I love Student Market Place (SMP) as it is an opportunity for our kids to delve into the world of making, creating, building, and constructing in order to come up with a product which will sell well.
The theme for SMP this Term is
"Responsible Recycling"
The kids have come up with some great ideas recycling, reusing and repurposing items from home which maybe normally thrown away.
Here are some snaps of ideas in the initial stages...
Paris and Bianca making 3D letters and covering in patterned paper.
Mitchell and Andre with their Minions made from toilet rolls and coloured paper.
Jack, Ben, Aaron, and Alex G. are creating 'mini furniture' out of iceblock sticks.
Jehmial and his group are writing quotes and words onto canvas and recycled wood bits.
Andre and Mitchel's second venture idea is hotrods made with gladwrap tubes, skewers, and milk tops.
Chloe and Sharn are repurposing wine bottles and writing quotes in hot glue that they are painting over.
I also did a Periscope yesterday of the kids in action ... tweeting out live on Twitter. Here is the video of it...
This morning at 8am we had another Google Hangout.
This time with Laura's kids in Connecticut, USA.
Laura has connected with us for #NZreadaloud5Pot - it is the first time we have had a GLOBAL connection for our #NZreadaloud so it is pretty special.
Laura and her kids are almost finishing their year and unfortunately will not finish the book before the year ends. However Laura is recording the last chapters so her kids can listen to it while on holiday if they wish.
Laura had organised this morning's Google Hangout and had her kids stay till 4pm especially for it. We are very lucky to have had this opportunity and her kids did well at the end of a busy day at school!
The purpose for our Hangout was to share our thoughts, predictions, and ideas about our book we are reading Phantom of Terawhiti. The kids discussed what would happen to Tasha, Zealandia, the Neanderthals, what they thought Crawford's book was going to be about, and what Mikhail Popanov will do if he finds out Tasha is still alive.
Then the kids talked to each other about other stuff like whether they have a uniform, what they eat for lunch, what they are doing for their holidays, did they know the 'running man', and then of course they all did 'the dab'! It was a great way to start the day!
Thanks Laura for organising this and thank your kids for staying back to talk with us. It was great fun:)
Today I witnessed true connected learning in 'real time'.
We consider ourselves connected learners in theONE6 ... all of us including myself. Using Hangouts, Edmodo, Blogger, Twitter to connect with learners all over the world is fun but sometimes 'real time' is hard due to time zones and teachers with different timetables.
'Real time' happened today and what I witnessed AND heard was music to my ears! My kids commenting on the fun they had discussing and sharing their learning with kids in another part of New Zealand - all the way down in Oamaru - Oamaru Intermediate School.
So what were we doing? As part of #NZreadaloud5PoT I have connected with Lisa Dyer and her class of kids at Oamaru Intermediate. Our kids share and learn alongside each other in Edmodo every week. But today was special ... we set the kids up in groups to use Appearin.com as their 'real time' discussion rooms. Well ... as I went around and took my photos I heard fantastic sharing going on. Here were Intermediate kids having literary discussions AND loving it!
It is these moments which warm my soul ... which makes the effort and energy put into providing these experiences well worth it.
I would like to thank Lisa for her willingness to experiment, for her openness to things going wrong, and for her passion as a young teacher to connect with an old bird like me! It has been an absolute pleasure to work 'virtually' alongside you Lisa and I look forward to our continual collaboration:)
It is always an exciting time. Connecting globally with other classes around the world. I often think and say to my colleagues how much more engaging and fun my school days would have been if we had been able to do this.
So today we did another mystery hangout ... with a teacher who had tweeted this out the other night ...
Once again, I can share the value of Twitter ... those who still consider it to be just social media filled with gossip ... I can tell you this: if you follow the right people (for me it's educators) it can be the best way to make connections and LEARN.
Anyway ... after I saw this I immediately tweeted back and the rest is history. It just involves sorting out the time zone situation and selecting a day / time. So we did ... and today was it:)
ALL theONE6er's involved themselves today ... some more than others but that's ok. Here are some photos of the Hangout and Sophie who took our notes.
Mallory and her class were from Mission Middle School in Escondido, San Diego California. We did not quite get to the end ... but it was fun all the same.
I would like to thank @Mrs_Resendiz and her kids ... it was a shame that it ended so abruptly but her kids were keen to 'get out' - it was 3pm for them when we finished. Our morning was just kicking off - 10am.
At the end of the day I had the kids write a reflective tweet ... there were definitely some questions we would have loved to have asked AND some wonderful learning which occurred as you can read in the Storify here:
