Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Learning Can Be Fun!

I think that learning can, and should, be fun! I love when students get excited about learning, and I love seeing them so engaged in activities too. I love hearing great conversations between students, and I love when students can learn together. Today was a wonderful day of learning and a ton of fun too!

In class, the students have been learning how to spell the colour words correctly in their writing. They've continued to learn about adjectives, and they're applying what they're learning by working on descriptive writing too. I set-up six special literacy centres that all focused on the colour words. The students only got to visit three of these six centres today. They'll visit the remainder on Thursday, so after Thursday, I'll blog again with more details about the activities.

Tonight though, I was going through the mini-movies made by the students using ScreenChomp and ShowMe, and I loved them so much that I just had to post them. In class, we read, My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss, and the students reflected on what they learned by creating some short videos. Some students spoke about their different coloured days. Other students read the story and responded to it through pictures. Some students even read the story, and thought aloud as they discussed what Dr. Seuss really meant in his book. I hope that you enjoy these movies as much as I do:


















Another one of our centres today was descriptive writing using Twitter. I brought in two large bags of various toys, and students wrote clues through our class Twitter accounts (and my account too) to describe these toys. We used the hashtag #namethattoy, and other classes from "around the world," joined in with their own clues and their guesses too. Here's a short screencast showing my students' tweets and the replies too:



Students just loved this writing activity! They spent time proofreading their tweets, and working with the other students in their groups to help each other with spelling and punctuation as well. I was thrilled with the results! Thank you to all of the wonderful teachers and students that joined in on this Twitter chat today, and I look forward to doing it again on Thursday!

Looking back on just what's shared here, it's clear to me that learning can be fun! What do you think? How do you have "fun" in your classroom?

Aviva

7 comments:

mrsk said...

Oh my goodness you guys are so clever! I think what you have done is fantastic! You must have had so much fun while learning at the same time. Thank you for sharing your great work with us. I hope one day we can use those same apps just like you!
From Mrs. K and Room 4 at Craigburn P.S.

Aviva said...

Thanks Mrs. K. and Room 4! I'll share your comment with my students today. They'll be so excited to see it! I was really proud of what the students did yesterday, and I'm excited to see what the other students do tomorrow!

Aviva

Mrs Light said...

Well done on the fabulous work and thanks for sharing it! My students will be really keen to see what you've done as they are just starting to create some screencasts of their work. I really like the way you've used twitter as well. It definitely sounds like it would be a lot of fun to be in your classroom!

Aviva said...

Thanks Mrs. Light! It definitely was a lot of fun yesterday, and my students loved making the screencasts and tweeting too. I hope that your screencasts go well. I'm sure that the students will enjoy creating them!

Aviva

Brent said...

This is Awesome Aviva! You and your kids never cease to amaze me! Your kids did an awesome job! I am so impressed! Love your idea with this and thanks again for always sharing.

Aviva said...

Brent, thank you so much for your kind words! I'm glad that you liked the ideas. I'll let my students know too. They'll be very happy!

Thanks for the comment!
Aviva

Online Diploma said...

Well, how many kids can figure things out themselves for tough Math sums?! At that age they definitely need some form of guidance. The difference is in the quality of teaching in her school and how fast the kid can absorb and apply.
So our kids are mostly like yours