The Seniors

Once again only three pupils. I had already begun collecting information for a project with the whole school. When the road had been built I had read a story on the first teachers journey to Matau in 1896. The seniors had found it interesting and I had made the suggestion that they could collect other stories and we could publish them somehow on CD. We had previously talked about preserving local history and donating it to the museum. In fact the school has an excellent history of doing this. They looked at what information already exsisted. This included stories of the early maori and the first Europeans to the district.
Next they decided to try an interview at least one person from each decade as far back as possible. The questions they asked were very simple. How did you get to school? - and - tell us about one special trip to town. The result was fairly spectacular and they have about ten results that overlap but stretch back to the 1930's.
After a visit from Rachel our IT facilitator the decision was made to record the information using Frontpage and recording it onto a CD.
This quickly bogged down and they were understandibly worried about the prospect of typing up all the interviews. I have since got an adult to do this for them and they are now setting about designing and planning all the pages.
There were two things that emerged from this. One was that it wasn't really their project. It was one I had foisted on them. It was only the stories that emerged from the interviews and Rachels' example of her families wartime archives that started them going. The next was the huge amount of computer time required. Currently we have two using computers on Frontpage and one researching on the internet and scanning pictures. As we aren't networked this requires a lot of running around with a pendrive.
Co-operation, teamwork, leadership, independence, and ability to organise themselves is slowly beginning to emerge. Being such a small group and tackling a fairly large task was always going to require co-operation and teamwork. But there have been disagreements and this has required some leadership skills in that someone had to make the decision. Also they are getting to the stage where they have to trust each other to get the job done and to trust themselves to be able to do it. This is my definition of independence and they are now at the stage where this needs to start happening. The next two weeks will be fairly interesting.

The Middle School

That's an overstatement as there are only three of them. However the aim is to focus on basic research skills, extending their comprehension, and use IT in a meaningful way.
Once again tthe sealing of the final stage of the road created the opportunity. The question that arose was- why would anyone come to Matau?
After discussion I suggested they could produce a pamphlet that would encourage tourists to come here and basically left it at that. They came up with a list of questions themselves and also the idea of interviewing two people that had recently arrived in the valley. They also decided to collect some pamphlets from the information centre to check them out.
They completed the research very quickly but it was nearly all based on oral and visual language. They didn't even need to read the pamphlets, just look at what was in them.
Next they planned out what would be in the pamphlet and very quickly produced the cover page using Works. Due to sickness and other interuptions the second page has been held up. The only skills I have had to teach so far have involved saving files on the scanner.
This group have been very pleasing in terms of working without help from me and working together as a team. In fact I feel I have underestimated them. I think the trick at this level will be to find problems that are sufficiently complex to challenge them and at the same time stay within their reading levels.

Starting Out with the Juniors

After going to Navcon2k4 in Cristchurch I decided that the best approach was to start in a limited way and gradually expand and learn as I go. With the juniors the focus was to be on literacy and we decided to produce a book about our new road. ( I asked the question and they seemed keen would be a more accurate description.) This was based around i-photo on an i-Mac.

After one quick demonstration they were easily opening the program and share writing the story by themselves. The problem I had was in forcing myself to get out of the way and let them get on with it . Once underway they could be fully absorbed for twentyfive-thirty minutes. The team building process seemed to involve little arguements over the text and whose turn it was to type. They quickly sorted this out and sometimes one would wander off and check out the other things happening in the class. Eventually they would wander back. At the end of the first session I reviewed the days work and looked at a couple of errors. I discovered that it was better to do this at the start of the next session. The kids were fresher and were more likely to make changes.They shared the story with the seniors to make sure that they understood it and it was then printed off ready for binding.
They are now comfortable with the basic i-Photo program, demonstrated good sequencing skills with both text and photos, used a shared approach to spelling, selected appropriate photos from the library and added a text that complimented the photos. Main lessons for me. They learn the basic skills with programs very quickly and- let them make mistakes - then use the mistakes as teaching points.

Kids' Blogs

As we have only nine pupils we have a limited audience for any work the children produce. While we do have a webpage it's very time consuming to be publishing in this manner. I decided to use weblogs because they are so easy to set up. We were already using one for the schools newsletters and to publish the odd story. After attending a course at the Navcon2 conference I decided that each child would set up their own weblog, allow for new comments, and link to our webpage for photos and information about the school. This was completed fairly quickly with a comment being recieved from Mexico within the first 20 minutes. I am a little apprehensive about this being an open forum so we will have to keep a close eye on this. The next step is to get some help from Rachel our ICT facilitator to link back from individual photos on our webpage.

Early Thoughts

The purpose of this blog is to act as a diary to record my thoughts and progress as I attempt to integrate ICT into the school programme. Currently we could be classified as a dithering school as we have heaps of IT gear but it's used in a piecemeal fashion. After attending a principals training course and listening to Liz Millar of Hitahitahi school I decided to make some fairly fundamental changes to the school programme. The changes recognise that literacy and numeracy form the core of primary education but that through inquiry learning we extend the children across the curriculum. I have some reservations but the basic model is as follows:
New Entrants to Year 4
Emphasis on highest possible standards of literacy and numeracy plus thematic topics and emphasis on authentic ICT skills and co-operative learning.
Years 5 and 6
Emphasis on high levels of literacy -- comprehension, writing, and spelling. Integrated where relevant. High levels of numeracy. Emphasis on integrated topics , co-operative learning skills, and authentic ICT skills.
Years 7-8
Applying higher order thinking to problem solving. Application and demonstration of high achievement in literacy and numeracy. Thinking and information retrieval. Emphasis on leaders with integrated inquiry thinking skills using high levels of ICT in authentic situations.
This is the Hitahitahi model but as we are a 9 pupil school we will be focussing on the basic theory behind the model.