Learning to type

We'd like every student in the secondary school to learn to type - or at least improve their keyboarding skills. Here is a draft for our approach:

1. Learn about correct posture and set up of equipment/space.
2. Home keys - this is critical, ensure no switching of sides!
3. Increasing our expectations for the amount of typing students do - we learn best by doing!
4. Supplementing this with some games and practice of drills to learn the motor skills - some to start you off are below...

List of online tools to practice typing - each student needs to evaluate the below tools at some stage during the next week and place a comment on this blog post with their evaluation of the tool:

1. Typing Club - Reuben and Anna to evaluate
2. Typing Tutor - Olivia and Helena to evaluate
3. Typing Lessons - Reuben and Tyler to evaluate
4. Typing Test - Meg and Jenny to evaluate
5. Typing Test 2 - Helena and Nathan to evaluate

Continue

Autumn by Helena

Autumn

Leaves, crunching, crumbling,

Trees of red, orange and green,

Cold and wet season.

Continue

The 3 Elements of Poetry

Today for English we used Autumn and our Harvest Festival as inspiration to learn about poetry. The students brainstormed what they thought poetry was, then matched this with one definition. From there, they explored their ideas relating to Autumn and used the three elements of poetry to improve their writing.

Here are our ideas:

• Rhyme
• It's like a song that you talk
• Words that collaborate in some way
• It paints a picture, or images, in your mind

This bolded words above are the three elements of poetry:

1. Rhyme - 
2. Rhythm - 
3. Imagery - 

Check these poems as our first attempts - we published these using GarageBand to showcase our writing.

Further reading...

Continue

Autumn by Anna

Anna's Amazing Autumn poem

Always cold but full of light,

Underneath leaves small bugs fight,

Trees are turning red and gold,

Unturned logs are full of mould,

Mice make homes in uncut grass,

Nuts are falling on the path.

Continue

Olivia's Autumn Poem

Running round, hearing the sounds of rustling leaves,

That crumble into nothing, as you run over them,

Red, yellow and orange are the colours of autumn,

The ground covered in the colours of the leaves,

That have fallen off the tall trees,

That are dying already for autumn,

Children running and laughing,

All dressed up, in autumn clothes,

Ready for an awesome day...

Continue

Autumn by Jenny

The leaves are turning red and brown,

Falling hard upon the ground,

Covering evidence of children's fun,

Laughing, playing, in the sun,

The time has come to keep warm,

While we wait again for the summer swarm.

Continue