Two Point Perspective Art

Last week I took an art rotation with each half of my class during our technology time. We looked at one point perspective art of a basic room. The technical drawing and language that the children used sold me on attempting this type of art again and extending their pieces.

With group one student's looked a two point perspective art of a country house and with group two student's looked at two point perspective art of a city. I am pleased with the outcome of their drafts. They are still in draft phase of these pieces at this stage, they discussed how two point perspective is much harder than one. Some students chose to leave certain features out of their art due to difficulty or no room based on where they placed their finishing points. 

Things the students noticed for their final pieces:

- Rulers are a must!

- Don't press to hard because you need to rub some lines out 

- You use a lot of lines in these pieces as a guide for windows, doors etc..

- Where you put your vanishing points will affect the size and shape of certain features 

- There is a lot of maths in this type of art

- Student's believe these art pieces look best in pencil form (most didn't want to add colour or too much detail because they thought it would take away from or ruin the piece)

Two Point Perspective City

Student Work:

Two Point Perspective Cottage

Student Work:

One Point Perspective Art

One point perspective art was our focus for today's art session. Students have had opportunities to create a range of colourful and expressive pieces of art throughout the year. I wanted student's to attempt something a little more technical and structured.

We began the session by looking at a range of perspective art works and discussing their key features. This prompted a lot of discussion and we talked extensively about distance and relationships between various objects, the vanishing point and perspectives from a range of angles.

Student's found this activity challenging at first. They needed a ruler, rubber, pencil and blank piece of paper. The confusion came from the angled lines that came from the vanishing point. It took student's a while to grasp the concept that all angles come from and go to the vanishing point.

I was impressed with the amount of Mathematics language they were using when discussing their pieces. They spoke about parallel lines, vertical and horizontal lines, angles, shape, distance and scale.

We used the following video as a guide for our first piece. Student's followed the instructions from this video as their first draft and introduction to one point perspective. They will be designing their own rooms using the rules from today's session to show their understanding of one point perspective.
Students will be adding colour to their pieces and their own uniqueness with what the put outside the window, in the paintings and on the walls.

Examples of student work:

This work is unfinished and in draft form

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Term 4 Novel Study time!

Pretty much mine and my students favourite part of each term.
I am such an avid reader and I love getting students excited about the books we read.
I usually try to find a book with a movie as a reward/comparison study or books that are in a series to encourage further reading. Every term I have so much fun trying to decide what our novel study will be. I spend time looking for books that fit our terms inquiry and resources that will engage and suit all my students.

This term I had decided on 'Hatchet'. I had made all these resources and had everything super organised and ready to go, only to find on the first day of term half my students had studied the novel in year 5. That will teach me for being so eager!

I had a dilemma that needed to be solved quickly. I had the hard copy of' 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children' in my cupboard to pre-read for next year. I just decided to give it a go, thankfully another teacher had read it and could vouch that it would be perfect for my kiddies.

I read them the brief synopsis and showed them the cover. I was trying to gauge if this would suit them and think on the spot of how to hook them in. It didn't take much, they loved it, they were so excited the begged me to start straight away.


"A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs.

As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive." 

We read the prologue and first chapter. I only had my students listen at first, pausing occasionally to discuss themes, characters or vocabulary. After I had read the prologue and chapter one I showed them the book trailer. We discussed some of the themes that were already arising from the text and began building our wall of predictions. The students got really excited because they thought the book trailer was a movie trailer, had to burst their bubbles on that one. However it is going to be a movie in 2015.

We started our third session by using Kahoot. I had created a brief quiz to check their understanding. It was great to be able to introduce them to a new ICT tool, have a little fun and assess their needs. Students over the next fee weeks in their reading groups will be creating their own Kahoot quiz. They are going to create them about their favourite books, general knowledge and topics we have covered this year.

I found a PDF copy of all the images in the book and ran them off. Each time we come across a new image in the book I pin it up on the wall for students to analyse. Each morning as I have come in students' have been crowding the wall discussing the images and sharing their predictions with another. It is awesome to see and hear!

Students also are beginning to create a web of the characters. They are drawing relationship lines between them explaining how they are connected and writing adjectives around them. They will continue to add to these as we read.

P3 are loving the book so far. Some have gone home and read ahead (Couldn't stop them with any amount of bribing) and even I am struggling to not read ahead.

Episode One: 'The Block P3'

'The Block P3' has kicked off this term!

Say goodbye to what was once a boring measurement unit and hook students in with Minecraft, movie making and tons of creativity. 

The challenge was set, students at to form teams to compete in 'The Block P3'

Criteria:

Teams of 2-4
Pick a team name
Pick a team colour
Choose a team motto
Design a team poster
Film a small segment for the trailer to 'The Block P3'

Once students had completed the assigned tasks they began to design their own visions.
I set no criteria at this stage. We simply brainstormed what was necessary in a house and what was extra. I made it very clear to students that the more they added to their houses the harder the maths would be (some did not listen to this instruction and have made it rather challenging for themselves). I told students that the only math requirement for this section was that they had to have the perimeter written down for each room.

As they bought their maps to me to check I sent them off to check if their rooms were to scale. One student came to me with a child's room that was 4m long and 3m wide. I told that student to get rulers and map it on the classroom floor. She quickly realized this was much to small, this sparked a great class discussion about scale and students began wandering outside to pace out the size of garages, swimming pools and all the important man cave.

Once students finished their own maps complete with perimeters and to scale they sat down with their teams. They shared their maps and discussed the pros and cons of each persons design. They had an A3 piece of paper and began mapping out their team design. As they did this I asked to begin thinking about the criteria that we would need to judge these (we will be co-constructing the judging criteria next week).

They are aware that although they are designing their vision they know there will be alterations made based on the challenge that is given to them each week.

They will get their first challenge next week and will have to create a video of their room to add to their blogs as their episode. The winning room each week will feature on this blog and be shown to the other class that is competing as well.

How to differentiate this unit:

Give different groups different challenges based on their ability.
One group may have to design a lounge with a perimeter of 25m but it can't be a perfect square.
The next group might be working with the area of 15m squared.
It is up to you how hard or easy you make this unit for your students.


Next steps

- Students to design and build their first room based on the challenge criteria
- Students finish to filming their trailers
- Co construct the judging criteria

Also check out Mrs Hay's class and their Block adventure:

'The Block P2'

Blackout Poetry

Another amazing freebie from teachers pay teachers.

Check out the prezi at this link - Click me

My students loved this!

They loved it so much they have asked if it can be part of our guided reading rotation. 

It is perfect for everyone and everyone can be successful with this poetry lesson.

I photocopied random pages from Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Divergent and Maze Runner.

All books they are familiar with, I did this so that the language they came across would have relevance and meaning to them.

We didn't practice on newspaper like the Prezi suggested, we just got straight into it.

Each student found an anchor word (a word that stuck out to them) and shared their anchor words with a buddy.

They then began hunting throughout the passage for more words that could help bring that anchor word to life.

They were very excited as they found words to make their poems work, this was quickly followed by frustration when they knew what they wanted to say but couldn't find or make that word happen.

This was a great activity for students to think about their vocabulary and share their poems with their peers without fear of judgement. 

Pros:

My lower readers and writers can create amazing poetry in a non threatening way

My top readers and writers are pushing themselves to think outside of the box to come up with illustrated poems

Students are all excited to share their poems with no fear or judgement (I believe this comes from them not actually writing the words but sharing what they 'found' in their passage)

Cons:

You need start in pencil (We didn't) and box around the words large enough that when you use the vivid it doesn't cut any of your words off

We didn't have enough black vivids - make sure each child has one

Next time I need to remember to discuss grammar 

Examples of some completed Blackout Poetry by P3 students:

White teeth

Oval Eyes

Dark Skin

Standing waiting for him

He looked inside to see the strange boy

Harry and Hermione drew their wands at the silver cat

Silence spread in cold ripples 

Then somebody screamed

Old and thin

Dark lord had tears pouring down either side of his snout

Violently Harry sped forwards

Pointed his wand at the unsteerable invisible barrier

Death Eater shot a curse

So close

I'm coming Harry, I'm Comin! 

Teach Meet NZ Presentation

Teach Meet NZ for Connected Educators Month

I was asked by the lovely Sonya (@vanschaijik) to be a presenter for Teach Meet NZ in October because it is connected educators month.

I was a little apprehensive at first because I had never watched or been part of an online presentation and didn't know what to expect. I decided that I had to just jump in head first and give it a go.

What's the big deal about Minecraft?

Teach meet NZ presentation from kasseylee11

Sonya was lovely and helpful during the practice sessions and she taught me a few tips and tricks with using Google Hangout. Such as using the toolbox to add your twitter feed, how to screenshare and how to use the Q & A.

In the practice sessions my presentation was timed at 6 minutes (double the allowed time). I had to spend some time rearranging my speech to still be able to say what I wanted to say in way less words. This was great for keeping my thinking succinct.

On the day I was ridiculously nervous. I practiced my presentation at least ten times to make sure my time wasn't over three minutes. I had managed to get it down to 2:58. That right there is success!

I loved being a part of #CENZ14 and the Teach Meet NZ crew. All the educators who presented were fantastic!

As I was listening to these great educators I was tweeting out all the great content that was being presented.

TeachMeetNZ was an awesome way to network with other educators. At Ulearn I was able to meet some of the other presenters and discuss our experiences. 

Overall my experience was fantastic. I recommend it to everyone and anyone who gets the opportunity to participate in one of these, even if it is just watching the broadcast.

Transcript for my presentation:

What is the big deal about Minecraft?

It is incredibly simplistic

Appropriate for all ages

There is no goal or end, basically the game is a giant sandbox encouraging construction, creativity, exploration and survival

Minecraft is a basically an online version of Lego and it is a fantastic learning tool

So why do kids love it?

And the bigger question is why should teachers?

Minecraft covers the key competencies in the New Zealand Curriculum

Thinking – Students have to think constantly about what they are building and what their next steps are

Using Language, Symbols and Texts – Students are using rich language to discuss their projects. They are using words like mods, spawning, griefing and crafting to communicate with their peers

 Managing self – students set their own time frames alongside setting their own agenda and goals and they manage themselves to ensure they meet them

Relating to others – Teamwork and collaboration happens within the game and outside the game to support the learning

Participating and contributing – Students participate and contribute to the Minecraft community when they build amazing creations and share them with their peers

The simplistic graphics allow anything to be possible. They can build on a small scale such as building their dream classroom or on a large scale replicating an Ancient Egyptian city.

They dream it up and then they build it

 Students work together to create complex and elaborate structures. Often this will involve a planning process where a committee of students get together to develop a plan. While in the planning process students engage in rich discussion to bring their vision to life.

Minecraft experts step forward and become the leaders in the classroom

The game has built in social structures with LAN worlds and a chat function.

Players have access to Wikis, blogs, websites and message boards. They share tips and upload elaborate videos detailing the amazing things they've learned to build.

 Students are constantly reflecting on their creations.

They are willing to take risks, make mistakes, fix them and continue this forward thinking process.

It is important for students to be able to identify the learning when using Minecraft

I encourage my students to use their blogs to reflect on projects and share their designs

These are just some of the values that Minecraft can teach students

Minecraft is fun – Students don’t even realize all the values and skills they are learning. However they are engaged and contributing positively to the learning and classroom environment.

The following are all successful ways I have been able to use Minecraft in the classroom.

My most successful Minecraft project has been the recent fictional setting of Coconut Cove from the Novel Hoot. Students created maps, models and worked in teams to create a detailed replica of this city to scale using the setting description from the text.

I encourage you to allow your students to be the experts. Open the door and allow students to co-construct the path alongside you.

Minecraft and gaming is taking over the classroom. So come and join the movement!

#Ulearn14

Ulearn 2014

What an amazing conference!

It always is... but to have it in my own city just made it that much more special.

This was my third Ulearn conference and I can easily say it was the best one yet!

We were privileged enough to have our school Kapa Haka group preform on the Thursday morning to 1600+ attendees.

I was able to see and talk to ex students who were working at the conference and was even lucky enough to have one of my own students come and help our with our workshop.

I tried to summarise my experience in a tweet:

We were lucky enough to have 6 of our staff attend the three day conference. This meant when we saw something amazing we were able to discuss and reflect on how we could introduce that into our own classrooms and teams when we get back to school.

Highlights:

- Presenting on Minecraft - Sharing my passion with other educators and helping them on their journey

- Connecting, networking (Face to face and on Twitter)

- Talking and talking and talking about everything and anything with like minded educators

- Hearing the Poutama teams journey (Breakout 5)

- Steve Mouldey's creativity is not just for the arts

- Stephen Lethbridge's session on making way towards a maker culture

- Having so many of our staff attend!

- Sharing my love of Twitter with my staff & teaching them how to use it

- I won a t-shirt

Lowlights:

- Super tired now at the end of the week

- I don't have enough money to get all the amazing things I saw

- I never wanted it to end! 

Tweets from the last three days

Day One:

Day Two:

Day Three:

Goals

- To use some of the tools and models I saw during the breakouts to develop my students thinking and questioning skills

- Let my students have more choices - let them choose who to work with, how many they need in a group etc...

- I want to try use Trailblazer with my class for evidence of research in their inquiries

- Buy some robotics/electronics kits, get stuff from junk yards for student to have a maker session - get parents involved to

- Help change my staffs mindsets!

- Are our learning spaces being used effectively?

- Read the books Steve mentioned in his session 

My takeaway tips/lesson ideas/websites

-  The notion of creating problem finders

- What if statements - start engaging discussions and questioning activities 

- Creativity challenges

- Trailblazer

- New Twitter friends!

- Kahoot 

Our Minecraft Slides (Breakout 4)

Now I just need to find the time to sit down with my other staff and do our team reflection together.

This is my initial basic reflection.

As I go over my notes and resources I will continue to update this blog with how my goals are going. 

If I saw you at Ulearn or we tweeted then thank you!

Loved the connections and learning.

Hoot Server

A final video of our nearly completed Hoot server! 

Connected Educators Month - Rotorua Pass the Blog

Connected Educators Month runs for the month of October.

Each school day of October a different class will post. There is a set list of questions and small list of protocols to show our digital citizenship. The hope is to have classrooms from all across the education sector participating. 

If your are a teacher in Rotorua please sign up 

P3's Blog Post:

Estelle
Tegan
Josh

1. What school do you go to?

Mokoia Intermediate

2. What is something special about your school?

Mokoia has an amazing fitness programme that we do every morning before we start our learning. We are very privileged to be able to try out lots of different sports and represent our school at a range of events and levels. I think our fitness programme makes us stand out athletes. 

The opportunities Mokoia gives us for everything. Sport going to Aims, camp leaders, house captains, house competitions and lots of learning opportunities like Rotomaths and news team. I think our school gets along really well together because we are quite a small school.

The sports opportunities are awesome. We can try out different sports and go to lots of events. We are such a small school that all the teachers and students know us really well. Even when you do something small you get noticed for it and I like that. 

3. What is something you have enjoyed learning about this year?

I have really enjoyed speeches. It is a different type of learning from normal and I got to choose my own topic. I chose to research and talk about ivory smuggling. I discovered that the items they make from ivory were beautiful but the slaughter of elephants is a tragedy. 

I really enjoyed learning about my exploration topic. I chose to research about hostile environments. I chose Caracus, Venezuela. I liked this topic because I like researching and planning out my budget to visit there. I used IMovie to present my work and I had never used that app before. 

I liked Genius Hour. Genius hour =  we chose a topic we would do for a term. It was our passion time to create something we were interested in. I chose to make a Hunger Games P.E. game. I got to work in a group with my friends and I enjoyed all the research and effort we put into this. 

4. What do you like most about living in Rotorua?

I love that it is a small town and I know a lot of people from different schools. I like being able to go and swim at the lake and mountain bike in the forest. I am glad I don't live in a place like Auckland because it is so busy all the time and too much traffic. 

I love living on a farm. I like spring the best because we get to have pet calves and lambs. I like using my farm to train for cross country. I really like the forest as well.

Swim training with Hank. This is all I really do because I pretty much do squad training every day.

5. What do you most like doing on your computer/ipad/devices at your school to help your learning?

I like Minecraft. It is helped me with understand co-ordinates, symmetry, maths (area/volume/perimeter), visualising, explain and design new modern structures and being creative. I love using quiz up in reading time it has helped me to read faster and my general knowledge on a range of subjects.

I like Minecraft. It helps me to be design buildings and lots of other cool stuff. I also like Quiz Up because I like to challenge other people. 

I like Kodu Game Lab. I like all the programming and seeing how things work inside the programme. 

6. Is there anything else you'd like to share about yourself, your learning, your class or your school?

In our school we all work well together, we have a strong bond and that reflects in our learning because we all help and support each other. This is not something that just happens in the classroom is happens during trips, camps and out in the playground. I am proud to be a house captain and to be able to take on lots of leadership roles.

I love our class, we all have lots of fun together. We have had lots of good times in our class. My favourite subject is reading and writing. My ambition is to be triathlete and a teacher. I am excited to go and compete in AIMs games this week on Sunday for cross country and next week for the multisport. 

We have got the coolest, amazing, fun teacher. I want to be a swimmer when I am older and I want to break world records. I really like to play with a ball at break times with people in my class. 

Hoot (Minecraft)

New Minecraft Project!

P3 begged and begged until I finally gave in and said yes we can start a new Minecraft project.
Last year I did a similar project with  'The City of Ember' and it was hugely successful. We used the novel to help visualise and create alternate endings to the book.

This year with Hoot we will be using it in a similar way. I like the students to be able to take meaningful notes and then use those notes to support the design process. Once they have completed the town they will use it to give a guided tour, retell a chapter and recommendations for the novel.

Students have been keeping specific notes about the characters and settings we have been introduced to in the story.

Coconut Cove:

- Golf Course – 18 holes and a driving range 

- The camp of Mullet Fingers was off the golf course through a small forested area

- Roy’s House 

- Roads + Bus Stop + Bus 

- Police station

- Mother Paula’s Pancake house Construction site - Caravan, big fence and 4 dogs

- Auto parts yard - Ice Cream Truck

- Garage - Bike Repair

- Trace Middle School - Classrooms, cafeteria, teachers lounge, car park, bus bay

- Beach 

- Dana’s House - has a front porch

As they kept these notes they began developing a birds eye view map of 'Coconut Cove' the town from 'Hoot'. Once students had finished this we had a class vote on whose map they thought was the best depiction of the town.

No students have seen the movie so they were only going from description and and their imaginations.

Josh's map was the map the class chose as the best to use as a guide.
I printed out a copy of his map for each student to put into their reading book to help with planning out the city

We initially all went onto our own class server together but discovered that it was pointless until the roads were completed and each part of the map was plotted out because everyone was just building in random areas.

We nuked the server and started again. This time the roads groups went onto our class server first. Having a class server has been awesome, I have set it up to only allow 28 players (my class + myself) and they need my IP address to get on and this changes each day so no one from other classes can get on. I also have to have my direct server open on my computer for it to work, so no one can 'sneak' on during class time.

Once the roads are finished students will begin construction of their chosen buildings.

We will be blogging more about this process and students will be reflecting on their own blogs as we get further into the story.


UPDATE 10/9

Here are some pics of the buildings students have completed so far. We are aiming to be done in a week and then begin filming.

Puarenga Art Rotation

This term I have been taking art as part of our learning rotation. The other teachers in my LC have been teaching Spanish, science and Chinese.

The first piece of art we created was a watercolour piece.

Instead of using watercolour paints we used watercolour pencils. The students were able to take more care with their colour choice and experiment with colours without any fear of 'ruining' their art.

I bought an amazing art resource from Teachers Pay Teachers to help with selecting new and exciting art lessons. Below is one of the lessons from the resource:

Students have decided on their own 'movement' pattern and how they want to represent the black/white aspect of the picture. 

I will add some finished results here in the next few weeks. 

Minecraft Chat

Monday 2pm 

September 15th 

Question 1 - How does Minecraft improve/help your learning?

Question 2 - What is the best structure you have built on Minecraft?

Question 3 - How do you use Minecraft in your classroom?

Question 4 - What other ways do you think you could use Minecraft to help your learning?

Question 5 - Do you have a current Minecraft project you are working on? Tell us about it

Question 6 - How does your whanau feel about you using Minecraft in schools?

Question 7 - What device do you use Minecraft on?

Question 8 - What other games could you use in school to help your learning?

Use the Hashtag - #mckcnz

The original hastage was #minecraftkidschatnz but was changed to prevent spamming 

30 Day Book Challenge

30 Day Book Challenge

The challenge is for students to get excited about reading. I want student's to read a new book for the next thirty days that they haven't and may haven't come across. It is important for them to realize not to judge a book by its cover but by its themes/content. I encourage all of them to give their book ago, they picked it for a reason (based on descriptors).

Organisation/Set Up

- Look around at the words that describe each book

- Think about three that would interest you to read

- No one unwraps a book until the end 

- We will random name generator.

- When your name comes up, you can get up and choose a book

- Tell the class the three words used to describe your book and keep it face up on your desk

- Just because you have this book doesn't mean you are safe

- The next person who gets up can take a book and then they can choose to keep the book or steal another

- You only get one steal at the time of your turn 

- The person who goes first gets to steal at the end

- Before opening you are allowed 30 seconds to try and swap with someone if you are not happy – however swapping is not compulsory. Stealing is!

- Once everyone has a book we will open them up one by one. 

Where to next:

- Students to blog about their book

- They can take the book home and read it during silent reading time after each break for 5mins

- Added into homework rotation 

- They can swap their books once they have completed it 

P3 Reflections:

Ronan

P3's teacher contacted the National Library and asked for a load of new books. She spent time wrapping them up and writing key words on them. We returned from the weekend to a surprise, a whole lot of books were wrapped up and we got to pick our own book based on three key words. It was great we didn't judge a book by its cover. I got a book called 'Call of the Rhino'. I think it's great and I can't wait to do it again. 

Estelle

Today we had a session in the second block where did a form of  'Secret Santa' with books. 

Miss Downard wrapped up 23 books, one for each student, making the cover non-visible only writing key words from the story on the wrapping so we couldn't judge it by its cover and used the random name picker to let us pick from the books one at a time, However you were also allowed to steal, but only once because you either steal or pick from the piles of books in the center of the mat. 

Once it got to me I chose a book with the words "Dystopian, save the future and girl main lead" but this book got stolen off me by Maya so I had to pick a new book of the floor. I ended up with 'Perks of being a wallflower' and so far I am enjoying it. 

Alexa