Year 3 Visual Representations: Graffiti

The Year 3 children have been working hard creating a wide range of types of art.

This week in the ICT Suite, they used the website Graffiti Creator to design a colourful and fun name plate in a Graffiti style.

They then learnt how to take a screenshot on the computer in order to save their work and upload it to the Google Drive for storage.

Take a look at some of these colourful works of art!

Picture Collages with Year 1

The year 1 children took their iPads to Madurodam and took SOOOO many pictures!!

When they got back to school they had fun choosing their favourite pictures to make a collage out of. We used the app Pic Collage to make these collages.

The year 1 children were so clever, they did it all themselves. Here is a list of all the skills they had to use the create their collage:

• Take photographs (I think this was the best bit!) 
• Choose the photographs they wanted on their collage 
• Arrange the pictures by making them bigger or smaller and moving them around the iPad screen 
• Writing their name (choosing a font and colours) 
• Choosing a background design (this was the second best bit!!) 

Here are some of the finished collages: 

Year 4 Collaborative Work: Designing Robots

The Year 4 children have been learning how to use the Google Drive to work collaboratively. 

One of their IPC tasks was to design a Rescue Robot for use in an earthquake situation. They worked in pairs to design their robot using Google Drive, Drawings.

Once completed and labelled, they wrote a reflection of their work and created a QR code to insert on their design which can be scanned in.

The collaborative aspect of this piece of work meant, they had to communicate with each other to decide who was designing which part of the robot. It took them a bit of time to get used to it, but every pair managed to design a fantastic robot.

Here are a few examples.

Year 3: Photographs and Word Processing

I have been working with the Year 3 children to practice taking quality photographs using the iPads.

We spoke about what makes a good photograph and what not to do, and came up with a "Do's and Don't list" for each class.

The children then went to the Green Space with their class teachers and used that list to take various photographs. Once all the photographs had been uploaded to the Google Drive, the children used the computers to choose their favourite photograph and write about it.

Here are some of the chosen photographs:

Year 5 - They have been working with technology I promise!

I was just going through my Blog and I realised I haven't mentioned Year 5 all term!! Now please do not think that I am neglecting Year 5, we have been very busy!!

Firstly, we have been working on Google Drive a lot. Year 5 and 6 each have their own personal Google Drive accounts. All the other year groups have a year group account which is logged on already on the iPads. So the year 5 children have been practicing logging on to their own Google Drive.

We have also been very clever this year and have created a folder specifically to share work with their teacher which allows their teacher to view and print out work.

The next exciting thing is .............

APPLE TV! 

Yeah. We FINALLY have Apple TV in the Year 5 and 6 classrooms which makes teaching with an iPad soooooo much easier and fun! It is great for the children to be able to show their iPad screen on the whiteboard without having to plug it into a cable! It is great for me as a teacher to be able to walk around the classroom with my iPad, giving the iPad to various children, without having to stand at the front of the classroom attached with a cable to the whiteboard!! This tiny little black box has changed my teaching this year. If you haven't got one, and you teach with iPads, you MUST invest in one in your classroom!

And finally, the year 5 children have been working so hard this half term on creating books in the style of the Mr Men series for Language Arts. They have been using the app Book Creator to make these. I am really looking forward to posting some of the finished books so please return soon to look at them!

Classifying dinosaurs in Year 3 using Popplet

One of the most versatile apps we have on all the yeargroup iPads is Popplet. At €4,49 is it well worth purchasing the full version of this app.

In year 3, we have been using it to classify dinosaurs. Since the children are already familiar with using the app as a brainstorming style app, it was easy for them to use it in a different way to help create a branching database to sort dinosaurs. Using the iPads and the app made a complicated task a little bit easier.

Here are some of the finished branching databases.

Year 3: Dinosaurs

The Year 3 children have started their new IPC topic Dinosaurs! This is such a fantastic topic, I love it! To start off their ICT lessons, we used the computers to draw their very own made up dinosaurs.

We used the website Sumopaint (which is available online or to download) and concentrated on using the following drawing tools:

Pencil (different sizes of thickness) 
Paint Bucket 
Colour Palette
Undo and Redo buttons
Text tool

Don't be scared - they may look fierce and scary, but I have been assured that some of them are Herbivores and the others, well ....... RUN!!!!

Year4: Word Clouds

We have a new app and we love it!

Word Salad

This app can be used to create colourful word clouds for all areas of the curriculum. Year 4 have been using the app to create word clouds about Volcanos and other natural disasters. They even used it in their Mother Tongue lessons. Here are some finished clouds (or salads as the app likes to call them!)

Year 1: Family drawings

I am so excited to properly meet the Year 1 children. I love working with the little ones because they are so enthusiastic, especially when it comes to using the iPads.

The majority of children at our school have some form of tablet at home, so they already know how an iPad works. My challenge, is to teach them how an iPad can be used in the classroom, for learning, not just for playing!

So, we started off this year using one of my favourite drawing apps, Drawing Pad.

This app is actually installed on every year group iPad, including Year 6! It has so many different drawing tools, plus stickers and fun things to add to your drawings. It can keep children entertained for hours using their creativity to its maximum!  

To keep it simple for the children, I set the app to the marker pen (though some children were adventurous enough to choose different tools as well) and they draw a member of their family for me. Here are some of the fantastic drawings they did.