Week 4

Learning Federation

During both our lecture and our tutorial this week we were introduced to The Learning Federation.

This website seems extremely useful and has some fantastic resources for all areas of VELS and the curriculum. The learning objects of this program state that it contains interactive multimedia resources that support learning of concepts and skills in a range of curriculum areas in the P-12 years. I can definitely see myself using this resource to help me teach my students new concepts and skills in many different areas of the curriculum - it's fantastic!

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Inspiration Task - Dreamtime Stories

Our first task for today was to choose and watch an aboriginal dreamtime story from the Dust Echoes website, these stories are found at www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/dustEchoesFlash.htm.

There were twelve different stories to choose between and I chose one that is called Mermaid Story. It is a beautifully animated story about an old song man who decides to go walk about as he feels unneeded, unloved and unappreciated by his family. He believes that they do not care about him or his feelings and are not showing him any respect.

On his walk about he finds himself drawn to a water hole where he meets some extremely beautiful young mermaids who show him and take him into their world. He loves singing to them and they admire him and show him the love and respect that he was longing for.

Whilst he is with the mermaids singing, the song man is very happy for quite sometime, until one day he starts to remember and think about his family. He imagines his family grieving about his disappearance and longing to see him again. In his heart he knows that he must make a choice and realises that he misses his family terribly and must go home to be with them. He also realises in his families absence that they do love and appreciate him but he could not see that.

Although the mermaids do not want him to leave as they love him singing to them, they take him back through the water to the water hole where they first met. They say their goodbyes and cry as they watch the wonderful song man walk away out of their lives.

When the song man arrives back to his family they rush up to meet and embrace him. The song man now understands after his experience with the mermaids that he is loved and he does belong here with his people.

Therefore the message in this story is all about belonging and the pull of family and the country.

Once we had watched our chosen story we were then asked to use the Inspiration Program, that we have previously learnt about, to create a retell, or concept map, of our dreamtime story.

I think that this was a very interesting spin on a potentially boring activity such as a retell. I also believe that the students would enjoy choosing their own pictures to use from the story and develop some fantastic skills associated with learning how to do a retell of a story in such a different and dynamic way. As you can see above, this is how I chose to present my retell of the dreamtime story entitled Mermaid Story.

M&Ms

The next activity that we did in our tutorial was a spreadsheet activity using M&Ms. It is a simple activity that is both enjoyable and educational for the students and can even be achieved in classrooms that only have one computer (it would just take longer).

Using a packet of M&Ms and Microsoft Excel the task requires students to sort all the M&Ms from their packet into their respective colours. Once they determine how many M&Ms of each colour they have, they need to input these amounts or results onto a spreadsheet in excel. Using these figures the students need to then design a spreadsheet that graphically shows their results. They can also include other pictures to be as creative as they like, however they must ensure that they have included all the colours that they found in their packet and the correct amount of each colour is displayed in their graph.

Below is an example of a spreadsheet design that I did in our tutorial.

This activity is a mathematical sorting activity that can also include prediction tasks. This can occur if you were to ask the following questions, for example; If the packet is brown will there be lots of brown? If the packet is yellow will there be lots of yellow M&Ms in that packet?

Once each student or pair of students have created their spreadsheet of colours found they can discuss the results as a class and perhaps the teacher can make a whole class M&M graph that incorporates everyone's results together.

At the end of this task there will be some questions that the students will be required to answer. These questions are designed to ensure the students are thinking about the activity they have just done and showing the knowledge that they have learnt. Some sample questions may be:

How many M&Ms were in your packet in total?

How many blue M&Ms did your packet have in it?

Why do you think some colours don't appear too much in each packet?

What colour is your favourite?

If you were to do this activity with older students you could also include some chance and data related questions and activities.

Again I think that this is a great activity that I can see myself incorporating into my classroom. Obviously you need to be mindful of allergies (especially nut allergies) but it is definitely a good activity that could be done with something other than M&Ms if necessary. Not only does this activity help students with their numeracy skills but it also incorporates literacy, ICT and social skills too. It is fun yet very educational at the same time - definitely suits my teaching style!