Categories and Number Counting Game - due to the success of last week's story, one word at a time, I decided to run them through a similar activity this week, except with a few less rules. We started off with them in a circle, and then, in order going around the circle, they had to call out a thing from a category they chose. We did one round of this, then opened it up to ‘associated categories’. They could choose to say any word or thing that was associated with the previous thing, so we could shift between objects, colours, creatures, and all sorts.

We ended the activity with that number counting game, where the group has to count to a specific number, with only one person saying each sequential number at a time. If any says the same number as another person, then everyone starts back from 0. They struggled with this one for a little bit, with some students choosing to mess about and keep saying numbers to reset the game. Eventually, they figured out that they could use the same method used in the previous games, where they could count up, going around in their circle - this ended the game very quickly!

Persuasive Videos/Animations - using the speeches they developed last week, we got the students to use Scratch Jnr to develop short animations to be used during the mock election in a few weeks. There were a number of tech issues with this, especially when trying to get the audio from the correct ipad to the correct group’s Scratch Jnr (with the audio having been recorded last week, we did remind students to make a note of which number ipad they had, and made note ourselves, but even then it became a little messy).

All in all, the students enjoyed using Scratch Jnr to make the animations with their voices behind it, and the activity was a good introduction to filmmaking, something they’ll need lots of next term when they make their mini series’.

The main activity took up a lot of our time today, so we had to rush through the creative cubby building session. Unfortunately, my design for the bricks that the students are making is not very sturdy, and with the number of paper bricks we have the structure is falling apart, so we’ll be discussing ways to reinforce our creative cubby - it might become an outdoor scene, rather than just a cubby.

We knew that we wanted to do promotional/persuasive videos for this session, but finding simple technology that would let the students make something quickly was challenging. Going with simple animation software that lets the student incorporate their audio was a good start, and it let them experiment with fast-turnaround video making, even if the resulting videos may not be as persuasive as we hoped they would be.

Using the technology in this session certainly kept the students engaged. As always, there were a few tech issues here and there, but mostly the students were enjoying playing around with the software, and integrating their characters and their voices into the videos (hence why we went overtime, and barely had time for a reflection activity).

We had initially planned to run the mock election at the next session, but we’ve decided that the students need to have a session to bring all their materials together and create the election hall themselves. So we’ll be conducting a planning session with them next week. We’ll help provide some direction on what needs to be planned, but we want to let them do the layout of the hall, placement of posters, design of new flyers, collating of their videos, and whatever else needs to be done.

The classroom will need some pre-setup to ensure there’s space for the students to design their election hall. Some old projects will need to be taken down off walls, and their election materials will need to be accessible for them.

The videos will be displayed on the main screen in the classroom, and there will be plenty of other students, teachers, and school community coming through the classroom to take part in the mock election.