Hastings PEEL

Written by Lara Laverman, Berwick Fields Primary School

To provide students with learning and teaching experiences that are authentic and prepare them for future stages in their learning journey and family and work experiences it is important that students have the knowledge, skills, capacity to work collaboratively with others. Students require the skills necessary to learn, work, negotiate, share, reflect and collaborate on tasks.

 In my grade 3/4 class students are able to all contribute to lessons as they all have enlarged visual access to information, and stimuli.  Students are able to work together as a whole class to solve problems, brainstorm solutions, share discussions, annotate images and text, ask questions, play, share ideas, teach one another and reflect.

An example of collaborative work on a whiteboard was the introduction of arrays where a video clip of ‘Scooby Doo’ was used to engage the students in their quest to find arrays (3×4).  Students collectively watched a short clip of the film once to enjoy and then the second time that they watched the clip they were asked to look for arrays within the images.  To begin with students were unsure of arrays and their application in day-to-day life.  This clip allowed them to search for them and understand them in real life circumstances.  Students were at first hesitant to identify them and an example was provided in the sets of windows lining the front of the window as two groups of two and therefore a two by two array.  From here there was a frenzy of discussion as to whether within the windows there were further arrays, within the bookshelves there were arrays, within the tiled floors 

 Each time an array was identified a ’screen capture’ photo was taken of the video and placed into Smartboard notebook and then the image was annotated over with students offering and sharing their reasons why this particular image was or was not an array.  Students had the opportunity to draw over the array.

 Future tasks involved students going outside to explore the school and find the arrays that around the school grounds.  Further collaborative interactive whiteboard tasks also allowed for the creation in small groups of arrays using image programs such as KidzPix and Smartboard tools where children were grouped into no more than three and together their tasks was to create an array for the rest of the grade to identify.

Is the use of IWB more effective than a video clip on a DVD/ TV, yes in the sense that it can be paused and that scene can be captured, cropped, saved, annotated the whole group are able to share in the process rather than just watch it take place and then talk about it.

 The students are engaged in physically moving objects and recording with the other students engaged in the process as they can see what is happening.

 A whole class is able to take part in the manipulations, discussion, negotiation, turn taking, decision making, problem solving. The work that is recorded can be saved for future reference or further investigations. The process is fast, exciting and engaging and the results are immediate.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Ideas/Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.