As part of our Christmas project, Year 5 have recorded their own version of Band Aid's 'Feed the World'.
After watching a moving documentary based on the charity work of Mary's Meals, we decided that all money raised from CD and music video sales would go to the world hunger charity.

We are very proud to announce that we have raised £50.00 for Mary's Meals and have done our best to make a small contribution towards the issue of world hunger this Christmas time.

CDs are still available at £1 for the CD single and £2 for the data CD containing the mp3 and music video.

You can view our music video here (You may need a Vimeo account to view the video)
http://vimeo.com/81261793

You can see some of the other work we have completed based on our Christmas charity project here:

Choosing our single cover:
http://5tanfieldlea.weebly.com/1/post/2013/12/which-logo-should-be-our-singles-cover.html

Being thankful this Christmas / Comapring and contrasting our own lives with those of other
http://5tanfieldlea.weebly.com/1/post/2013/12/being-thankful-this-christmas.html

Using www.oddizzi.com to find out about some of the issues:
http://5tanfieldlea.weebly.com/1/post/2013/12/world-hunger-feed-the-world.html

One of the first questions that comes up when using iPads as a way of producing work is "How do you get the children's work from the iPads into their books?'
Email is one solution but requires each child to have the mail account set up, and individual mails to be sent to the teacher. This in itself is a laborious task and still requires the teacher to then download all of the files before printing can begin.

Aidrop is the simpler alternative to this and allows the teacher to quickly collect the children's work to a single place - their own ipad.

Although it isnt the solution for every iPad activity, it can be used for some of the apps covered on the blog such as:
- Puppet Pal Videos
- Popplets
- PicCollage
- Notes (created in the notes app)
- Skitch images

A quick guide to using Airdrop and collecting work
Please note: To share work, it must be first saved to the camera roll (Videos - from Puppet Pals, iMovie or the Camera. Pictures from PicCollage, Skitch, Photos)

1. Checking AirDrop is visible to others:
The first step is to check that your own iPad is visible to others. To do this swipe your finger from the bottom of the screen to bring up the options shown bellow.
Now, select the 'Airdrop' option and 'Everyone'.
This will make your ipad visible to others.

2. Sending the work
The children will now need to find the piece of work they wish to send in the camera roll (a video or image).
They need to select it (so it is ticked).
Then click on the Airdrop logo as pictured below.

3. Finding the teacher's iPad and sending the work.
The pupil's iPad will then search for other iPads.
As you can see in the example below, my iPad was the only choice so could be tapped and selected.(
(Note: When using with a whole class, the children will have to look carefully for the teacher iPad as their own will apper as well)

4. Recieving the childrens work:
Once the children have sent their work, a message from AirDrop will appear on your ipad as shown below.
Simply click Accept and the video or photo will be transferred to your camera roll.
NOTE: Children need to do this one at a time as the ipad will cancel the action if too many pieces of work are sent at the same time.

Printing:
To print work, connect your ipad to the computer using the charger cable.
Find the work on the iPad (as you would on a memory stick)
Copy it to the computer.
Highlight all of the images.
Right click and print.

We need to decided which logo should be used as the front cover for our Christmas single.
Which one do you think we should use?
Here are the winners from each of the tables in our class.

Please leave your vote in the comments. eg 'picture 1' OR '1'
Teachers - Feel free to do a class count and add the total votes in one comment
Only comments containing a vote will count (no full sentences please)

Thankyou,
Year 5

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

Picture 6

Picture 7

Picture 8

Picture 9

Our classroom was in desperate need in decoration in preparation for Christmas. Therefore, this afternoon, we created our own paper chain decorations. However, they weren't what many people would expect because we took some time before we started to connect our decorations to our recent research linked to our Christmas single. (Feed the World)

We started off by thinking about what Christmas was like for us, in our own homes. As you can see, we all have lots to look forward to.

However, as we know from our Oddizzi work earlier in the week, life in other countries is not always the same as on in our own. Many people are a lot less fortunate than ourselves. We then thought about what it might be like at Christmas in these areas and compared them to what we expecting our own to be like.

We also thought about some of the lyrics from our Christmas single, Feed the World, to help generate some ideas.

We could clearly see that we had a lot to be thankful and grateful for in our own lives. Our groups then suggested some of the things we would stop to say thank you for on Christmas day. We also suggested some of the changes we could make to show greater appreciation of the issues in other parts of the world.

With all of this in mind, we then created the links for our Christmas decorations. Each link contains a message explaining something we will be thankful for this Christmas or one thing we would like to change to show appreciation of our own situation.

Everybody worked very hard to complete their decorations.

Thinking carefully about what we will be thankful for this Christmas.

A finished decoration ready to be put up (not on the walls Miss Hemmings)

Our finished decorations adding a little splash of colour to the classroom.

Our Christmas single, Feed the World, will be available to buy from Thursday 12th December with 50% going towards a hunger based charity (to be decided by the class).

Congratulations to Drew for placing 95th in the UK for the points he earned on Mathletics in the last 24 hours (a full day).

Remember this is all of the children,in all of the schools in the UK, who have signed up to Mathletics.

A fantastic achievement Drew!

Today we have had some visitors in school from Spain, France, Sweden and Turkey. They have been teaching us about their country.

In year 5 we made a traditional Turkish dip called cacik.

First we chopped some cucumber, added some mint sauce and garlic paste. Then we mixed this together with natural yoghurt. It was delicious!

You could make this at home.

http://www.padlet.com/

Padlet is a free, online resource that allows real time collection of thoughts and ideas. Although, not an application that needs installing to the iPads, Padlet can be very quickly set up on a desktop computer (email and password is all registering requires) and then accessed via Safari on the iPads.

Quite simply, Padlet is one if those educational tools that falls right into the 'simple yet very effective' category.

Allowing you to create a virtual pin board, Padlet allows students to post (or pin) their thoughts to the board. The beauty of this is that they appear virtually in real time. This eradicates the need for a traditional hands up approach , where ideas are collected on a one by one basis and then scribed to the board. It also ensures that everyone is involved and engaged, removing the opportunity for children to take the 'leave it someone else' attitude. Within minutes, the teacher can present a class with a problem or a task and have 30 or more individual thoughts or responses. A Fantastic way, of quickly assessing, building class ideas, collaborating, evaluating, sharing ideas and so forth.

Here are some links to Padlets we have used:

http://padlet.com/wall/layeinkrpm Literacy: Direct and reported speech for a newspaper report.

http://padlet.com/wall/sb7swyp2d Literacy: Similes and metaphors optional homework task.

http://padlet.com/wall/21ptve5th Literacy: Rhyming words

http://padlet.com/wall/f6x8i51hqw Numeracy: Revisiting a mathematical problem.


Below are some examples of how Padlet has been used in my own classroom.

Numeracy:

As part of a mental starter, I set the class a problem from the 2003 Year 5 QCA paper. This was a question I wanted to revisit as previously children had struggled with the concept. With Padlet I was able to briefly explain what the question involved but then give each child a chance to submit their own solution. Most importantly this meant that every child had to think about the question and how they could solve it. There was no option of sitting back while others found the answer and fed back to the class. I was also able to respond to those children who hand'the quite understood by responding to their solutions as they appeared on the whiteboard.

The problem:

The solutions submitted to myself:

Literacy - sharing ideas:

As part of a literacy lesson we used Padlet to share rhyming words as we were preparing to write rhyming couplets based on our topic work. Children were able to submit their ideas quickly, allowing more time for their own writing activity.

Children were also able to revisit the class ideas via Safari and the iPads on their tables. A great way to support their writing.


Literacy - Creating success criteria:

As part of a lesson writing a diary entry, the children were asked to read an example diary entry and decide what they felt made it a strong piece of writing. The class were then asked to submit one of their thoughts to the Padlet. This effectively allowed us to quickly build a selection of features that we needed to include in our own work. Effectively a class success criteria in 5 minutes, without the need to stand and scribe then on the board whilst talking one to one feedback. Again, it was a powerful tool form making sure that all children were thinking about the initial question of 'what makes a good diary entry ?'

Rhyming words example:

Revisiting whole class ideas to support writing with individual iPads

Literacy - Collaborative homework.

As part of talk homework for Big Writing, children were given the optional challenge of sharing a simile or metaphor to describe the Highway Rat. Throughout the evening, children added their examples which created a fantastic resource to be used as part of teaching the following day as well as a supportive tool for writing through access with the iPads.

In Additon to this, children in more than one class (in this case Years 5 and 6) worked together, using the same Padlet to share their thoughts. A great way for children in different classes to support each other with their thoughts. It also meant that Children who struggle to complete their talk homework task still had ready access to some excellent ideas.

Ideas collected as part of homework:

Using Padlet to supprt Big Writing.

Thankyou to Mr Temple for pointing out this superb resource!

How many bronze certificates can I award on Monday?

Today we were very lucky to be given our very own accounts for:

www.mathletics.co.uk

We have been given the responsibility of assessing the website and letting Miss Hemmings know what we think about it.

To do this, we need to play the games and activities as much as possible. Therefore, when you get a spare moment at school or at home, logon and have a go.

You could even submit a review in the comments below.

Have fun!

Rememeber out trial RUNS OUT ON TUESDAY 17th DECEMBER!

As you know, we have been recording our own version of Band Aid's 'Feed the world' from 1984.

However, we have not discussed why we are learning this song and how we can use of music to help raise awareness of one of the World's issues.

World Hunger:
In some countries, there is not enough food to feed the people who live there. Our song will hopefully help to raise little bit of money to help these people.

Your task:
Design an information page of poster showing some of the world hunger issues.

Use the webisite Oddizzi to help you. Use this link:
http://www.oddizzi.com/teachers/explore-the-world/food-and-farming/not-enough-food/

What else can we do to help? Read this page. Can you suggest anything we can do to help solve this problem?
http://www.oddizzi.com/teachers/explore-the-world/food-and-farming/food-waste/