Wednesday 25 November 2015

IT room makeover part 2

Hi all,

I've been up the walls busy lately (literally!). One of the things ticked off my "to do" list is finishing the IT room displays. Here's what I've been up to since I last wrote about it.

I really enjoyed putting up this timeline. I decided to do it as a wavy line rather than a straight one to make it a bit more interesting. This is part of an IT room decor set I made during the summer. In case you're wondering, the bird templates are to preserve the lives of the birds who mistakenly fly towards their own reflection and meet their end!



 And here are close-ups of the start and the end!































These other posters like the welcome sign, "Caution: Coders at Work" and reminders to save, click undo or think before you post are also part of the IT room decor kit that I made.




And here are the keyboard shortcuts, coding (Scratch) and robotics displays that I posted about the last time. Click here to view that post.





Monday 16 November 2015

Elapsed Time Station Cards (Freebie)

Hi all, 
We've been working on calculating elapsed time. I created these cards, stuck them around the classroom and the children worked in pairs to move around the room, filling in the answer sheet. They had to name the start and finish times and calculate the elapsed time. I've also included an answer sheet. Click here or on the image to download this for free from Google Drive.

Thursday 5 November 2015

IT room makeover (work in progress)

Hi there,

It's been a while since I've posted! Now back to business. As the ICT coordinating teacher in our school this year, one of the jobs on my list was to do up our IT room. I haven't had the time to do all that I want to do but here are some updates on the progress and where to find the resources.

We've had a big push on getting coding this year. Some of the classes have been introduced to Scratch and they are absolutely loving it. Many of the children work on their own Scratch projects at home without being asked to! 

I wanted to do a big Scratch display to show the different blocks as a point of reference during IT sessions. After a quick search, I found these Scratch blocks ready-made on Twinkl. You need to have a platinum classic account to download them. 

As we're a PYP school, I decided that coding really helps to develop the learner profile attribute of being "thinkers." Hence the lightbulb overload!



I also wanted to put in something to explain why we are coding in the first place. I found some lovely quotes from Stephen Hawking, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs about programming. Who better to tell us what to do than some modern greats? The keyboard style lettering is so easy to make - simply add a white letter on top of a rounded black box - BAM!




I've also put up this keyboard shortcuts display that is part of my IT room/computer lab classroom decor kit. If you're interested in just the keyboard shortcuts part of the pack, comment below and I'll add that to the store. I could also make a Mac version of it with the command button instead of the control one - just let me know what you'd like!



The last display that I'll show to you today - which is still a work in progress is our robotics board. Two teams in our school are going to take part in the Jr. FLL (First Lego League) robotics competition. The challenge this year is called "Waste Wise." Here we hope to document our progress between now and the end of the competition.