WEEK 4 - M&Ms - and creating a spreadsheet & graphs, the Learning Federation Website, Mind Mapping Software & Dust Echoes Website
The focus of this tute was 'fun ways' of encouraging students to collect data, enter data into a spreadsheet and create a graph or chart to evaluate the results. Ellen was my partner for this task and using the worksheet we sorted the plain chocolate m&ms into colours and counted the number of each colour from a 250g pack.
With using confectionery the only concern these days are allergies. Obviously a teacher would know or find out what students are allergic to and perhaps bring in an alternative or send a note home to parents stating what students are allergic to and asking them to bring in something i.e. jelly beans.
To encourage and guide students to complete a retell they need to be able to use copying and pasting using the print screen function and using paint. It is quite a cumbersome process to pause an image and collect various screen dumps of images and paste them into inspirations or word. Another way students can retell the story is by drawing the images themselves or giving each scene a title word and drawing a flow chart of words/themes in each scene in the story.
The focus of this tute was 'fun ways' of encouraging students to collect data, enter data into a spreadsheet and create a graph or chart to evaluate the results. Ellen was my partner for this task and using the worksheet we sorted the plain chocolate m&ms into colours and counted the number of each colour from a 250g pack.
This activity is a simple but effective way of encouraging students to count and introducing the concept of sorting or even classifying things. Mathematics comes into play once the data is entered into excel and the number of m&ms of each colour and altogether can automatically be calculated by using the sum function in excel. If we had a mixture of types of m&ms such as peanut and crispy the graphs could become even more intersting. Excel is a very useful program for students to learn to use as they can create graphical presentations of their data such as pie graphs, bar graphs etc. for school projects.
With using confectionery the only concern these days are allergies. Obviously a teacher would know or find out what students are allergic to and perhaps bring in an alternative or send a note home to parents stating what students are allergic to and asking them to bring in something i.e. jelly beans.The m&ms website at http://m-ms.com.au/ is an excellent site for kids. It's very colourful and offers them many ways to interact such as; competitions, games and even kids cooking ideas. The site also allows children to copy and paste images of the m&ms characters.
DUST ECHOES WEBSITE
This website http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/ is wonderful for students studying Aboriginal History, Art & Culture. It features twelve animated dreamtime stories about Aborignal love, customs, loyalty and land just to name a few. The site offers teachers example study guides for each of the stories presented and the films are very beautiful to watch and in language children can understand.
The story I watched this lesson was 'Namorrodor' quite a scary story for children I thought and I probably would not show this story to younger students maybe Grades 5 & 6. However, as a mother of two I could really relate to the story as I am quite protective and cautious with my children.
This story is retold in the images below. The two important messages of the story are;
- That babies should not sleep unprotected in the bush and
- Meat should not be cooked on the fire at night as the smell attracts 'Namorrodor' - insects and creatures.
The story is about a mother out in the bush with her three children and she wraps the baby in a blanket, puts the baby to sleep and places him on the ground. Meanwhile her two children find a piece of meat and place it in the fire. The mother gets mad with them for doing this and senses something is wrong. She then sees the Namorrodor try to grab her baby and she fetches a stick. The namorrodor is thrown high into the sky and her children have been saved.
NAMORRODOR
To encourage and guide students to complete a retell they need to be able to use copying and pasting using the print screen function and using paint. It is quite a cumbersome process to pause an image and collect various screen dumps of images and paste them into inspirations or word. Another way students can retell the story is by drawing the images themselves or giving each scene a title word and drawing a flow chart of words/themes in each scene in the story.I truly believe this sight is magnificent and students would throroughly enjoy using it. I intend to use this sight for my Humanities assignment on Aboriginal Culture and teaching children about Aboriginal History.
The stories are as mentioned previously told in a language that we can understand and the animations are especially suited to children.
THE LEARNING FEDERATION
This website contains digital curriculum content to support teaching and learning. The materials are available free of charge to Australian and New Zealand schools at http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/default.asp.
There are so many games on this site for any topic you can think of it is just amazing. I will most definitely be using this site when I'm out teaching. One of the games I really loved that really simplifies quite a difficult area to understand (the trade market) is Fish Market. The learning area of this game is SOSE and the objectives of the game are that:
- Students identify opportunities for profitable trading.
- Students estimate market value by comparing supply and demand.
- Students explore the value of networking to identify market opportunities.
- Students operate a business in an international environment
- Students review business options and make decisions to increase profitability.
- The pace and variety of trading opportunities encourages active engagement.
- Students search for a rare, prized fish.
- There is an option to print a summary of business outcomes.
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