Showcase of Learning

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Yesterday afternoon, the class had their “Learning Showcase” at which they set up display booths and greeted students and parents to talk to them about their learning this year.   The children were VERY excited and had gone to a lot of effort to colour theme their booths and to make the area as inviting as possible.  They had made posters, cards to give out and added stylish touches like colour coordinated sombreros.   We do remember suggesting a bowl of lollies at their booths in much the same way as booths at ‘expo’ type events do.    The children responded VERY well to this idea and I must say that they have had their sugar fix for the week even before tonight’s trick or treating occurs.

🙂

The children were brimming with confidence, competence and enthusiasm and it was lovely to see them having this opportunity to share their learning with others.   The expertise shown by them in many different areas was actually very impressive.  Parents were quite astounded at the depth of their skills and spoke to us about how they had struggled with actually knowing a lot about what they were doing this year.   We take from this that we need to have more events of this type and also to encourage the students to share what they are doing.

The groups had decided on different things they would be showing and demonstrating to their visitors:

Ava, Brianna, Tess and Ella were brimming with ideas for a new app they have been exploring – Canva.

Mila, Lucy, Tilly and Emma were a font of knowledge about the workings and potential of Keynote.

Alex, Patrick, Henry and BJ were the experts on Pages for communicating their understandings.

Gen, Abigail and Abby shared their green screening skills with everyone.

Dylan, Connor, Oscar and Henry recreated their very popular lego stop-motion display.

Puppet Pals 2 was explored in great detail by Matisse, Jess, Maddie R and Maddy K.

The power of Explain Everything as a screen casting tool was demonstrated by Kobi, Cooper and William with Kobi having worked on Book Creator as well.

The camera team of Nate, Tate and Josie wowed the audience with the knowledge of the camera on the iPad.

The Augmented Reality display was a hit with lots of interest shown by the students and the parents in how this worked.   This is something we are still experimenting with but the possibilities for next year are really exciting.  I was talking to a couple of parents about how we can produce a maths movie of the week and then on the homework sheet, if an image is set up as the ‘trigger’, it can allow a child needing help to receive a movie tutorial.    I know as a parent myself, that it would be really helpful to have an example of how I should be exploring a concept in Maths , for example, using the same language that the classroom teacher uses and this use of technology would allow us to achieve this.  This is an example of technology at work in innovative and exciting ways but also an example of how we can differentiate for different learners.

Some of the things the parents reported to us:

“I didn’t know they were such experts”

“I just listened to XXXX and she has wowed me with her knowledge of Keynote.  I couldn’t believe it!”

“They are so excited!”

“They have met up at each other’s houses to plan this presentation”.

“They speak with such confidence”.

“I am blown away with how much they can do”.

“I didn’t know a device was capable of that”.

“That’s amazing!”

 

Children’s thoughts:

“It was challenging to speak to the younger kids as they needed a bit more organising”.

“It was fun telling people what we get to do”.

“It was great showing parents how to do things that they don’t know.  I helped my dad fix his phone and he bragged about me at work”.

“It was challenging with the little kids as they kept asking us why we did things and that made me think”.

“I loved showing my parents the things we have been doing as at home I don’t really show them”.

Well done students…….you were stars!

🙂

Mrs F

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