Maths Minion!

Like lots of infant teachers, I have always had a class bear or two. The first way that I used them was to teach children about the world. The Bears went travelling, we plotted their travels using Google maps and the children shared photos and wrote journals (see the blog sidebar and one of the pages of their travels). Lily went to Australia, Old Trafford, Las Vegas and the Yosemite National Park, to name a few, all in one year! 

When I started at East Harling the class bears were used to promote free writing. By the middle of the second year I changed the expectation to reading the bears a story, because the quality of writing in the books differed greatly and I didn't want judgments being made. My children were asked to read a story to the bears and record what they (the bears) thought of it. 

This year I have one bear that will be a travelling bear and a very new Maths Minion to try. As a school maths is a focus area so I thought that one way to support this would be to put together a rucksack with Stuart, who needs to learn some maths as he finds it tricky. The back pack came with a handy pencil case, folder and notebook. I will add a laminated sheet with some activity ideas, which will include lots of games, mental maths skills and ideas to use and apply mathematical in daily life. I have also linked the Maths Wizards blog I made  couple of years ago (for a child with SEN) to our Class Blog as I know that many children enjoy using technology to play games. Hopefully this puts less pressure on busy parents.

I'm relying on the novelty factor of Minions to entice the children to take Stuart home with them.  The important thing is that it will be their choice what they do. We shall see how it works! 

Minion Me! My lovely class Minions!

Bugs and numbers

This is another lovely EYFS/SEN app made by Little Bit Studio. Like Bugs and Buttons, the graphics and the music are appealing and of high quality. There is a range of games to play, to enhance early maths skills from counting and adding to time and fractions.

As with the last app I reviewed, there is a handy finger to give you a hint should you need it.

The first game I played was number recognition and ordering to 100. If you get the order wrong you get an 'oops', but then continue from where you were, which is good.

At the end you get a score, which I would then encourage children to try and beat.

The next game I looked at was a sequencing game. It shows you the order of the xylophone, which you then shake up before replicating. A nice matching/sequencing game. 

The time game is a simple match the analogue to digital time. I only played this briefly so it may go past hour times. It scaffolds learning by showing the time as you move the small hand, then the train chuffs away if you match the time correctly. 

The adding game uses ants as visual, which I know will appeal to children. It is a great game for independent work for a child with SEN in my class as I know he will experience lots of success with it-which it more important than challenge at times. 

The music is appropriate for each game, with a lovely Italian favour during pizza fractions! 

The measuring lab had suitably scientific kooky music too. If you weren't watching your child at play, you would know exactly what they were doing.

There is also some lovely humour too - during game show addition and subtraction (level 1) I was told that I am a super genius! ☺️ That's what I tell my children all the while!

I haven't played all the games in the app, but from the ones I have played I would recommend it as another quality app for early years education. I will definitely be using this in class.

Bugs and buttons

This morning I am exploring some more apps that are great for EYFS and children with SEN in ks1. Little Bit studio have made a range of 'bug' apps that look beautiful, because of the brightly coloured high-definition graphics. They definitely feel like the high quality resource you would want to be using in the classroom. 

Learning and exploring through play is key for our youngest children and Bugs and Buttons 2 lets children do this. There are 18 games within the app, with different environments for your child to explore. It covers a range of skills, from counting and sorting to manipulating and early computing (computational thinking) skills. The latter happens as children have to think about what they need to do to be successful within the games. It's nice that the games don't get too hard, too quickly, but that is a bit frustrating for me as a reviewer, so I have bought it for my favourite little beta tester to trial too (thanks Ruby!) I will share her views once I have them. 

A quick snapshot of some of the games

The first game I played was a simple match the button to the trolley game. I realised quite soon that you could speed it up by adding more buttons to each trolley, then got it wrong when I was matching by colour, but not by button. Early computational thinking. At one point it seemed quite frantic (in a good way) as I was trying to put all the buttons I had on screen into the trolleys before they rolled away. A nice matching game.

The next game I played is a 1:1 correspondence game, whereby you have to give the right dish of treats according to the number of bugs. It has nice background music for an app- well it didn't irritate me like some have! Before starting the game there is a helping hand to give a hint about what to do. 

This game is a lovely manipulation game that I shall try with a child in my class. (If you use your personal ipad in class it is important that you lock it to the one app so that they don't go wandering.) In this game you pinch the screen to create an elastic band, to bounce the buttons so that they don't hit the bugs. Lovely! 

I will be having a look at the other games, but for just over £2 I really don't think you can go far wrong! Here are the other games that you can play.

I will add my beta testers reviews once I have them, so come back and check them out soon - or subscribe to updates. If you have any thoughts, please comment below!

Drawing Carl

Talking Carl was the first app I had seen on an iPhone and after my friend showed it to me it started off a giggling domino effect. When I saw the drawing Carl app I wondered if it would compete with the other drawing apps available, but it was free at the time so I had nothing to lose. 

I think that this is a lovely app for EYFS and KS1, to prepare children for art apps like brushes. It has some nice features, as well as the ones that you would expect to find. What I really liked is the 'smoothness' in which you can draw. At £2.49 it's not one of the cheapest apps available, but it might just keep your little artists amused in the holidays!

There are a lot of options for wallpaper with different colours and styles.

Stamps are easy to use and easy to change colour.

If you are happy you can save and share your picture.

Creating a new colour is simple

and there are some nice effects that you can apply.

The part I like the best is the ability to add features to create your own talking monsters.

It giggles like Talking Carl and it is fun to experiment with the mouths. 

These features will keep children amused for hours! (Well a while any way)

Winky Think - computational thinking in EYFS

It's Saturday morning and the time when I usually test out some new apps. So the first one today is Winky Think. I really liked this! As always I need to find some 3-5 year olds to see if it keeps them engaged, but I thought it was great for problem solving. 

The aim is to navigate your shape to its home. When you are successful it turns green and stars sprinkle out of it - accompanied by an appropriate sound effect. It's a good motivator and I think it would be great for children with SEN too.

There are different elements that you have to think about, such as colour and shape matching.

You have to appy logical reasoning when shapes need to be in a specific order,

and when elements are covered up.

Sometimes the shapes in the way are on elastic, so both hands are needed.

The logical reasoning aspect gets increasingly more difficult.

Mazes are introduced to encourage motor control

and then you find that there are doors in the way, 

Some of which need you to be pressing your shape on the button to keep them open.

There are times when doors move and you have to dodge them. I have got up to around level 54 and wasn't bored, I just wanted to play something else. It will be interesting to see what our youngsters think of it. I shall endeavour to find some beta testers during the holiday! 

If you have any thoughts about this, please let me know!

Proud of my #Selfie

I have always acknowledged that my better ideas are inspired by other's work, thoughts, throw away remarks and/or challenges and I always try to accredited my sources. The only reason I started teaching through mantle of the expert was because my HT at that point mentioned it in a staff meeting (not what it was, he just asked if I'd heard of it). Off I went to research it, because I was intrigued and because I hate not knowing something! My first class blog post in 2007 was written for the very same reason - my head had said 'I wonder if it would be a good way of commincating ...' 

So this week I was inspired by tweets between Claire Lotriet (@ohlottie - a fellow GTAUK friend, year 6 teacher extraordinaire and computing expert) and Amy Harvey (@Ms_Jamdangory - fellow Talent Pool/ teachmeet supporter/bonkers Norfolk friend). Claire's post, #proudofmyselfie, shoes how her students take photos of themselves and the achievements they are proud of, then share them via social media. 

I loved this idea and immediately thought of a child in my class who finds it difficult to accept praise and will rarely think that they have achieved or done something they should feel proud of. At some point we will get a school twitter account, but as always I wanted to do something immediately with my year 2s. Only last week I had been talking to a colleague about giving each child their own display space so that they could choose what they put up. I have limited wall space though and talked myself out of it as I wouldn't be able to give each child an A3 sized piece. Our class blog is our extended display space, so I decided that I should give a bit of control back to the children about when their work gets posted. On Monday night I created some 'stickets' - tickets that children can stick on the work they are proud of.

 I created the blog on Tuesday and told the children about it at the end of Wednesday morning. In the afternoon we were working on some backgrounds for our art and I grabbed a couple of children to go through some misconceptions from the morning. One child's lightbulbs went on and she said, 'I'm proud of my selfie!' Bingo! She stuck in her sticket and I took her photo. 

I've often championed the blogger app and this shows how brilliant it is, as 30 seconds later it was online. I will teach my children to blog themselves, or my mini digital leaders will do it, but as a model I have done the first ones myself. Today has been the best feeling though as 11 children collected their own stickets because they were proud of their BIG writing achievements. I haven't read their writing yet, but the fact that they are proud of it is perfect. I have already achieved what I set out to achieve too as the aforementioned child collected a sticket. How wonderful when they go home and show their families. 

If you want to see for yourself, click on the Proud of my #Selfie tab on our class blog. 

Thank you Claire for the inspiration!

16 (or so) quality ipad apps to use in a year 2 class

In the next couple of weeks my year 2 children will be using the brilliant Scratch Jnr app to create basic polar bear animations. It ties in with the work that we are doing in class and I believe that the app is easy enough for 6 year olds to use, especially with some careful pairing. 

Update: My year 2s used the app independently, check it out on the class blog!         

After the briefest conversation with my HT I have been considering whether I have been using the iPads effectively this year  - and thinking about the apps I use and whether they are high quality. Am I still using them innovatively and is this possible with year two children?  I am one of those people who lives in the moment and I honestly can forget very quickly the things that I have done. I looked back over our class blog this year and am pleased that I think we have used quality apps effectively, though maybe I could use some apps more often. I'm not sure whether it's innovative use - probably not, but they are being used.

So here are my top apps this year for year 2, in no particular order. All photographs of children have been taken from our class blog this year. 

Number 1: Collins Big Cat apps

Fab for guided reading and writing

I use them for guided reading / writing interventions. They are great at keeping my children focused when working independently whilst I am working with a group too.

Number 2: Book creator

We used these to create profiles of ourselves to send off to a school in London. The expectation was that they just create one page. This will be built on this half term when they create an ibook about polar bears, then in the summer term an ibook about nocturnal animals. It doesn't replace paper work as their writing in the app is minimalist in comparison with paper based activities. That's because they are concentrating on so many skills here!

Book creator

Number 3. Puppet Pals

We used this in the autumn term to create animations from our local fen. They designed creatures, took photos at the den, created storyboards then animated!

Puppet pals animations

Number 4: Comic life

A great little app for creating posters across the curriculum. We used it to show knowledge and understanding of Samuel Pepys.

Comic Life (posters about Pepys!)

Number 5: Brushes

Creating art work in the style of Hockney as part of our environmental artists work. We used the ipad to take photographs of our natural art too.

Brushes

Number 6: Google maps/Earth

Use in conjunction with atlases! 

Number 7: Skitch

Not just great for planning journeys, it can be used in lots of ways!

Using Skitch to plan routes

Number 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, programming apps:  Beebot, ALEX, Daisy Dino,  Fix the Factory and Scratch

A.L.E.X

Daisy Dino

Number 13: Twinkl phonics suite

A child in my class uses this daily for the brilliant pairs activity and letter formation as well as phonics practice. Lovely little app!

Number 14: Primary games maths apps

We use these regularly for boosting their rapid recall of number pacts. There are lots of great apps available!

Number 15: Explain everything / screen chomp

I haven't made use of these yet this year. They have been planned for, but my children haven't been secure enough to do what I have wanted them to do. My aim is for my top mathematicians to explain strategies for pencil and paper procedures by using the apps. We will get there by the end of the year!

16: Clicker grids

I can't believe I intially forgot this! Eek! I have used this fabulous app with a child in my class with SEN and it has enabled him to write his own pieces. Equally, a child with ASD who comes to my literacy group has been inspired to use it (he loves tech) and he writes much more quickly with it. I have blogged about the app here, which somehow I reverted to draft after publishing, so have republished it now! I will take a photo very soon.


They are the apps I use regularly - many other quality apps are available and we will be exploring more this year, like Little Fox Music Box and possibly i-movies bu the end of the year. Incidentally, the two top apps that I use regularly as a teacher are popplet and blogger. I also love Nosy Crow books for whole class teaching (they are a little expensive for all ipads).

You can see lots more quality apps from EYFS to KS2 on my ipad site.