Embedables: Jigsaw Planet

Following my previous post about embedables, I came across another that colleagues might find interesting and students fun through my Twitter Feeds. Thanks to ianinsheffield for this. Jigsaw Planet, generates an embedable jigsaw puzzle from an image uploaded to the space and then code to embed either the puzzle itself or a hyperlink to the hosting space. This widget requires the Java Browser Plugin, and the example below was made from an image I had previously downloaded, but

• Can you see what it is or might be without using either the ghost or image tool?
• What clues or evidence make you think this?
• What strategies would you use to solve the puzzle?

Like Ian I was thinking this tool might be an interesting way to promote discussion in class in small groups and pairs or perhaps at home through the VLE, perhaps around a school visit, as a starting point/stimulus for a new topic, idea covered or to be begun in class. How about using it like an IWB hide and reveal activity, encouraging students without using the ghost or image tools to solve the puzzle, gradually building up the mystery image or object, what clues did they use drawing from these discussions to support vocabulary choices. Any other thoughts?

Starting with Bobby: Exploring Repeating Patterns in a Mathematical Context

Meet Bobby, a tile character I initially created this morning, to accompany me as I began to explore and think through some of the mathematical possibilities in using QCA ICT Unit 4b to explore repeating patterns. In a previous post I presented some ideas around how I have used these ideas and processes to develop a Design and Technology focussed project using MS Paint. Here I wanted to take a different tack, and expand on and explore another context where I found the process useful, in exploring the language of shape and space through a mathematical context.

Why MS Paint? Well since the PCs I use in school, all run Windows, and those of my students who have computers at home generally work within this environment, paint is a tool, that we have ready access to, frequently underused and exploited, there is the possibility that if excited and motivated by the tasks we develop, the students may choose to extend ideas away from school.

In beginning projects involving repeating patterns I favour an approach where my students begin by making their own tiles, using simple shapes, copy and paste, alongside flip and rotate, to develop more complex designs, that can eventually be used to develop their patterns. Repeating patterns activities such as the one I am thinking through in this post, have it seems to me enormous mathematical potential, an affordance we may not readily associate with graphic and painting packages.

Beginning with the development and creation of a set of tiles based on irregular polygons, such as an L shape, which we can describe as an irregular hexagon or hexagonal, and others such as these examples.

The sessions might be developed from the limiting of tool use, and copy and paste to develop initial tiles exploring different polygons that can made using only 2 rectangles, perhaps expanding to explore polygons that can be made using 3 and so on, and then using these tiles to support discussion around the properties of shapes. Perhaps we might explore the number of right angles they have? Are the angles always right angles, perhaps inviting reasoning about why the students think this might be the case? What happens if we overlap rectangles? How does this alter the possibilities for polygons we can make?

In developing these relatively simple "objects" we have begun to think mathematically about the activities we are going to engage in as the process unfolds, and this can be further built upon using the flip and rotate tools as we move to develop our tiles. In MS Paint the flip and rotate dialogue box offers options to flip horizontally or vertically and to rotate an object through 90, 180 or 270 degrees. These can be compared with 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 turns, that our students may be familiar with through their use of tools such as the BeeBot floor turtle, and maybe even related to table top work related to using mirrors when exploring symmetry. Here we can begin to introduce or develop the use of numerical values for right angle turns with visual modeling and exploration of effect being developed as children create new tiles based on copy, paste and rotation of their original tiles. The idea of angle and a measurement of angles being related to rotation and turn around a point being introduced at the same time, through discussion and exploration of the effects applying these tools to the objects has.

This tile was created by copying and pasting one of my irregular polygons 4 times, rotating it each time progressively through, 90, 180 and then 270 degrees, and overlaying each newly pasted tile onto those pasted previously. From this context there is the possibility to expand on discussions begun around my Polygon activity, by exploring further, ideas around the properties of the tile and shape created. This shape possesses no line symmetry, as it was made by rotating tiles, it may be rotationally symmetrical however as all of my rotations were through right angles. We could test this together, using copy and paste, and the flip and rotate tool, with the object set as a transparent layer, and by dragging the tile over the original, to observe whether or not the tile is rotationally symetrical. We could also ask what the children notice about the angles? Again theyare all right angles, why might this be so? Using the tile, we pasted and the flip and rotate tool, we can make a tile or a shape that does possess line symmetry?

This tile was made using the "flip vertical" tool in MS Paint, by copying the tile, pasting it and then dragging to touch or tessalating the two tiles. What will happen if I copy this whole shape and join this to my other tile? How many lines of symmetry do I have? What effect will "flipping" this tile vertically have on the pasted shape and the one I make as a result of tessellating them?

Moving on from these simple tiles, the children could be challenged to make their own designs, firstly using rotation tools to make their own simple tiles and then flip tools to make symmetrical tiles, that they can tessellate, by repeated copy and paste.

Patterns are governed by rules, having produced their tesselating designs and saved, these they can then be coloured using flood fill tools, to follow either given rules or support reasoning and generalisation around visual lines of enquiry. Using save as in between each step of the activity, eg

• Using two colours, make a pattern where no two shapes adjacent to or next to each other are the same colour,
• Create a design where adjacent columns or rows are different colours?
• Use three colours to create a diagonal pattern?
• Use your design, save as and 2 different colours to investigate the different ways in which you can paint half, quarter, three quarters of your design.
• Use a multiples of 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 pattern to colour your design.
• Colour your design using a multiples of 3 pattern, and then a multiples of 6 pattern. What happens to your design, when the new rule is used? What about a multiples of 2 and 4 pattern, or 5 and 10? What happens to my pattern if I use three colours and paint a multiple of 2 4 and 8 pattern?
  

These rules would obviously be varied and increase or decrease in complexity of language use and reasoning required according to needs of the students. The students might also be encouraged to design their own rules for patterns, and to apply these, or to challenge their friends to follow them.

As a bit of an afterthought a great follow up to these tasks would be to use a tool such as MS Photostory, to enable children to use and rehearse mathematical language and reasoning by including the digital outcomes of their tasks within a presentation. Dragging the images developed into Photostory, the students might use ideas from discussions they have engaged in during tasks, to record orally their work, ideas and findings as voice overs supporting their images, describing the processes they went through, and using and applying vocabulary developed during the sessions within the production of their presentation. The completed videos would make exciting evidence of learning while also supporting student understanding in using and applying mathematics activities and puzzles, as well as acting as a vehicle for sharing their work with others. These could be published for friends in school, but could also be added to blogs or VLEs for comments by visitors.

What happened to Bobby?

Well here he is and as I have been writing this he has not been far from my mind, in fact I have had a really challenging time working with my fussy friend, while in a mathematical frame of mind, to think about how I could use him to support systematic investigational work with a year2/3 Class or group. How about the possible colour combinations he could wear...
Despite his complexity, and his inability to tessellate, in his current form he does make some interesting designs and patterns, when used on his own initially to form part of an investigation. I wonder what combinations of trousers and jumpers are possible using only two colours, and what would happen if I had three Colours to choose from to make these combinations? How many different ways could he be dressed using four different colours? This as a simple pattern design would make a really attractive wall display!

Maybe extending this to make an initial tile, and using some of the rules from our investigation, we could systematically reapply the investigation to decorate these tiles, For this pattern I had three colours, and tried to find the different combinations I could use to colour opposite characters the same while rotating the colour fills between them.

As a discussion point, there other whole class possibilities for using some of my original more complex patterns using Bobby. Using an open ended question I might be able to use some of these following student engagement with tasks like those above.......
Perhaps embedding this pattern into a smart notebook, I could use a hide and reveal techniques to explore the patterns and shapes, asking questions such as What can you see? Is there anything else you can tell me? What shapes can you see? Is their anything special about the colours I have used, and the way I have used them? Encouraging responses and answers to be given in sentences, asking why do you think that? and seeking responses that require and support students as they use not only I think.. or I can see ... statements, but require reasoned "because" type responses to be formulated, perhaps through paired discussion teacher modeling and group rehearsal.

Winged Sandals: Thinking Around Writing Myths from a Multimodal Starting Point

In this post I want to share a great website I discovered last year. From the website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Winged Sandals is themed around Ancient greece, and plays host to 4 beautifully presented flash movies of Greek Myths.

Our narrative unit in literacy sessions this term is based around Myths and Legends. and so I wondered if the materials presented here, might ignite the students enthusiasm, for a genre where the language structures can be complex and difficult to understand.

During the first week of the teaching sequence we used some of the beautifully illustrated traditional texts we had available to introduce how Myths as oral stories, were created to explain natural phenomena. We chose three stories from Nordic and Greek mythology around the theme of creation. These were photographed and the resulting images used in smart notebooks as shared texts. Once in the notebook, pens and highlighters were used to annotate the texts, and to help us identify and highlight the features of the text type for charting and inclusion in our VCOP displays and writing ladders.

Another way to share texts from digital photographs, is through use of the slideshow tool, an integral part of Windows XP's fax and picture viewer. On Smartboards, though I am sure other whiteboards will allow something similar, images can be annotated, and then captured along with additions to the notebook for saving and later reference.

Despite loving the stories and the strange names and places, accessing the text itself independently was problematic for some of our students. To support this, and the key reason we chose to embed these images in a notebook for sharing, was that we began the stories with a rub and reveal activity. This was intended to develop the idea of using the images as reading prompts, and to begin introducing more complex words, such as character names before we engaged with the story itself.

"Rub and reveal," is an Interactive whiteboard technique that involves inserting objects to a notebook page, painting over them and then with students, using the eraser tool to uncover sections of the object a piece at a time. In 2 previous posts, Images from the Past 29/04/07 and Hide and Reveal Techniques 17/02/07 I expanded on this technique, which I have found particularly useful in using images to support student talk in inferential work and reasoning around texts.

Returning to Winged Sandals, this week we decided to use the story of "Perseus and Medusa" as our focus text. Our choice of this as a text was in part due to the appeal of presentation, but also the structure of the movie and how we thought it lent itself to the key objective we wanted to explore

• To use beginning, middle and end to write narratives in which events are sequenced logically and conflicts resolved

Organised like a TV series, the movie presents this quest myth in 3 short episodes, bite size pieces that essentially divide the story into its beginning, middle and end. Over three days, the students were involved in 3 very similar tasks, where we invited them firstly to engage with and respond to the text, through paired, group and class discussion, before finally using the outcomes of these activities to develop storyboard based plans for their retelling of the tale during big write time this week.

As the shared text, we drew on multimodal analysis techniques to engage with the story. First of all episodes were engaged with minus one of their key modes,

• Without sound
• Without visuals

Children were encouraged between "viewings" or "listenings" to talk about and think together around key ideas, such as

• Where the story or this episode might be taking place?
• what clues did we have from what had been seen or heard?
• What were the characters like? How did we know?
• What happened as the episode progressed? How was this different to the previous episode? What might happen in the next?
• Who did the children think was the hero and why?
• What did we find out about the other characters?

Following this inferential process, the students watched the story again, but this time with all modes available. In talking twos and small groups the children were asked to compare what they thought, with what they had gained additionally from the whole text. Had their opinions changed? If so how had they changed? What clues were there in the story that supported their ideas?

As follow up from the reading activity, students were given storyboards, including screen captures we had made that featured key moments from the story, and encouraged to compose super sentences, that they could use later, when they came to write their own version of the myth. Openers for each new episode were of particular importance, because we wanted to be able to move our readers from one part of the quest to another, and begin to think about how we enable changes in "sequence, place and time in a way that would give coherence" to our story overall.

Explaining paragraphing can be difficult, but I think this video offers enormous possibilities for helping with this too. Each episode, as representation of a beginning, middle and end, allowed the children to see this story recount as existing in 3 parts. Each episode representing a particular part of the story, was in a sense a visual paragraph, and the sentences we developed in our storyboards, the beginning middle and end of these. The students really enjoyed this story, and the visual and auditory nature of the experience I hope, through the charting process will give us points of reference to draw back to as we move into the guided and shared creation of our own myths.

This week as we move on we want to familiarise the students with a local legend. Our school at the base of the Dundry Slopes is very close to the Stanton Drew Stone Circle, a site with a story all of its own. Building on the multimodal approach we have begun, We want to introduce not only the text, but also to begin thinking about the setting and scene. We have made a collection of photographs, at different times of the year and day, have a version of the story retold by some Y4 students a couple of years ago, and as I ponder this morning, am thinking about how music might help stimulate thought and thinking about language use, perhaps adding the use of Clannad, Enya or even well chosen Mike Oldfield tracks to support slideshows and zones of relevance activities we already have planned. Placing the students in the story, the legend tells of a wedding feast that goes wrong, so we have decided as later authors, needing to retell the tale, they should be the official wedding photographers, and as things begin to unfold, they discover they have only space for three photographs that tell the story of the day. The magical nature of events and the place opens a window that means they can move back and forward through the story to capture and revisit key events. Using a film strip story board/map, and based on freeze framing, the children will be encouraged to record pictorially key scenes from the wedding feast and so the legend, to form the beginning middle and end of our writing week next week. Drawing on these we should be able to relate back to the episode structure of "Perseus and the Medusa," to help the students see, how our story might be presented as three paragraphs, featuring a beginning middle and end. Our big write , rather than a narrative this week will be a poem, (though some students might decide to structure this as a narrative) using figurative and descriptive language or phrases collected from our engagement with images and the story, that will hopefully inspire adventurous use of language when we develop a version of the story we can publish. Interestingly when we were discussing this, we wondered about the idea of writing a picture book for younger students, however we also began to discuss whether since we wanted to challenge the student's use of language, whether we might not rather consider writing for an older year group instead. This is something I think we still have space to negotiate, and it will be interesting to see what the students themselves have to say about their preferred audience.

Text Jumble

Have just picked this online fridge magnet and text tumbler tool up from my feeds via Joe Dale. Already got my mind whizzing with the possibilities it has for talking for writing, sentence and text rehearsal tasks and generating silly sentences on the interactive whiteboard.

Making a Molehill Out Of A Mountain: Ramblings and Reflections

Explaining how I plan or visualise the learning routes I design for my students has often been a headache for me, since I haven't found a visual model to help me explain. The IKEA man image I presented in a previous post, although describing my behaviour during the planning process, somehow didn't really explain how I see this process in my head. In order not to make a mountain out of a molehill, I have made a molehill out of a mountain instead, and in this post wanted to share a visual model I am currently working on with my students to help break the processes we engage with into steps while supporting us in working towards the outcomes I want to achieve. I would like to thank Di Pardoe for the idea behind this image, and for the inspirational work she did with us around assessment for learning practices, in recent years.

I mentioned in my IKEA Man post how concerned I was becoming that when we look at planning frameworks, particularly like those presented in the QCA schemes of work, we tend not to look at the end product first, or the outcome we want to achieve. A learning focus often taking a back seat to the need to deliver. This may seem strange to some of us, plans are essentially linear after all, we move from point a to point b and then we can do c. Our plans might be, but classroom learning as a long conversation, provides many first hand experiences of how when engaging with students, the assumptions we make during planning, can quickly become unravelled, leading to more complex situations and requirements than we intended or expected. Recent events have required my reflection on this and to find a way of formalising visually, the processes I want to engage with in supporting student learning and to guide classroom visitors and myself toward seeing where we are now and how this has been achieved, modelling how the small tasks and activities in our learning process are leading towards desired and intended outcomes. I still feel it is important that we and the students see the big picture, to ensure understanding of how the steps or processes that evolve link to the way we are approaching these goals, and using the Maths Mountain above is enabling me to begin fulfilling many of these needs. It enables students to participate in the journey we have taken so far and to see where we are to go next as we traverse our topic. On the top of the mountain goes the big objective, or target outcome for the week, and at stages or stopping off points up the mountain the smaller objectives to be achieved are displayed. We have a character who climbs the mountain with us as the week progresses, and during our plenaries we review the sessions and make decisions using traffic lights about whether we can move on up the path. In our final sessions we engage with a problem or a puzzle involving the steps we have developed to review where we are. This simple visual device is helping me to improve the transparency of the processes we engage in, and currently flexible enough to allow small diversions, while focusing my attention and guiding my conversation toward the intended outcomes of each session, allowing at a glance for feedforward and feedback around the steps in our journey and the possibility of insight for students and visitors to where we will be going next.

After attending the Year 3 numeracy sessions held in Bristol today I have been considering how this tool might also support another issue, that of evidence of learning. The practical nature of the teaching and learning processes shared and outlined today by our colleagues, and the emphasis on talk as a process I have over time come to recognise as "thinking together" is in stark contrast with school based requirements to have children record all outcomes. I was interested to hear the question "Why are we doing this? raised, is it for the students, for their parents, for the inspector or maths coordinator? One suggestion made to free us from this concern was that we list the things students had done in a word processor and to copy and paste these to create cut outs that could be stuck into student's books at the end of the week, or to perhaps capture photographs of students engaged in practical work and discussion to be added. This essentially might turn the student's maths book into a learning log, where some pages have student recording, while others outlined learning outcomes or showed images of learning in the first instance generated by the teacher. This fascinates me since it parallels much of the work I have been doing for my Degree on "Narratives of Learning." As a result this evening I am toying with the idea of producing in a smaller format the maths mountain for students to use with our existing green for go and pink for think colour coding system, so they can use the I can statements included in our class mountain, to share with each other their personal progress towards the class targets set, perhaps helping to take ownership of the learning we engage in. Perhaps at significant stages in the process, during plenaries or as part of a morning task the students might be encouraged to highlight or later annotate these with sentences about their work, putting the vocabulary they are engaging with into practice, or illustrating the mountain with examples of what we have been learning. Perhaps the addition of a problem or puzzle to be worked together, could also be used to provide additional evidence of their ability to use and apply the skills and experiences gained during their practical work. I was really drawn to the power of the idea of encouraging children to express themselves, what they have gained from a set of practical activities, rather than forcing an activity merely to model it for an often remote audience. As professionals, the idea of our plans as records of learning, even though as an assessment support teacher I used to advocate this, somehow right now doesn't seem to cut the mustard in some circles, and so this for me right now is certainly worth further consideration. I would be grateful for any comments that might support this idea.

(Having just reread this I have amended the title, it is a bit of a ramble, perhaps I should have called it High on a Hill stood a ... it seemed to make sense at the time Ed.)

A Potted Guide: This week we have mostly been writing instructions

This week we have been mostly writing instructions in Year 3. But what use are instructions without an audience and a purpose? And how have we used ICT to help? Rather than starting with the perfect instructional text, we began with our student's prior experiences of the genre.

Bringing into school a few potted plants, old plant pots and a bag of compost, I began the session by telling a tale, the story of how I had tried to re-pot the plants I had with me. Being concerned to get it right, I had emailed my friend for advice, but the instructions they had sent me, had left me confused, and my kitchen in a real mess. It was now the cleanest it had been in a long time, but this was only after I had managed to get water and compost everywhere. What I had managed to figure out from my friend's letter was that the things I had with me would would help me to finish the job I had started. Our mission as a class this week was to reshape the email, and create a good set of instructions that we could publish to help other people learn how to pot their houseplants. The publishing format I left blank...

Preparing for the first session my colleague was great, helping out by flanneling and sending the woolliest letter she could imagine, actions completely jumbled and out of sequence, and rather than telling me what to do... she had made suggestions about how I might like to do it. I made two copies of the email. Placing each on separate pages in a Smartbook. One copy was the entire letter as a block of text to share and discuss. The second a version of the letter was split into dragable sentences. Beginning with the block text, we checked through it together using this to unpick problems through discussion, and highlighting issues as we went, while we began thinking about how my friend's email should have been written. Using the dragable text and suggestions from the students we tried rearranging pieces of the letter to see if it could be changed to make more sense. This acted as our first class draft. Using this set of class instructions the students repotted some plants in small groups. As the students worked a digital camera was used to photograph the steps they followed. To end the session we reviewed the draft instructions, and began to edit them on screen, taking out the "suggestions," made by my colleague's email and replacing them with "command words," that drew on the practical experience to describe what had been done. We also added additional steps that we thought were missing, eg putting down newspaper to keep the surfaces clean.

For our second session, the digital photographs taken during the first were imported to the smartbook, and used in a storyboarding activity. Using this new "dragable" tool we revisited and thought about the sequence and order of activities we carried out in the previous session. As visual prompts our photos were used to scaffold a "talking for writing" session. The photographs had been inserted in a random order, so we needed to rearrange them in a chronological sequence. Then the storyboard that resulted was used to rehearse aloud the text we might use to produce clear " instructional sentences" to support them. The onscreen story board as well as being a visual class prompt, modelled the table top, storyboard activity the students would use during the lesson to plan the sequence of Instructions they would use later to write and publish.

In our third session we looked at a set of prepared instructions, and pulled out the key features of the text type. What would a good set of instructions include? We would need a clear title, and would need to split our text into sections, "what you need" and a "what to do." The to do list was identified as a list and we discussed how this could be laid out across the page using commas, or down the page using bullets. We closed the session by looking at how the sentences began, and had a quick look at our storyboards. Did each of our instructional sentences begin with a command word? The model we had explored and developed on screen, became a writing frame, and the students worked individually during the remainder of the session to draft their own set of instructions drawing on their storyboards, to help, but being encouraged to refine their text as they worked. The outcomes are great, and next week will be including one or two in our blog.

Writing is for Reading...

Extending the written instructional text activity, I worked yesterday with a small group of students using Microsoft Photostory, to create a simple vodcast. Using the photographs taken earlier in the week, and instructions written by the students they added voiceovers to image clips, before exporting these to video in .wmv format.

I uploaded these later to Zamzar for conversion to Quick Time's .mov format. I have set up a class account and podcast page at Podomatic, and have published the video file to this space. As I mentioned in an earlier post about using PhotoStory for this purpose, it all may sound a bit complicated and convoluted , but with a little practice the publishing process is quite straight forward. This was my first attempt in class at doing this particular type of activity, and a process that was completely new to the students. I was really pleased with the video outcome it is a little rough and ready in places, but I think it models really well what can be achieved using tools such as this in a classroom context. You will notice the background hum from the classroom where it was recorded. Real children working together, as this group record their file. I like the count in, as one of the students leaves a run in space at the beginning of his voiceover track, not realising at this point that his count is also being recorded. The idea of students taking turns is also inherent in the file as they swapped places and the mike to each record different sections. As a first attempt, there is much to discuss. Asking the class what we might do to reduce the sound level, when we are recording in class. Perhaps reviewing the process of authoring a text like this by asking about strategies we might use to carry out the count in which was so important. Do we need to designate roles in the process, and have a director or software operator as well as narrator.

I have experienced many times from colleagues "the its alright for you but.." statement, But I think this is a really exciting way to work, not only for me but the students too. Learning to use PhotoStory does not take long, but it is a potentially powerful device. If you would like to watch our vodcast file you can find it by following this link. I look forward to any comments or thoughts you may have.

Starting from the Student..thinking aloud

I was asked the other day to comment by my tutor, on a research digest article, regarding Interactive Whiteboards, by the NCETM (The National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics) This document is really interesting not for what it has to say about the use of technologies in Mathematics lessons, but in the assumptions it makes regarding teacher perceptions of the role of talk as a tool in ICT mediated learning contexts. This was of particular interest to me since this has formed an integral part of the literature review for my dissertation, which uses digital video to explore aspects of what learning looks like in my ICT mediated mathematics lessons. It has helped me reframe the perspective of my discussions, and provide context and relevance to some of the issues I had, previously raised about an overly generalised outsider perspective on how ICTs are used to mediate learning.

What seems at the moment more relevant to me, in terms of understanding what learning might look like, is in the material that surrounds the IWB review presented, and what it has has to say about the use talk, in supporting, framing, mediating and developing mathematical contexts. The "transformative potential" of the IWB lies not in the technology, but how we as teachers understand it as mediating tool in learning situations, We seem to shy away from the idea that IWBs are presentation tools, becoming defensive about our perceptions of it, but essentially this is what they were designed for. In the classroom however their transformative potential lies in how we use them as a vehicle to bring together a host dynamic tools within wider structured and tool mediated collaborative or communal work. How as "designers for learning" teachers draw on the affordances of software environments and other tools to engage their learning communities, for example through guided investigation and problem solving approaches within shared and communal tasks.

The current web 2.0 revolution is evolving through social networks, where learning together and communal knowledgebuilding is a key and accepted element. I learn much by visiting other blogs, wondering how certain things were achieved, experimenting and joining in sharing ideas, and seeking support from a diverse network. In the classroom I know this occurs also, but the key to enabling this is how we use the space to share in the knowledge and experience developed by one member of the community, building on this through the experiences we bring for the benefit of everyone, seeing each contribution or idea as part of a larger whole. Using the ideas embedded here, and stemming from engagement with the work of Neil Mercer, I have begun to use his view of talk, as a process of "thinking together," to look at how or whether the IWB and other mediating tools used supported the creation of common knowledge and ideas in my classroom, and the strategies I used that enable or disable this process to take place. Anyway to end on a lighter note, thinking about starting from the student I found this today thanks to Doug Dickinson

A group of young children were sitting in a circle with their teacher ...
...she was going around in turn asking them all questions.

"Davey, what sound does a cow make?" Davey replied, "It goes 'moo'."

"Alice, what sound does a cat make?"Alice said, "It goes 'meow'."

"Jamie, what sound does a lamb make?"Jamie said, "It goes 'baaa'."

"Jennifer, what sound does a mouse make?"Jennifer paused, and said, "Uhh... it goes... 'click'!"

Submitted by Dave, Bolder, Co to My Kid Sister's Sayings .

I have to say this really appealed to me, as a similar incident occurred when a colleague from Chile was drawing with his son. They had made an elephant, and were colouring it in. My colleague asked if he could paint the elephant grey, and his son reached over dipped his finger in the paint and pressed on the elephants body. Unfortunately unlike the PC based "paint" this did not result in a flood fill, which is what his little boy had expected. So talk, what we say and how we interpret it does have a bearing on the common meanings we make!