Cultural Exchange Project

We are back at school and the year has began in earnest. The new Grade 1's have completed their first week, the new students feel at home and the Staff are back in the swing of things.

I have prepared an open-ended project with a school in the UAE in which our Grade 4's and their Year 4's will be sharing information about their Country and their Culture.  We will be making movies, sharing our findings with avatars, writing stories, turning journals into Little Bird Tales and hoping to Skype one another to learn some words in one anothers languages. 

We will be looking at things like:

• My Class and My School
• My Pet(s)
• My Weekend
• My City, My Country
• Tell me about...
• My Culture
• A Story for You
• Wrap Up

We will be using a wiki to upload our clips, photo's, stories and discussions. It's only starting this week but I am looking forward to a wonderfully enlightening project. I will track the project and ideas / what works / doesn't work here - in case you want to try something similar.

It's early days, and the Project being particularly organic, may take shape differently to how I envisage - but there is atleast a plan in place to begin.

So, let's begin, shall we!?

World Maths Day

World Maths Day is coming up on 7 March 2012.  Have you considered participating?

As a school we have taken part and it was a great experience for everyone. Its really simple. All you need to do is get permission from parents, register the children, and then follow the instructions that are very clearly laid out on their website.

It looks from the Pre-registration that one now signs up for World Spelling/ Maths /Science Day.  Even better!

I registered the children who wanted to take part, and then each day from the time that "practice" begins, they can come in and get used to how the whole event works. I do this so that it is not a surprise when they get to the timed event - they are confident and ready for action!  What I also enjoy about this, is that they can log on at home and continue to practice or compete after school in their own time.

The best was listening to their excited shrieks of "I'm playing against Japan!" or "I am playing against India!" or "I am playing against someone in Australia!"  Suddenly the world was bigger than our ICT Lab and we embraced every moment of it!  We got a report back on how each child did and how we achieved as a school.

I am really looking forward to registering our learners for these events again this year. Why don't you?

Wishing all a wonderfully educational 2012!