Magic Box Stories
We’ve moved on now from our ‘Magic Box Stories’. We learned so much by working independently and with our writing partners, and by peer and self assessing our completed work. We each completed our own self-made ‘2 stars and a wish’ comment sheets and the stories and comments were shared with the parents during our recent ‘Parent Nights’ on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.
‘Magic Box’ Comments
Here are the comments we received about our ‘Magic Box’ stories. We think Harry posted all the way from Australia! Neil is Mrs V’s (class teach) son, who logged onto our blog from Manchester. What a great comment about the ‘Movie Trailer’ interviews …….. and Happy Birthday today, Neil!!!
At 08 November, 2006, Harry said…
Magic Box… It sounds very interesting, but I was wondering what the story “Magic Box” is about?
At 08 November, 2006, p7 teach said…
Hello Harry,It’s about whatever the pupils in my class want it to be about! Check out our writing spaces link if you like – the stories are all very different!
At 16 November, 2006, Neil said…
Hi! I’m really impressed with this creative writing idea. It’s great how many different stories can come from the same title. I also like the interview – it’s like a movie trailer to get you interested in the story.
You can also check out the comments made by our friends in Australia recently P5/6 Allstars !!
New Technology!!
This week in class we’ve been experimenting with our new digital video camera. We decided to video some volunteers interviewing each other about our poetry lesson this week. We’re hoping to write some poems of our own soon, so we began by looking at avariety of poems by different authors. We then chose a favourite poem from the collection and filled in an evaluation sheet. In the video clip on the link below, Nathan is interviewing Lisa (Adam, seen in the video on the previous post, is off playing football with the school team – he probably feels more comfortable on the football field, rather than in front of the camera!).
Parents’ Night
It’s Parents’ night tomorrow and we’re going to invite some parents to help us make a podcast. We want them to give us their opinion of our Blog. Hopefully the quality of the sound will be good …… we’ll be using our ‘matsui’ mp3 players (the tesco ones don’t have the same quality). Watch this space!!
‘Magic Box’ Evaluations
In the ‘P.I.T.’, we’ve been busy peer and self assessing our Magic Box stories. Danni’s
review of her own story is just great – she is so pleased with her effort (and so am I!). She wrote most of her story on paper first and then typed it up on her wikispace page. The only trouble is that her story is about 8 pages long, so she didn’t have time to transfer it all …. but she’d love some comments on what she’s made public so far!
I love the way that Lisa explains in her self-evaluation that, as she re-read her story, she tried to put herself in a ‘geovisitor’s’ shoes …….. 🙂 What a great idea!
Josh is really pleased with his effort. He says that he worked really hard with his writing partners to fix the spelling and punctuation to make it eaier for the reader to follow. He loves to play computer games, and has made some of his favourite characters ‘come alive’ in his story.
A Wikispace Experiment!
The History Button
Earlier today Jamie’s story read like this. I made some minor ‘secretarial’ changes. It now looks like this. The changes are very small, but if Jamie was to click on his history tab on the top of his wikispace page, he’d be able to see some small changes (the odd capital letter replacing lower case, a missing comma added, etc.) to his great story.
Even More Math Class Action!
Over in our Math Class Blog we’ve been very busy working away ‘behind the scenes’. …… and there’s lots more planned. Why not take a look?
Meanwhile on this blog, we’re ready to self assess our ‘Magic Box’ stories – check in again soon to have a read!
For P 7V – Update of 2 stars and 1 wish (comments included)!
Here is one example of the children’s self-made worksheets. They use these to assess their own, and each others’ writing. They know to add 2 ‘star’ comments (things that have been done well) and they then add a ‘wish’ for the future……how could the writing be even better?
07 November, 2006
Kim said …. Your writing assessment worksheet looks really interesting. What sort of “star” comments do you use? Do you think that this sort of assessment sheet helps you to focus on the areas you need to work on in your writing? How helpful/useful is it? I’m interested because my class need some help in “polishing” their writing, before they publish.ThanksReplyHello Kim,Thank you so much for visiting our blog …. and thank you for taking the time to write a comment. It’s quite new for us to comment on each others’ writing but we’re trying to learn to appreciate the good things – the ‘star qualities’.
We’re also learning to comment on what can be improved, but are trying to not hurt others’ feelings – the ‘wish for the future’.
We want to encourage each other to write so we always have 2 stars and only 1 wish … does this help answer your question?
We’re not sure yet how much of a difference it will make ……..
More Math Class Action … and other exciting news!
Over on the Math Class Blog we’re off to a flying start! The group names have been chosen, the rules have been set, the problems are being solved and the podcasts are being made.
An exciting day for Carronshore Primary today ….. we received our very first visitor comment – and it was from Australia!! Maybe we could be Blog Pals! Read it below (I only received it after the p7v had left …. we’ve spent the afternoon tracking them on our ‘geovisitors’ link).
Hello Primary 7V,
Your writing assessment worksheet looks really interesting. What sort of “star” comments do you use? Do you think that this sort of assessment sheet helps you to focus on the areas you need to work on in your writing? How helpful/useful is it? I’m interested because my class need some help in “polishing” their writing, before they publish.Thanks
You’ll need to scroll down to the photo of our ‘2 Stars and a Wish’ worksheet to read the original.
We’ll definately reply tomorrow!!
End of an Exciting Week!
It’s been a quiet week on the Blog – but there’s plenty been happening behind the scenes! Over on the Math class blog the pupils are being given new group wikispaces so that they can use our new MP3 players (10 of them …. thank you, Mrs Livingstone!).
We’ve also been in touch briefly with some fabulous bloggers! Over at Priestsic Primary School, we learned how track our visitors. Check out our new More About Us Blog and click on the ‘geovisitors’ icon down in the right hand margin.
Over at Sandaig Otters Blog, they’ve given us a mention. We wish them luck with their new Media Room – it looks great.
Both these Blogs are FANTASTIC ….. we’ll keep visiting them to catch up on their news.
Visit to Denny Primary School
Today some of us visited Denny Primary School to learn how pupils there use Edward de Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats. We would like to say a big thank you to Mrs McKenna for arranging the visit – a special thanks too, to primary 4 and Mrs Kirk for sharing their great ideas with us.
The children use the activities from their ‘Thinking Wall’ to sharpen up their brains ….. we tried the ‘Sorter’ game in our own class today – it was great fun!!
We have written a fuller account of how they use the ‘Thinking Hats’. Follow this link to read our account and to see some pictures of their colourful ‘hats’ display.
We interviewed P4 teacher, Mrs Kirk, to find out more about how they use thinking hats in class and made a podcast to put on our class blog.
Click the link http://primary7.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/denny+final.mp3
The Magic Box!!
Well – here goes – another podcast attempt! Some of the pupils interviewed their classmates to hear about their plan (so far) for our new imaginative story writing … The Magic Box.
http://primary7.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/magic+box3.mp3
In class this term, we have been writing our Autobiographies. We used ‘mindmaps’ to help us plan some of the chapters. The picture here shows examples of these on our classroom wall. They helped us to organise the paragraphs in our writing. In our writing pages, some of us decided to use extracts from our autobiography to let you know a little bit about our hobbies, our families, important events in our lives and who our friends are. Rebecca has written all about her life so far, and Ryan has told us what his hopes are for the future – good luck Ryan!
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