Author Visit With The Help Of Technology

Modern communication brought us face to face with an author of one of our favorite books. Jonathan Emmet, who resides in England, entertained our students by reading his story, "No Place Like Home."

Ms Kim and Ms Lauren's students were thrilled to hear their story being read by the author and thought carefully about what they wanted to ask him regarding the creation process.

Grade two students were able to speak to the author and ask all the questions they had regarding the inspiration behind the story, choosing perfect words, the colleagues he worked with and the colors of the illustrations.

The chat ended with the girls being inspired to read and write more, one of the goals set by our Reading and Writing Coach, Ms Jenette.

What a wonderful opportunity to have such an important visitor in our class session by the click of a button.

Movie Making At AAM

A group of our Grade 5 students have been working hard at collecting and editing footage for our Taaleem Movie Competition - A Day In The Life Of (Our School).
It amazed me how our young students could navigate around their iPads, using tools for interviews, film editing and working on sound.
Here is the final clip.  It was a joint effort between our Grade 5 SOAR girls, Ms. Kim and Ms. Nadene.
I believe the hardest part was limiting the running time to under 3 minutes. We look forward to hearing the results.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AAM from Nadene Jennings on Vimeo.

Authors Integrating Publishing Programs and apps.

Grade 4 students are working on researching inventions and will write their own book on their findings. Last year they wrote books on influential women in the Middle East. They are working with free software available online called Riot Photobooks .This year, apart from working on a new topic, they will also be using a timeline app to reflect an element of where there inventors fit in, in history.

Time Line is a free app which allows for collection of images and text in a time line format. It is a wonderful visual tool to help students understand their place in time.

Sharing Our Success With Our Community

This year at AAM, we are looking at innovative ways to teach our students new skills and to share our work with our community. Using the Aurasma app has been one of our ideas.

Grade 3's have shared their success in landscape painting by adding an Aura to their art display.
Read More Here...
Scan the image after following steps 1-5  (It's quick and easy!)

To view our school's Auras you need to:
1. Download the Aurasma App on any device iOS or Android - It's FREE!
2. Create an account by using your email address
3. Go to the search tool (a small magnifying glass) and type in AAMTAALEEM in the search bar at the top of the page.

4. Select the channel which appears and tap on the join button on the right of the screen.
5. Now you will be able to scan any of our images within our school building that is accompanied by this sign. - or try scanning the images on any of the Augmented Reality Tabs.

David Hockney's - "A Year In Yorkshire"

Interactive Math Skills

Ms. Laura's class are working on graphing and reading scales in Math. They got to work with Explore Learning.com and used their Science Gizmo labs to help them integrate Math and Science by reading and interacting with digital graphs and scales. These Grade 4's are analyzing data to adjust their graph accordingly.

This program allows students to practice a wide variety of skills including labeling, creating titles and reading graph data. Perfect practice for our upcoming MAPP testing. 

How do you help prepare your classes for upcoming tests? Which programs do you use for reflection? Leave your comments here.

Kindergarten Students Tell It Like It Is

Our kindergarten students have been analyzing books to see what they entail. These students have shared their thoughts with the community via Aurasma, an orgmented reality app.

Hear and see students talking about what they can find in books, watch them retelling and sharing stories with their friends. LANGUAGE IN ACTION!

Join our channel at AAMTAALEEM once you have created your account in Aurasma. The app is free and available to IOS and Android devices. You have to scan the picture on the wall in school to see the videos of our students' discussions come alive. So come and visit our inspiring Kindergarten corridor.

Working On Future Careers in Language Arts

Ms. Sandi and her Language Arts classes have been looking at interesting ways of getting people to read student writing. They explored the use of Piktochart.com, a publishing tool with a modern edge.

They published Magazine articles buzzing with information as part of their 'Gatsby' study. 

Follow this link to view the whole article.

This is the outline which she posted on Edmodo for her students to access:

Gossip Magazine Assignment (Grade 11)

After reading the article and using chapters 3 and 4 as your guide, create a one-page spread of a gossip magazine (perhaps The Great Gatsby's own "Town Tattler") that shares information and rumors about Gatsby (first and foremost) and any other characters from the novel thus far. Keep your information to chapters 1-4, please. This encourages close reading and doesn't give things away for others.

Consider:

-the rumors of guests

-suspicious behavior witnessed by other characters (ie. Gatsby reaching out to the green light)

-words of characters that may be considered "suspicious" or leading

-the guest list of the party (this will require some online research and is mandatory for at least 3 guest from chapter 4)

You can have as many articles as you want on the page, and you can include quick sketches/images if you choose. Include the page numbers of any quotations or paraphrasing that you may use.

Criteria:

·         At least one well-developed article that explores the "world of Gatsby" (2)

·         Carefully edited for grammar, spelling (2)

·         Stories are directly connected to details from chapters 1-4--only (2)

·         Lay-out like a newspaper/magazine with headings, date, page title, etc (1)

·         At least 3 guests have been researched and their background briefly mentioned (and that this mention indicates something about Gatsby's parties) (3)

 You may use piktochart.com or Microsoft Office to create your page(s).

Students were able to share their work with others by emailing a link or by posting it on their Edmodo page.