Book Week 2013-A Look Back on the Week

This Book Week has been a great success.

Our students and staff members across the Secondary school have been very busy reading great books and engaging in plenty of book related activities. The Spanish and English classes that came in busily filled in book blurbs and worked on Reading related activities. Many of the classes that joined us in the LRC during the week, spent their time  reading for pleasure on the bean bags and carpet areas.

One of the first events of the week took place on Monday when Mr. Keslake held his annual Book Week Assembly for 6-8th grades. As always it was an exciting event full of stories and sharing by both staff and students. We were so impressed that we have added many of the books that were highlighted at the assembly to our final book order this year. 

The Book Fair that has been with us since Wednesday will be packing up this afternoon. We would like to thank them for taking the time to bring their book stalls in, as well as for coming in extra early on Thursday, so that tutors could bring their students down to browse the selection. We would like to thank the students and the book vendors for their Spanish language book donations that were dropped off. The Santa Tecla Children's  Library will be very happy to receive their donations.

The churros and handicraft stalls, which were with us as of Monday morning, were very busy all week long, often packing up rather late into the afternoon, once the demand slowed down.

Hilda, our assistant librarian, led a Scavenger Hunt on Thursday in the LRC, which was a wonderful success. It was really exciting to watch our students as they worked through the QR Code clues with the iPads. It was even more exciting to listen to their joyful comments as they came to the realisation that scavenger hunts are really fun! We must hold more scavenger hunts in the future!

Today's Character Day has gone very well and is not over yet. We will be adding the images to our Flickr account as well as our FaceBook Page as the day progresses. Do go in and have a look at all the wonderful ways in which our school has celebrated its joy of reading great books.

Book Week So Far

Hi Everyone!

Book Week continues this week with the QR Code Scavenger hunt at 2:00 in the LRC. Do see Hilda if you are interested in taking part.  The  book fair is open from 7:00-3:00 today and 8:00-2:00 tomorrow. Check out our One World So Many Stories book display at the front of the LRC. You might be surprised at what you find there. Take a moment and fill in a book blurb about a book you have read recently. 

Remember, Friday is Character Day. What character or book will you represent?

We will share some of the pictures from Book Week very soon, so do check back.

Book Week is Coming Soon!

Each year the LRC hosts Book Week. This is a special event in which books and reading are the focus. Students participate in competitions, read plenty of books, focus on literature based activities, interact with guest authors and guest readers, dress up as their favourite characters and more.

This year Book Week will take place during the week of February 25th.

Do take a look at the short video teaser we have prepared for the event. There will be more information to follow soon.

Internet Safety Week Playlist

The teachers and students have been very busy creating internet safety videos for everyone.

We have begun collecting them all in a playlist for easier view, and they are also being posted on our Facebook page.

The short videos were produced by the KS3 students using Morfo on the iPads. The longer, Netiquette video was produced by Mr. Fastiggi in the Upper Primary school, with contributions by the upper primary school students and Mrs. Garcia in the LRC.

Have a look. We hope you enjoy and even learn something new from them.

Using Minecraft

We have recently purchased licenses for Minecraft Edu and are about to set up our first server. This is a huge step for us as the 7th grades will be using Minecraft in ICT to plan and build fortresses in teams. We have a great many team leaders in the 7th grade who will be in charge of organising each build, leading the work and building the more complex structures and mechanisms. This is our first time trialing Minecraft at school. That said, a good half of the grade has rated their abilities as intermediate to expert. The remaining half are novices who will be learning on the job, with the support of their teacher, their team and our online lessons.

Students will use their understanding of Castles and Fortresses from their 6th grade work to organise the materials, and plans for the project. We will build in Creative mode most of the time, but test the structures in survival mode during the process and once the builds are complete. 

It is always heartwarming to see students selecting the right tool applying their ICT skills in other subjects. Our 8th grade students have been working on WW1 Trench projects in Humanities and two of them have recreated their interpretations using two very powerful digital tools, Minecraft and Sketchup.

I have included their work below.

SketchUp Trenches




Minecraft Trenches 

Netiquette

Preparing for Internet Safety Week
Yesterday I put together a short Puppet Pals video for the Primary School, which attempts to explain what Netiquette really is.

The Apps
I have found that Puppet Pals is a great resource, once you have purchased the director's pass. It allows you to upload your own content and produce short videos that are easy to download as well as upload. Videos can easily be opened and edited in iMovie as well as dropboxed to a Mac where they can be edited and scored in iMovie and Garageband.

I also love Sock Puppets for this type of work and Morfo is great for head shots. In both cases the puppets mouths actually move with your voice. I have had trouble with Sock Puppets recently however, as the option to save to the iPad picture roll seems to have disappeared with the free version. Time to upgrade I guess....

Anyway I hope you enjoy our little video on Netiquette.

Internet Safety Week

It is Internet Safety Week next week. During the week students will be participating in mini activities in Tutor time. 

We would also like to invite students to put together short 20-30 second PSA (public service announcement) videos which focus on teaching about internet safety. These can be recorded videos, animations, or even morfo, puppet pals or sock puppet videos done on the ipad or other mobile devices. 

Contact Mrs. Garcia or Hilda in the LRC if you are interested in participating.

For more information on keeping safe online, check out the Safer Internet Day Site and our ABC Web Fluency Lessons.