Hamburger Book Reports

For the class assembly this year, my class sang a parody about books. To compliment this they also wrote book reports on a book of their choice. They included the characters, setting, plot, conclusion and their favourite part. The students really enjoyed making these hamburgers and they have looked wonderful hanging up in the classroom for the last few terms.

The link to the song we sang is below.

https://youtu.be/psby0mI6ZLY

Designing Egg Driven Lego Cars

For Design and Technology this term we designed our own egg driven Lego cars. Students first drew a labelled diagram of their lego car, highlighting the safety features for their egg. They set to work building their car. Many teams needed to adapt their design due to lack of parts, or inappropriate design. This was a real challenge for the students as they had to make decisions that would change the safety of their egg or the speed of their car.

The students loved racing their lego cars to see whose egg would come first.

Practicing Visualisation

During my Guided Reading rotations, I use a listening station. Students are given different tasks to engage with and this particular task was visualisation. Students are given a story to listen to through head phones. As they listen tot eh story they draw the images that come into their minds, this might be the characters, the settings of particular descriptions. These drawings are then put up on the window to make a display of all the different things we see as we read.

Planning with Planbook

This semester I started to use Planbook to organise my lessons and learning programs. Although I do not use this every day, I have found it a great time saving and organisational tool. I have been able to link in files, videos, websites and games for the different lessons. The cut and paste feature save heaps of time also.

Who's behind that recount?

I saw this idea being used by another teacher at my previous school and since then I couldn't wait to try it. The students love looking at the photos, even the shy students as most of their faces are covered. Even though the students only had space for two paragraphs of text, they still included direct speech, onomatopoeia and a simile.

Teacher's Perspectives on Inclusive Education

Previously I mentioned that I was conducting a survey on teacher's perceptions on Inclusive Education. The survey has been completed and 120 teachers participated. I have used the results as part of a university assignment for a unit on current issues in Special Needs education. I have created a pictograph to display the results of the survey.

Inclusive Education Survey

I am currently completing a Graduate Certificate in Education (Learning Difficulties). As part of one of my units, I have created a survey about teacher's experiences with inclusive education. It is a short survey with only 18 questions. I have posted the survey onto two Facebook groups whose members are exclusively teachers in Western Australia. I have offered an incentive in the form of a gift card to a teaching resource store. I am hoping that this will inspire people to complete the survey. Today is the first day the survey has been open and 16 people have replied. I am aiming for 150-200 people within 3 weeks. Fingers crossed.

I am really looking forward to interpreting the results of this survey and to find out how inclusive education is put into practice.  I will share the results once I have analysed the data.