Hawes Side Primary School Blog Community, Learning & Creativity in Harmony

Last year we saw a rise in the use of techology to support learning beyond the classroom and the installation of our green screen further supported us in extending learning opportunities.   Here are some of last year’s biggest successes in the use of technology to take learning beyond Pedders Lane!

Blogging – this has continued to rise and be utilised to support and share learning.     The live blogging this year, from York and Robin Wood, were really powerful and got parents engaged like never before.   The live blogging made it easy to follow the children’s exploits on these two residentials and to comment back.   Pupils and staff blogged about everything, from the coach journey and what they had for breakfast to the Minster, the Jorvik Centre and much more.   Seeing what they were up to and being able to comment on things as they were happening was a revelation for many.   It is now very much a part of how we intend to take blogging forward.

Green Screen – we were fortunate enough this year, to work closely with CMS, a Blackpool media company who fitted us a green screen sudio.   We have met with the company regularly to develop the system and now have a great little set up that the children have confidently made excellent use of.   There are many examples of how this has helped extend the childen’s learning but my favourite story from the green screen was Emily’s advert.   6S  were filming adverts they’d written to support work on persuasive writing.   I watched some of them on the class blog and was impressed with Emily’s as she is such a quiet girl and her advert belied this fact!   Mr Tobin, a teacher in Bradford asked if he could use the advert as a stimulus for his  Y3 writing lesson!   Emily was delighted when Ian sent pictures back from his own class showing them watching her advert and producing their own work based on it!  The green screen is certainly something we wil be expanding on in 2012.

Web 2.0 – like children in a toy shop we have continued to play with lot of web 2.0 tools and made use of some more than others. Among the favourites in school are wordle and tagxedo, wallwisher, voki, voicethread, photopeach, animoto and prezi.   Wallwisher has been used well to link with partner schools around Europe and Australia, to gauge views on things and collect thoughts and ideas.   We have used it to ask questions of our parnter schools and community and it is a simple and effective way of collating feedback.

QR Codes – the children have really enjoyed using QR codes.   They stick them on displays to lead viewers to further informaion, they stick them in their books to link to online content and each class door displays a QR code that leads to their class blog.   Next year we intend to create trails with facts and puzzles around school to make a tour of the site an interactive experience!

School Website – our website is always being developed and last year we changed a lot of content and its look.   Thanks to the green screen we have added video introductions and tours with testimonials from staff and children.  We have moved away from a text heavy site that no one really wants to wade through and replaced it with a more fun, interactive and engaging experience.   We have woked with a company called Virtualsixty to build what we hope is a more appealing and exciting introduction to the school and more.  The use of programmes such as I am Learning ensure that children and families are able to extend their learning by logging on via the website.

To celebrate National Poetry Day each year, we run our school poetry competition which is always lots of fun.   This year class heats took place one Friday 7th October with the finals taking place in front of the whole school yesterday.   It was great to hear so many children sharing the results of their hard work.   Many recited their own poems and everyone had worked hard on the expression, movement and delivery of their chosen piece.   It is a nerve wracking experience standing on stage in front of 500+ children and our finalists did very well.   The audience played their part to, listening carefully and supporting with generous applause.   Our congratulations go to this year’s winners, Chloe, Thomas, Georgie, Eleanor, Hanna and Chloe;  their names will be added to the school’s ‘Thomas Poetry Shield’.   They all chose books as their prizes last night at the Book Fair and these are being presented this week at phase assemblies. 

Do you have a favourite poem?

Perhaps you’d like to share it? Or make a film using the green screen?

Let us know and we can film it and then play it on the TVs around school.

Over the next two weeks 2B are looking at poems and practicing poems to enter into the poetry competition. Here are some of the poems the children have performed in class.

It was great to see some of our parents from 6A here today for their class assembly.   The good weather must have put some off as it wasn’t the usual high turn out!   The children did a fantastic job sharing their work on the respect agenda.   They danced into the hall to Aretha Franklin much to everyone’s enjoyment!   They shared with us how different faiths and cultures see respect as central to their beliefs and they talked about the respect agenda at Hawes Side.   It was great to see the work 6A have done on this important aspect of school life so early in the term.   They impressed us with their IT skills, their acting, their speaking and presenting.   Oh, and their dancing!!   Well done 6A.

6A Family Assembly

Welcome back everyone!   We are already into the third week of term and it is great to see everyone working hard, learning, playing and having fun together.   We are very excited to have been accepted for another Comenius project that will begin shortly.   Our partner schools this time are in Germany, Poland, France, Turkey and Estonia.   We are looking forward to learning all about the schools, their towns and their countries.   We are as interested as ever in how they learn and what school is like for the children, the teachers and the parents in each of these different communities.

We are also delighted to be embarking on a partnership project with a school in China.   This is the first partnership of it’s kind and something we know will prvoke a lot of interest both locally but also nationally and internationally.   We will of course keep you posted in things but I can tell you our partner school is No.2 Experimental School in Beijing.   Mrs Blair, one of our school Governors visited last term and took over school uniform, a prospectus and a range of other gifts which are now proudly displayed in the school.   It has over 3,000 pupils and they hold their sports days at the Bird’s Nest Stadium!!

This term we will be greeting many visiting teachers to Hawes Side.   Some are coming to look closely at how we use technology to support learning and others are coming to talk to us about parental engagement and how we work with the community.   Mr Livesey is also planning much more work around the Eco agenda and I am sure you will all be kept posted on these things through the newsletter.

It is great to see lots of exciting learning going on around school and I was very impressed with the Picasso style paintings that ^a have created.   So much so that I have put them all into a slideshow for you to enjoy!

Picasso style paintings on PhotoPeach

Year 6 have been creating some amazing artwork. There will be more to see on the class blogs. Here are a couple of examples to whet your appetite.

The new school year is upon us. Last year our blogs went from strength to strength, this year we are sure they will be even better. Please come back and check out the children’s class blogs to see for yourself the exciting things they learn.

The weather’s good and spirits are high enjoy the photos of our summer fair