What’s coming up. Floaters.

Crystal ball by David Reece

Okay now, a floater to some might raise a few brows and cause a few to smirk. But a floater to me is an idea, and one that doesn’t go away easily. A floater comes to mind when you are usually not following the ‘rule books’, when you decide to go with the flow in the classroom and see what the outcome will be rather than try to get to the outcome you have written down. A floater can be brilliant but also annoyingly out of reach. But it’s always there and always wants to be given a chance. Here are my floaters for the year ahead.

1. Allow my class to talk more
2. Make the school VLE a LEARNING ENVIRONMENT!
3. Create an ‘old school’ interactive learning display
4. Be more creative in my approach to other parts of the curriculum e.g. Use Green screen in RE lessons to retell stories from bible
5. Bring my guitar into school everyday for no other reason than to sing with the class
6. Be positive and stop moaning (but some things I have to moan about and I will continue to do so)
7. Ask my class for more feedback
8. Talk to my class more rather than getting through the mountain of objectives
9. Continue my personal pursuit to rid the world of pointless homeworks
10. If Oftsted do actually make an appearance this year, welcome them with open arms and have fun

Let 2010 commence.

Making music together

I love music. I love playing music too and I have been in a few bands over the years as either a drummer or singer/guitarist. I have even dabbled in writing my own songs. So earlier today, when I came across inbflat (a collaborative music/spoken word project), I was not only impressed at how simple an idea it was but inspired at the potential it could have for classroom use.

What to do

• Teach my class a pentatonic scale C D E G A C
• Give the children xylophones with only these notes so they can experiment on musical arrangements
• Video these performances for review and discussion
• Provide further instruments such as a keyboard marked with the scale for the children to explore arrangements further
• Children record these on PC and on video
• Upload separate performances onto a blog post for the grand performance

This is only an idea brewing but one which I intend to explore with my new class of Y3/4′s sometime this coming school year providing them a wonderfully creative musical experience.

Darren Solomon is the musician behind inbflat. You can find out more here.

edit

Earlier today @mrslwalker posted a link to the following video. It shows Bobby McFerrin demonstrating the power of the Pentatonic scale. Amazing stuff.

Myst V – the beginning of our adventure

I have been reading all about Mark Warner’s uses of Myst in the classroom over the past couple of weeks and I just had to buy a copy of the game and find out what all the fuss was about. As soon as I installed it and started to play I immediately saw why it has been given such a positive response by many teachers as an inspirational teaching and learning tool.

Over the next 6 weeks I will provide a daily account of how I have used the game with my class, what skills they have developed from using it, the lessons I have taught and the work they have done so that you too might just decide to take the plunge and try it with your own class.

Using a Wii in the classroom.

I’m not a skeptical sort. I’m up for most things in life and as an educator I believe in the same guideline, otherwise I’d be still doing everything on my blackboard. That’s not to say it isn’t useful but with the technology we have today and some literally at our fingertips i.e. samrt table we would be foolish not to embrace it.

So, I decided a while back to try out a Wii as a possible teaching/learning tool in the classroom and you can judge for yourselves if it’s of educational value or not.

(The first point for example is quite debatable but must be mentioned)