using hand on materials and technology.

We will also be helping students understand what it means to compromise with others and what being creative really means. You can give your child a head start with this learning if you watch and discuss the video below with them. We will be using this as a stimulus in class to explore compromise and creativity.

PHILOSOPHY

This week’s philosophy session used the photo below as a stimulus for students to discuss. We used the thinking routine SEE THINK WONDER to discuss what might be happening in the photo, why it might be happening, how the students in the photos might be feeling and to help our students develop strategies to help them stay positive and resilient in group situations.

Finally, just a little message to remind each student to bring into school a box of tissues. We really need a good supply of these to prepare ourselves for the winter months.

Looking forward to a great week from the Jpod teachers.

CAFE Reading Discovery Learning Learning Focuses Literacy Numeracy philosophy for children

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Fantastic start to the year

by Your Friendly J Pod Teachers

Welcome to the Jpod blog 2016!!!

What a fantastic start to the year we have had. The students have settled effortlessly into the routines and expectations of life in the Jpod.

The focus for the last week has been on students feeling happy and settled at school. There have been many opportunities planned by the teachers for students to get to know their new home group friends, to get to know other students in the Jpod and to get to know the teachers.

Students have been encouraged to use each other’s names, look at each other and smile when they are working with new friends, and to really work hard to build the positive relationships which are so important for learning.

Routines

The Jpod teachers have been so impressed at how quickly the students have settled into their daily routines. It’s been amazing to watch the students starting their days with diaries out, changing their readers independently and being ready to learn. The consistency with the prep routines has been clear to see and the transisition activities last term also seem to have helped prepare the students for life in the Jpod.

Reading

Our reading program is up and running with students refreshing the routines involved in CAFE reading, practicing reading to a partner, reading to self and checking for understanding as they read. We have also introduced word work routines. Look out for some videos which will appear on the blog soon, helping to explain some of the reading routines and strategies that the students are taught in class.

Next week will see small guided reading groups starting up so that students can receive more explicit and precise teaching of the next steps they need to focus on with their reading.

Writing

In writing the students have written letters to their new home group teachers telling them about themselves, their holidays, their families and their interest. It’s been great to read the fantastic writing produced by the students.

Maths

Numeracy sessions have been very hand on and fun, with students using quick mental maths strategies in games such as maths bingo, solve the number pattern, number snap with playing cards and exploring our numicons and numeracy iPad apps.

Discovery

Our discovery activities have focused on relationships and creating the right learning environment for the Jpod.

Students have been involved in devising a monitor system for each home group to help the Jpod run smoothly. Posters will be appearing in each learning area made by the students.

Our school beliefs

The students have discussed our school beliefs and thought about what a positive learning environment would look like, sound like and feel like. They then worked together to make large Y chart posters to display their ideas in the Jpod.

Collaboration and creativity

The end of the week has seen the students developing their collaborative and creative skills, working in groups with specific design briefs.

All students are having the opportunity to create shared models using Make Do, creative structures using our Green Hat Blocks and short multi media films using our iPads to get used to using IMovie to combine photos, music and sound.

The collaborative and creative skills on show in the room have been amazing to see and we hope you enjoy some photos of the learning.

As the year progresses we will use the blog to showcase what is happening in the room and also to communicate general learning topics and to share ideas and videos that might help with continued learning at home.

Don’t forget to post some comments too!!

The blog is shared regularly with the students in class and we will be teaching them how to post a comment on the blog.

Please feel free to pout a comment on the blog, it can be as simple as ‘great learning kids’. Or can comment on something more specific, or can relate to a photo of something that you’ve enjoyed. Remember we don’t use surnames on the blog so first names only pls whe you post a comment eg sign of your blog comment….from James (Banjo’s Dad).

If you click on the comment box below the post your comment will not appear on the blog until it has been moderated and approved by the Jpod staff.

All comments will get shared in class and helps to build the connection between the school, home and the students.

We are so excited about the year ahead and enjoying the learning journeys with each and every one of the Jpod students.

Finally, look out for homework books and our Jpod newsletter and timetables which are coming home with the students today.

Discovery Learning J Pod Communication (eg. newsletters) Literacy Numeracy

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Sharing creative multi-media presentations from the Jpod learning Expo

by Your Friendly J Pod Teachers

It was lovely to see so many parents in the Jpod today sharing their learning with their children.

The children who produced multi-media presentations or those who filmed their oral presentations were able to share their work using headphones and splitters in the room and show their work with many members of their families gathered around their iPads.

Many families wanted to see the films again and, of course, the blog is a great way to be able to share to a wider audience.

Here are the Multi- Media Presentations;

These were produced largely independently by the students using I-Movie on the iPads and also our new green screen room and green screen editing app. The students worked collaboratively to support each other with some teacher input and feedback ,when needed, to help with technical skills and editing the films.

The students were working towards the following criteria for their films:

– films needed to be planned and storyboarded before starting to film
– they needed to use multi-medias, i.e. combine pictures, video, text, talking, animations, sound and music
– pictures needed to match the speaking or text
– sound needed to be clear so voices were audible
– the films were to be somewhere around 2-5 minutes long

We hope you enjoy the students work. We were very impressed with the way they met the criteria above and included many creative additions to the films. This is very impressive work for such young students.

Oral presentations/songs and dances:

Some students decided to present their learning in an oral presentation, song or dance. This involved considerable planning, writing of scripts and cue cards and then filming their presentations in creative ways. Well done Mr Campbell for using your musical skills to support the students with their musical expression!

We hope you enjoy the films.

The students would love to have some audience feedback which you can leave by posting a comment below.

Discovery Learning Literacy

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Transition program

by Your Friendly J Pod Teachers

This week the year 2 students have been visiting the MI Pod to experience life in year 3 with a reading and maths session. They have enjoyed being year 3s and have looked settled and at home in the MI Pod. The consistency across the school and from area to area really helps the students to take this in their stride.

: Mipod maths

: Working together

: Jpod numicons game

: Read to partner in Jpod

The Jpod has also hosted the prep students for two sessions and the current year 1’s have been year 2 students for the day, feeling what it will be like to be leaders and role models next year.

Next Tuesday, December 8th, the students will have a 3 hour transition session, running all morning from 9.15-12.30 which will give them further time to settle into their new learning areas for next year and work with their friends new teachers.

This is what some of the students had to say:

Lucas (year 2) – Maths was fun because we played nasty numbers.

Freya (year 2 ) – We met new people in the Mi Pod and I enjoyed meeting new students and teachers.

Isla (year 2) – I thought it was interesting how they learnt different things and I had fun because I was entertained with the new things.

Joseph (year 1) – I liked the transition because we have been having time with the preps and I wanted to spend more time with them to get to know them.

Olivia M (year 1) – SERIOUSLY Mr.Ramage…don’t you know who I am!!!!!!!… (Mr Ramage pretending he had forgotten Olivia’s name)..actually, I meant to say the preps are wonderful.

Emily (year 1) – The preps are wonderful and it’s been good meeting them.

Sophie (year 1) – I like working with the new preps and getting to know them.

Miky (prep) – I have enjoyed learning new things with the grade 1s.

Alex (prep) – we got to do some different things in the Jpod like playing get out of the house.

Makenzie (prep) – I have enjoyed seeing other people and making new friends.

Remy (prep) – I have been feeling less nervous after coming up to the Jpod.

We would love to hear some comments from other students:

What did you think of the transition program and what are you looking forward to next year next year?

CAFE Reading J Pod Communication (eg. newsletters) Literacy Numeracy

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J Pod -Grovedale West Primary School

The J Pod blog – Year 1 and 2 learning at Grovedale West Primary School

Term 1 Discovery Learning came to a wonderful conclusion on Friday

Publishing writing to create enthusiasm and motivation to write

Getting very excited about the Games Expo…..

Collecting Data to help with our learning..can you help us?

We are planning our Expo for Friday 21st October, so make sure you pencil in the Expo date as it is sure to be a fun, fantastic, exciting event for all ages!

Homophones rule!!

Kids teaching Kids!- letters and sounds learning shared with the grade 3/4’s –

Term 1, Learning for the coming week 3..

Fantastic start to the year

Sharing creative multi-media presentations from the Jpod learning Expo

Here are the Multi- Media Presentations;

Transition program

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The J Pod blog – Year 1 and 2 learning at Grovedale West Primary School

We are planning our Expo for Friday 21st October, so make sure you pencil in the Expo date as it is sure to be a fun, fantastic, exciting event for all ages!

Here are the Multi- Media Presentations;

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