Mr P's ICT blog - Tech to raise standards!

Each Year at Davyhulme, I host the annual Talent show! We absolutely love giving the children the opportunity to showcase other skills not always seen in class! For the past 5 years, I, along with help from some other teachers, have also created an entry which amuses the pupils as they hysterically laugh at my awful dancing and singing! After last year's Frozen rendition, we decided to go more street with our own version of the popular - Watch Me Nae Nae Song! Here is our effort! As you can see at the end of the video the children seemed to enjoy it! If you missed last year -  The other videos from previous years can be found here. I just want to take this opportunity to say a MASSIVE thank you to everyone for all their continued support. It has been another incredible year and all the teachers in school, on twitter and facebook who have supported and shared everything on my blog and on the training - I cannot thank you enough! I am going to enjoy the break and...

One of my favourite classroom resources is Mat Sullivan's book - Developing Writing Through Comics ! Not only is it packed with fantastic ideas to improve writing but it uses a camouflage learning approach by focusing on children's love for comics! Within the book, Mat discusses using comic strips as a storyboard for writing. Adapting this approach, I have been looking at how iPads can enhance this idea and gave it a go with year three today. Today we planned to create a comic strip to be used as a storyboard for our writing. We were creating narratives about visiting a Winter Wonderland where we would meet Father Christmas. First step... setting! There was only one way to hook children to write well about the setting... let them build it! I have previously blogged about using Minecraft in this way and it always works brilliantly. When children are able to construct a setting, they are more attached and willing to write about it. Works the exact same way with tools li...

In preparation for our joint conference 'Improving Reading and Writing through Popular Children's Movies and Media' in Newcastle this coming January, last night John Murray and I were editing and developing some of the ideas for the day itself. The main approach for the day is to demonstrate how, when taught alongside the written word, other forms of media can be extremely useful in helping children to develop key reading and writing skills. We focus on a variety of texts that are underpinned by a range of media types (including films, adverts and songs) and explore how reading texts within context enables children to realise that stories, no matter how short or in what format they are told, have both purpose and audience as a driving force. We consider also the effect the combination of text and the visual form has on story telling and its importance in the teaching of Emotional Literacy when developing the whole child. In searching for some examples to use, a certain t...

On Thursday 10th December at 1.30pm, Year 6 will be interviewing my Grandparents to learn about what it was like to be an evacuee. This links in with their World War 2 topic and is something we have done for a number of years. This time we wanted to share this experience and so will be doing a LIVE Google Hangout on Air so any classroom around the world can join us in this valuable learning experience! It will be a worthwhile experience to learn from people who experienced evacuation first hand. I am always fascinated to listen about what they went through and how different the experiences were for my Nana and Grandad!  We will prepare some questions but you can also contribute by tweeting them to me -  @ICT_MrP  or post them to this Padlet Wall - Created with Padlet Make sure you join us LIVE on Thursday at 1.30. Here is the link to the video -  UPDATE - 10th December! What a wonderful afternoon! A massive thank you to my fantastic Grandp...

In planning for the Literacy Shed Conference, I really wanted to do something special. I decided to organise a launch for the #ChristmasAroundTheWorld project I started last month. To read more about the project and sign up click this image - I was so grateful to have a number of schools willing to take part - Davyhulme Primary Ravensfield Flowery Field   Hotspur Primary The plan was to do a Google Hangout at the beginning of the day to introduce ourselves and set a challenge for the children to work through and then share at the end of the day. The work would be shared with the 100+ delegates at the conference. Here is the initial Google Hangout to introduce each other - Unfortunately, due to a slight technical error we weren't able to broadcast the other video at the end of the day. Every teacher in the conference was amazed by the work each class had created. We loved seeing the Christmas tree the Year 3 class at Flowery Field created for their topic ...

The TV is packed with some fantastic adverts in the build up to Christmas. I recently blogged about the Man on the Moon John Lewis  advert with the help of John Murray . We have found another brilliant advert that really pulls at the heart strings! It is another brilliant resource to help develop Emotional Literacy, something we discuss on our joint conference . We have previously blogged about using the song 'Wasn't expecting that,' to develop Emotional Literacy. Here is the advert - Before watching the Advert Set the scene : It is Christmas and you need to phone your dad to tell him you can’t make it. Predict what the message might say and how it will be constructed: Will it be formal or informal? How will it start? What else might you say? How long will it be? How will the message end? Why do you think this? What might you say? How might you say it? Sit children in pairs back to back.  Give each learner a copy of the phone message. Allow t...

A big thank you to all that came to the conference on Friday. I had a great day sharing ideas and strategies to enhance the new curriculum using technology. 35 Evaluations 35 rated the content of the speaker as  excellent 35 rated the delivery of the speaker as  excellent Amazing training! Totally inspired and engaged. Superb ideas and philosophies - Can Lee be the new Educational Secretary for the Government?!     A fantastic course, so motivational. A real credit to the teaching profession. I wish more courses were like this! :)     Absolutely Fantastic! "The best course i've ever been on!"     Best course i've been on as a teacher. Great ideas of how to use different apps to benefit in the classroom. Infections energy. Cant wait to try all these new ideas.     Excellent speaker. Very inspiring to an ICT shy, technophobe. Will definitely be using the apps shared and converting others. Many thanks! ...

There is a lot of excitement and anticipation about the upcoming Star Wars film. I am sure plenty of your pupils will be desperate to see the latest installment. Knowing I have children hooked on Star Wars, I have used it as a stimulus in class.  I have previously blogged about discussing authorial intent with the teaser trailer.   You can read that blog post here.   I have also blogged about using the BB-8 droid to inspire writing, read that blog post here.  Today I discovered another little gem that could inspire some fantastic writing linked to Star Wars. Recently, Facebook released different 360 degree videos. Users can explore the videos by dragging their cursors within videos on the desktop or by physically tilting their phones while watching on mobile. Each video is a few minutes long and gives users a completely spherical—that is, 360-degree—way to explore sand dunes, the ocean, or, say, a galaxy far, far away. I have previously blogged about 36...

Sometimes the most simple apps can be the most effective! On a recent training day as part of my Year Group Cluster Training Package , I was shown the app 'Marvel,'  by teachers at Elworth Primary. This app is a prototyping app for mobile and web. The app involves creating a series of pages, these can be taken using the camera, loaded from the camera roll or dropbox. The app allows you to then create link boxes to other pages. When completed, the app turns into a mobile app that allows you to tap the screen and be taken to the desired page. I have previously blogged about a similar app, Pop, which you can read here . Today, I decided to give Marvel a go with Year 1 linked with their latest English topic, based on the book 'Dark by Lemony Snicket' The book is about a boy, Laszio, and his fear of the dark. We started discussing what fears the children have and why it makes them afraid. We listed some and then moved onto discussing how we show our fear...

I love Augmented Reality, if you didn't know this have a read of some of these previous blogs - Augmented Reality in the classroom Using Augmented Reality to inspire Augmented Reality Can Augmented Reality improve Writing? Mr P is abducted by Aliens! Interactive Reading Display Multimedia Digital Stories Giving Children Super Powers Reading with Augmented Reality  Decorating my house with Augmented Reality SPaG songs using Augmented Reality Arloon Augmented Reality Apps One of my favourite apps to inspire writing through Augmented Reality is String ! For a while, it had been taken away from the app store however, I am very pleased to see it is back available for schools to use! You will need to print off the following trigger images -  I have used this app in so many ways in the classroom, from creating comics - and short movies in KS2 -  To a whole project to create our own Augmented Reality in KS1 -  See the app ...

With the Year 3 class I have been working with over the last couple of weeks we have been creating some information eBooks all about 2D shapes. It has been a great way to encourage children to share what they know about different shapes. It has also given them a purpose to learn the properties of 2D shapes they didn't previously know. We first started by using the app Shape Lab for the children to create different shapes. I have previously blogged about this app here.   The children were challenged to  create as many different triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons etc and then take a screenshot of each page - Using the app Book Creator , they then used all of their screenshots to create an eBook. On each page, they used the wide range of tools available including the text, drawing and audio tool. They had to label each shape and record a short audio clip explaining the properties of each shape. Here is one of their efforts as a video -  YOU CA...

"So many ideas I want to get started straight away!" "So much to take back to class, thanks so much." "Fantastic, thank you for all the great fun ideas." "Fantastic inspirational glimpse into how to engage pupils with digital literacy." "Fabulous and intriguing!" "You made something scary feel very doable." I have some very exciting news, make sure you read to the end! Today I led a course alongside Jon Chippendall aka DrChips_ focusing on the computing curriculum and how to effectively deliver it in the classroom. The course is perfect for computing leaders, class teachers and SLT looking for innovative ways to teach computing. I focus on ICT and Digital Literacy while Jon looks at the computer science aspect of the curriculum. What I love about the day is that both myself and Jon are still working in our schools so using these ideas day in day out. I am always asked about which scheme of work I would recommend for compu...