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'

#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.

#educampTheTron

- Introductions
- Smack-down Slide Share
- Breakout

Ideas/tools/apps to try

- Todaysmeet.com
- Kidschatnz
- Diigo 
- Playbuzz
- Teacher Dashboard
- Guided Access for Ipad (Love this)
- Ipad Speech Selection (Reads articles to students)
- Storylineonline (Listen to reading)
- Imagistory & Write about this NZ (Ipad apps)


I presented on:

Annemarie Hyde's Storify

Kodu Game Lab

Today in P3 we tried out the coding game 'Kodu Game Lab'.

I had heard about it on Twitter and at conferences but hadn't had an opportunity to try it out. 10 of my boys were out at a the Boys High School open day, this was the perfect opportunity to try it with my remaining students.

Initially it took some time to get the programme installed, this meant some students were able to begin early on while others had to be patient. I gave very limited instructions other than see what you can create.

What students created:

- Racing car game
- Submarine racing game
- Plane racing game
- Soccer field
- Island
- Soccer field/battle zone (2 player)
- Factory
- Underwater worlds
- Aquariums
- Colourful worlds (playing with patterns)


P3's Reflection:

Pros:

- Challenging
- Programming aspect is fun
- Lots of options to change colours
- Being creative
- You can work with different sized tools (much quicker than Minecraft, which is block by block)
- Lots of options for manipulation (rotating, size, colour)
- You can verse mobs
- You can play together
- You can create games
- Can synchronise characters together

Cons: 

- Limited characters
- Requires patience
- You can only use a few resources before it goes pixelated and lags
- Confusing to use (especially when you are used to another game because you try to transfer those controls)
- Hard to move the camera and get the right angles
- Graphics were not that great of quality
- Time consuming to build one thing

I think that a lot of the cons come from my students Minecraft game play. They were expecting an immediate transfer of controls and build options because the game play has a similar aesthetic.


If you want to see what Kodu is all about check out this video:

We used this tutorial to help teach us the different aspects of the game.

Literacy Shed

Another amazing website to use to enhance writing.

Literacy Shed

My student's loved this. I asked one of them to choose a random number and then selected the corresponding thumbnail that went with this. We found ourselves on the ghostly shed page. 

I played the class the video clip without the sound. 

This started a big class discussion about how the character was feeling, what was happening, what sound must have been happening in the background and lots of other great questions. 

We watched the clip twice and students made notes about what they thought was happening.

They then used these notes to rewrite their version of the story.

Once they had written their own versions of the story and shared with the class, we watched the short story with sound.

Student's loved this writing exercise and have been begging to do another one, except this time they want to try it with only hearing the sound and not seeing the visual.

The website has great teaching points and content. 

Here some examples of student's work from this session:

Student 1:

The Escape

I shuffled carefully out of the unzipped tent, the night was cold but beautiful. My bare feet skimmed the soft dirt as I slipped them into my boots. I reached into my pocket, well half pocked and clasped my bony fingers around my unlit cigarette. 

I started walking through the dark forest, the stars look exceptionally amazing tonight. As I walked I noticed a long winding jetty with a wooden boat tied to the end. I gingerly stepped onto the boat and started paddling, the moonlight glimmering on the lake. I lay on my back and pulled out my cigarette.

Student 2:

What Happened?

I've been planning this for as long as I can remember, but as the cool air nips my nose I feel a shiver slide down my spine. I quietly get into my shoes and creep across the leaves.I walk to the jetty, I feel like something is watching me, I shake it off and carry on. I climb into the boat, drift for a bit and start my journey .

I look around and see this is the place and stop, lay my head back and pull out my cigarette. My parents still don’t know I smoke and I plan to keep it that way. I look out into the night sky, beautiful. Something rocks the boat, I sit up and look around, nothing, so I lay back down. There it is again, I sit up a second time as the boat rocks violently, that’s it, I start to row but I see I'm going nowhere. I sit back this is hopeless I sit back and write in my book 'Help Me' that’s when the last rock makes everything go black     

Student 3:

Is this the end?

I made my way carefully out of the tent, stepping over everything in my path. The fire is still blazing, red hot embers flying in the air. I wrap my hands around the lantern, clutching it, my heart pounding. My hands have suddenly gone cold and clammy. I ignore it and carry on.

The forest is alive around me. The trees are whispering and leaves rustle quietly on the forest floor. I keep walking until I reach the lake. The moonlight shimmers on the lake, as I step out onto the dinghy. I row out to the middle of the lake and stop there. I lay on my back, gazing at the endless stars of the sky. I light my cigarette and take a deep breath in. 

A splash sounds in the still night air. I stand up uncertainty on my face and worry in my eyes. 

Student 4:

Quetico Lake Mystery

I crawl out of my tent, my feet sinking into the soft soil, the heat of the camp fires flame fills the camp ground. I slip into my fur boots and start walking as quietly as possible into the dense forest, not knowing the foreign dangers that lie ahead. I tip toe along the jetty and crawl into the boat at the end, I use my kerosene lamp to light my cigarette, get out my book and start to paddle.

I decide this is a good spot, roughly around the middle of the lake. I rest for a while, my cigarette in one hand and one behind my head, not knowing this would be my last night under the stars.

“SPLASH” the boat starts to rock, sending ripples through the moonlit water, I start to worry I lift my lamp and hold it above the water…

Storybird Website

Today in class P3 had a play on the website Storybird.
I set very little guidelines. I told them they were going to write a picture book and that they could spend some time selecting the artwork to tell their story. They had not done a brainstorm or done any pre-writing. They used the images as a guide to sequence their story and then built on their stories from there.

We only spent one session on their stories and they came up with a range of different topics and story types. Some wrote humorous short stories. some created sophisticated pictures and other created how to guides.

They then had a buddy check and edit their work for spelling errors and missing punctuation. I still need to conference with each student on their story because when they presented there were still minor errors.

I was very pleased with the quality of work and it is definitely a website I am going to use again.

Tegan's Sophisticated Picture Book



Casey's Rhyming Tale



Tanner's How to Guide



Marnie's Funny Tale

Flappy Bird - Coding our own game

Today in class P3 learnt about computer science and were able to code their own 'Flappy Bird' game.

I got the idea from Tracy Tindle (who I have also hitchhiked on her Minecraft Lifeforms Project) - check out her blog - http://misstindlesclass.wordpress.com/

They looked at the pros and cons of the current game and made improvements they thought would make the game more marketable.

P3 already have previous experience using scratch, they were able to move through the levels very quickly. There are 10 levels, each level adding in a new element for them to think about. The only challenge from them was that they hadn't realized that the green blocks were the event blocks and that they required purple and/or blue blocks underneath them. They also needed to ensure they didn't have any loose blocks in the creative screen.

My Flappy Bird Game

Next session:

- Binary code

- Angry birds game