This has been such a fun, rewarding project that my class has loved to work on.  It has taken us a few more weeks than expected, but when you are involved in a process you can't just rush the final stages.  We have all learnt so much about publishing in pages and using the amazing templates that are available.

I use this writing process in most of my writing projects, I think I got it from the site Teachers Pay Teachers, but I can't really remember to be honest.  We discussed that every story has a problem and I shared a story mountain model so that we could start thinking about what mischief our monsters could get up to.

Using Padlet to collect ideas for any "Brain Drain" is a great tool to engage and inspire your learner's writing. Check out our brainstorm for this writing, lots of crazy creative ideas!!

After the children had discussed what problem their monster would face, we also talked about how they would solve it.  This was a collaborative task in which the children got into small groups with one possible problem.  They had to come up with some different ways the monster might solve it.  I believe that by getting the children to discussion their ideas with lots of different people really helps them to get the story planned out in their minds.  I find that when it's time to start the draft all children are confident and eager to get started.

As part of the planning process I adapted the "Seven Sentence" model to encourage the children to start writing paragraphs.  You can see our work flow on our class blog (this is a space I put most of our work for the children to access directly.

Here is one of our finished books written by Guy
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Last week we had the TVNZ film crew into school to do a documentary on how digitally technology is integrated into the NZ schools.  It was a real honour that they selected our school through recommendations from other ADS schools in America.  TAKP isn't just about putting iPad in children's hands, it's about teaching them how to use this tool to express their knowledge in creative ways.  

So to be given the opportunity to explore the Everyone Can Create: Photo multitouch book with a group of talented photographers down at the beach was amazing!!  I loved using the book with the group, it was super easy - I did think at first that the books were designed for older students, but I was impressed at the way the children picked up the key ideas.

We focused on the Chapter about Scenes in which we looked at using leading lines and the rule of thirds to draw attention to a focal point. We also played around with Panoramic pictures which was new learning for the group.

After coming back from Techpalooza, I was inspired to integrate more coding into my classroom by Peter Abt ( twitter.com/pabt65).  His workshops were all about how to use Scratch Jr and Sphero in subjects such as Math and design thinking challenges.

If you check out his blog (teachingwiththeipad.com/) you will find some great lessons that are easy to implement in your classroom, even if you are like me and not very "code-minded".  

The first challenge we did was to create a simple math game to teach a Year 2 some basic number knowledge facts such as odd and even.  Before we started we used some lessons designed by Scratch to learn the basics... their website is fantastic to help you learn how to use the App if you are new to it ( www.scratchjr.org/teach/curricula/playground/full) 

I got the children to work in small groups to plan their math game, thinking about what their objective was and what  they wanted their game to look like.  We worked together to create a game of our own  then they got busy creating their game independently and they LOVED it!

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• Thanks to the inspiration from the amazing @art_cathyhunt we have created our very own monsters using the Daily Monster app.(itunes.apple.com/nz/app/the-daily-monster-monster-maker/id451102546?mt=8).  This has inspired our writing and the class are really into using these guys to create stories about all the mischief they get up to.

First we started by creating our monsters, then using the camera feature in the App we took some photos of them in our classroom.  We used these photos to create some interesting sentences, learning about how to use verb and adverb openers.  This was where I was going to end this little project, but the children were so inspired that I decided to write some "seven paragraph" stories using their monster as the main character.  What a perfect way to teach the structure of a story using a character created by the children and a setting they all can connect to.

We are still in the process of writing our stories  - check out our blog to follow the teaching of this topic. 21.blogs.takp.school.nz/our-writing/seven-sentence-story/.

Watch this space... more to come!

Today I realised how powerful the new updates to Keynote are. I wanted the class to practise their Te Reo in a creative way, that included them recording themselves, some fun visuals and animation.  It is easy to see how Keynote is becoming my "go-to" when I want the class to show their learning.  Here is what we created....

After coming back from the ADE Institute in Austin Texas I was so inspired by all the amazing updates to Keynote and Pages - I couldn't wait to bring back my learning to my kura and classroom.  But I was equally as excited to explore ways to integrate Garage Band into my creative learning.

The Everyone Can Create curriculum develop by Apple is an amazing resource which encourages educators to tap into children' creativity to deepen and extend their learning.  This is something I am passionate about so be able to connect my thinking with this new resource has re-invigorated.  

So when I started this term, I felt determined to try and integrate this thinking into my program.  One of our learning themes this term is exploring sound (perfect for Garage Band) as well as using Mindfulness to inspire our writing. So when we discovered the  book "A Bottle of Happiness" I could instantly see the potential to integrate both.

As part of our Matariki learner, we used the book The seven Kites of Matariki and our inspiration. Our literacy goal was to retell the story using puppet pals and iMove but this was a massive job for one child to do alone... so we started this task collaboratively.  After reading and talking about the book, we created a story board and talked about each setting in the story. Our first task was to use Drawing Pad to create different setting and share them with everyone, that way the children only had to draw one picture the best they could.  After creating the scenes, we used the same principals for the characters.  

Then I saved the images on our class blog for the children to access and then use to create their puppet pals.  This was another collaborate task as each child to responsible for retelling one part of the story, then airdrop it to each other for the final stage, putting together in iMovie.

Our Makerspace has been busy over the last month of two... so busy I haven't had a chance to update our blog!  Our main focus was celebrating Matariki - our Māori New Year.  We used the book The Seven kites of Matariki to ignite our creativity and begun designing our own kites so we could collaborate our ideas to create a class Matariki kite.  It was an amazing project, with so much learning tied into it, we even begun a class weaving project using chicken wire and recycled material.

Today we started an amazing multi-touch book created by the very talented Monique Storey.  It is an invaluable resource for teachers and children who use iPad to help support their learning.   It teaches them how to take care of the iPad, how to use the iPad effectively and how to stay safe when on the iPad.  It's beautifully created and uses child friendly language in a  fun and interactive way to get learning intentions across.  My class loved going through Chapter One - Taking Care of your iPad and made some great Clips to demonstrate what they have learnt.

 If you'd like to purchase these amazing resources for your school see below for the link to each level:

The iPad license 4-6 year olds: 
​itunes.apple.com/nz/book/the-ipad-license/id1440556231?ls=1&mt=11

The iPad license 7-8 year olds: 
itunes.apple.com/nz/book/the-ipad-license/id1440560110?mt=11

The iPad license 9-12 year olds: 
itunes.apple.com/nz/book/the-ipad-license/id1440562203?mt=11

This is a bit of an oldie but a goodie - using using pastels to colour in nice and thick then covering with black paint.  I remember doing art like this when I was at school!! But I loved the attention to detail my class applied when creating their bird art work.  We used two books during our Makerspace sessions to inspire our art work, both had beautiful illustrations.