Cause and Effect

Cause and Effect By Mrs Pacheco on PhotoPeach

A new Term - 2 new classes

Welcome to Room 1 and 2 to the Unlimited Learning Space. Room 1's topic is the Unseen Urban Effect, looking at the links of Urbanisation and Changes to our world. Room 2's topic is Villainous Weather which looks at extreme weather disasters and their affects and what we can do to help our planet. Check out the blogs to see what we have been doing in class.

Technology and Literacy

Always a challenge and in the ULS we are trying to use iPad Apps to showcase student's learning and engage them process of presenting their understanding of a concept. This term we have used Fotobabble (great for oral language) , Pic Collage (visual language) and Popplet (cause and effect). Here are some examples.

Popplet for Concept : Human footprint Cause and Effect

Pic collage for Concept : What makes a successful Orchard?

Fotobabble for Concept : A case study on the human impact on Mt Everest

Writing and Speaking Frames

Students have so many great ideas but can struggle to organise their thoughts on paper or when speaking. A challenge is also adding detail to their information and expanding on their ideas. A writing or speaking frame gives students a good basic structure to work with so that they can put down their ideas in a logical order and it can focus them on where they need to add more information. Scaffolding students in this way is what we believe allows all students to feel success when writing and speaking.

What the Kids are saying about the ULS. . . .

The ULS Is different because you use iPads a lot, we use conferences we just focus on one topic and we use Bloom's Taxonomy.

What I like about the ULS room is that we do lots of thinking about human footprints and we also do poppet and Fotobabble.

I can now use Poppet,Fotobabble and a make a world map of countries that have been polluted by humans.

Conferencing helps me because if you were in a big line the teacher would get angry because everyone will be noisy so it is better having conferences than having a big line.

By Yazmin Rm 11

The ULS is different from our classroom because we use electronics a lot and we have to manage ourselves .

Conferencing helps me learn because we have to explain what we have done so the teacher knows that we understand our work instead of us just coping information.

By Winifer Rm 11

The Uls is different because we use a contract

I like doing my fotobabble, Going on blogger and putting my popplet on it.

Conferencing with the teacher is good so now you know your work is correct and makes sense.

By Haaris Rm 11

The ULS is different from other classes because you do more work and learn about the environment

I like working in the ULS because I like learning about the environment:)

Conferencing has helped my learning because if I forget what to do i can just check my conference:)

By Eli Rm11

Blogging

Blogging is a way students can showcase their learning with the school and wider community and get real time interaction about their learning. This can only happen when family and friends visit our student and class blogs and leave comments regarding their learning , so comment on a blog today.

We encourage students, parents and community to comment on student and class blogs with positive feedback. Never underestimate the value of connecting with students about their writing and encouraging their response. Some tips for writing quality comments :

1. Compliment the writer in a specific way.

2. Add new information.

3. Make a connection.

4. End with a Question.

5. Proof read your Comment

Conferencing

When students finish tasks on their contract they are encouraged to book at conference with a teacher. In regular classroom settings there can be a long line of students waiting for the teacher and this means time wasted for students and undue pressure  on the teacher. Conferencing 1 on 1 means quality time spent with the student and a real conversation is had about their learning on the task. This is the ideal opportunity for teachers to assess learning and students to showcase their understanding.  Students seem to appreciate the quality time and are steadily learning to respect this 1 on 1 time while they wait for their conference.