Week 1

The letter arrived on Monday and kids really excited. It's been a week of ups and downs with most of the downs being caused by the computer. What a shocker!

Monday - Loads of post-its adorn the Learning Wall - children enthusiastic to tell me about programmes they have watched, books read etc. One pupil remebered an article in the paper a few months back about a woman who went to live in the Arctic in the way of the Inuit so he is on that case.

Tuesday - children introduced to the Wiki and we're away (well almost). They came up with ideas for pages and decided to delegate responsibility for different pages eg. The Library.

They loved deciding what we need - even managed to find a use for the staffroom - and set up a notice board in the ICT suite for gathering info.

Today we also discovered that our network system does not allow us to access the Wiki as it is classed as social networking! :-( However the lovely boys in IT unblocked it :-)

Unfortunately we couldn't upload or edit anything because for some reason Internet Browser is not amused. Anyone else having this problem? So I had to put the photos they wanted on at home.

I rang the ELRS yesterday to explain that although I already have rather a lot of WW2 books out I really need some Arctic ones now and no time to call as inspection next week. Lady I spoke to said they don't have a lot but would put something together. She explained that their van is also out of action so they would need to be collected :-( Today Clive himself brought the box of books, in his car. What a great collection. The children loved them and got so much info. from them. They were fascinated! And Clive had even included books with a chapter or one story that goes with the topic and had indicated the pages. Talk about service. He even brought a copy of the recent BBC episode of Nature's Great Events about the Arctic - the Great Melt (currently on iplayer). The children had already suggested we try to get hold of it to review.

Wednesday - listened to "Before the Trader came" and conducted an absorbency investigation. Children wrote reports to include on their Iktuktuk page. Lots of their questions have been answered already. Listening to this made them more aware of the questions about the people of the Arctic, whereas yesterday they were more interested in the animals. They were amazed at how important the deer was.

My books and DVDs arrived from Amazon today. Not sure if one of them - "The Polar Bear Son" was on the original list but it's a nice little picture book. Also bought some last week - one to use for P4C next week and three by Michael Morpurgo. They are in school so I will add them to my blog tomorrow and let you know if they are useful.

The best thing is that the children are coming up with so much themselves - apparently we are going to build an igloo!

The Polar Bear

See my claymation on my Wiki.
Follow the link below in last post.

Arctic Stories On-line Museum

http://twoplusme.wetpaint.com/ Use this link to access our Wiki

Useful website info

For those involved with the project, or anyone teaching mapping skills there is a great interactive resource on Oxfam's Cool Planet site. The resource is called mapping our world http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/mapping_our_world/ .There is a section in it which asks which map should an Arctic explorer use and gives choices for maps including an Arctic projection.

Arctic Stories

The purpose of this blog is primarily to exchange information about the Arctic Stories project. Here you will find out how I'm getting on with new concepts such as Mantle of the Expert, how my class are benefiting and where you can see their Wiki as it goes online.

Today's training was inspiring - it took me right out of my comfort zone as far as content, challenged me to go further with independent learning and convinced me of the power of the learner. Can't wait to get started!

Slightly Later

Okay - getting to grips with it now!

First Day......

Today is my first day of blogging. My daughters will be so proud. Trouble is it is always so difficult to know what to say when you have to say something.......as opposed to wanting to say something when no one wants to listen.