Victorian Premier's Reading Challenge

 

 

 

 

Congratulations to our  2014 Year 7 and 8 students who have completed their 2014 Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge having read well over 3,000 over two year levels. They received their certificates in  Week 7 acknowledging  that they have read over fifteen books.

Josh Strauss in 8D  took out the prize for having the read the most books overall – 124 books.  Josh also helped his class to victory with 8D taking out the prize for reading the most as a class – 586 books. This will be the second year this class of exemplary readers shall take out this prize. Congratulations, 8D.

Once again convenor, Joy Reid, has done a fabulous job keeping this six month program alive and she plays a key role in promoting a reading culture at our Garnsey campus. Many of our students have read voraciously during this challenge and the twelve students who read over fifty books
celebrated their achievements at a Chinese Luncheon held at the Gippsland Dragon on the 20th November.

Holiday Reading Function

The ISC  team  invite you all to attend our  Holiday Reading Function  on Friday 5th December. It will start at 3:30 pm and drinks and nibbles will be supplied. Liz and Trevor from Collins Bookstore will also be making their regular  "guest appearance" to tell us about the latest summer  reads. We hope that you are able to come along and help us celebrate the end of the year. This function  is a great opportunity to  start unwinding and easing  yourselves into holiday mode.

Building Capacity in our Year 7's

With supporting skill development and guided learning being an important focus of our ISC, I have thoroughly enjoyed having the opportunity to co –teach with our Year 7 History and Geography teachers this year. Through their investigations of Asia and Ancient Egypt, Year 7’s have learnt and practiced new skills which have included:

·         Developing their own questions

·         Note Making

·         Using Inspirations’ mind mapping tool

·         Accessing ISC virtual resource guides

·         Using copyright friendly resources in their presentations

·         Using Moviemaker as a presenting tool

·         Uploading tasks to the school portal Discussion Board.

It has been wonderful to see their progression in these skills during 2014.

Paired Reading In Year 8

It has also been rewarding  and satisfying for Joy and myself to be able to  support Year 8's in developing their literacy and digital skills this term. In their “Paired Reading” project, students have learnt how to customise and maintain a blog, use the web tool Voki, use copyright friendly resources only, create their own movie and embed all multimedia into their blog. Students have enjoyed the variety of tasks in this project. With reading being an essential life skill, this project was a great way to foster a love of reading and allow students to present their responses in a challenging and creative way.

In Week Six, all Year 8's had the opportunity to showcase their blogs. It was also a requirement to peer and self -assess and  students managed to do this in  a respectful, constructive  and beneficial way. It was great to be able to read that they not only learnt a lot of new skills but found the project engaging and challenging.

YouTube Channels For Learning

It is now commonplace for educational institutions, including schools,  to  have their own YouTube channels. It is an exciting way for educators to host  and share their own collections of videos that could feature lectures, tutorials and  open coursework.

Below are some  general educational YouTube channels I think are worth following. I particularly like Teaching and Learning in  South Australia. Above are two of their videos.The first is from a series called Opening my classroom door. This series is a collection of short stories shared by teachers who have been willing to invite peers into their classrooms to observe.The second video which is about enriching learning with networked technology is from  a series called Professional Conversations.

YouTube EDU
Teaching Channel
TED-Ed
Edutopia
ASCD
Learning to Teach Online
Khan Academy
Discovery Channel
The rockEd Channel
RSA Animate: 21st Century Enlightenment
Teaching and Learning in South Australia

Empowering Students To Be Changemakers

 

After this week's  discussions at the Garnsey Campus  about  what constitutes "Academic Care" at Gippsland Grammar, this Edutopia article on social entrepreneurship really spoke to me. It suggests 7 ways teachers can tap into the local and global concerns of our students, empowering  them to change the world. As one would suspect,social media plays a key role with schools  needing to embrace social media platforms so that students can  share their concerns and actions with the world.

 

Periodic Table for iPad Apps

With technology constantly changing, this "periodic table of ipad Apps" poster is very useful. Inspired by Sean Junkins, Mark Anderson, an Assistant Principal in the UK has categorised Apps  into  8 areas of use.
 You can follow Mark on the ICTEvangelist blog. He has given the poster a Creative Commons licence which means its free to use and share. To  download a higher resolution of the poster  click here.