Lessons around the World!

The last couple of week have seen some really exciting developments in the links between staff and children at Woodford Junior and Meadowbank Primary. Here at Woodford the Year 4 children have been taught by the IT Director of Meadowbank, David Kinane! How, you may ask is this possible? 11,000 miles between us and a thirteen hour time difference. The power of technology and ever increasing Web 2.0 tools meant that those miles and hours disappeared in cyber space! A Skrbl board for demonstrating and communicating, a webcam, a microphone and a free video call via Skype enabled David to teach the children how to use vector graphics program Inkscape.



During the first sessions the children were "shy" and did not communicate with their New Zealand Teacher, however the second sessions saw such inhibitions disappear and dialogue taking place.



The lesson created great interest here, with the local newpaper printing an article, as well as a small note in a national paper the following day. Governors, staff and Local Authority representatives were all amazed at how the children took the lesson in their stride.

They (the students) seem to just accept there is someone teaching them that is half way around the world and 13 hours ahead - I find it absolutely amazing - must be my age!! (Jill Bailley International Development officer for Plymouth)

We hope that is the beginning of many such lessons. Helen Hardie is already looking forward to teaching in New Zealand in 2008.

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The slideshow above reaveals the interaction between David and the Woodford children as well as the spiders they created under his instruction. We hope to publish those here once they are completed! Arachnophobes look away!

The videos below captured some of the sessions from the Woodford ICT Suite.

A day in the life of room 1

Welcome back to school Woodford and hello all of you new year 4 students in Mrs Hardie's class. You will be getting to know us all a lot better over the coming weeks and months. I hope that you all had a great summer? We are hoping to use your summer holiday as a collaborative project over the next few weeks, but Mrs Hardie will tell you more about that.

Here at Meadowbank, we have been working hard on a project to show you what a day in our class is like. We shot the following film over a week and a half, but we chose all the things that make being a student at Meadowbank special. We tried to think of the kinds of things that make our school day, or the way that we are in school different from the way that we think you might be in school at Woodford. We all do Literacy and Maths and those kinds of lessons, so we tried to show you some of the other lessons that we do.

Look at our video and see what you can see that makes our school day different from yours. Let us know by posting comments. If there some parts of our school day that you want more information on, please use the comments for that too.

We made the movie using Timer Shot and a web cam, so the quality is not good, but you get the idea. We hope that you like it!

There are still a few items that we are planning to video, so this version will be updated. So keep an eye out for our updates.

Comparing Ethnic Data for Year 4

The children in Year 4 at Woodford have been comparing the ethnic groups of the two schools. They have collated the data in an excel table and then produced different types of graphs. They have written about what the graphs tell us. These are some of their graphs and conclusions.

· We found out that in both schools there are more girls than boys. In Meadowbank it is an almost even split but a Woodford there is almost 2 girls for every boy.

· Auckland has more people that were born in different places, than the people in Woodford school. In Plymouth , in the Woodford school, they only 3 Ethnic groups, and in Auckland at Meadowbank, they have 11 Ethnic groups! We have 63 British people, 2 Chinese people, and 1 other mixed background . Auckland have 0 British people, 9 Chinese people, 3 Indians, 1 Japanese, 7 Maoris 1 Middle Eastern, 63 NZ Europeans, 5 other Asians, 3 other Ethnicities, 10 other Europeans, 2 Samoans, 1 SE Asian other, and 0 Any other mixed back round.

· At Meadowbank school in year 4 there are lots more people in different ethnic groups than in our year four according to the graphs. In year 4 at Meadowbank there are 13 different ethnic groups and in Woodford year 4 there are only 3.

· The ethnic chart show us that Meadowbank school have eleven ethnic groups and we at Woodford only have three. The graph also shows us that all European schools have different people from different nations. The gender chart shows that there are less children in year 4 at Woodford than at Meadowbank.

World War Two Memories

This video was inspired by our World War Two Day when Grandparents were invited to talk to the children about their experiences and memories of World War Two. Ed Knight's grandad, Mr Hazel, was unable to join us for the day so Ed decided to interview him at home, recording it to share with everyone else. (Ed apologises for the creaking noise on the film - the video camera hadn't been used for a while)

Below are the photos of our day which show a real rapport between the children and grandparents. The children and staff all came dressed in appropriate World War two style clothes, complete with boxes for gas masks and evacuation labels. Rob and Roland also joined us from Plymouth City Museum with artefacts of WW2 and photographs of Plymouth during the War. Did you know that Plymouth was among the worst bombed cities in UK during World War Two. Can you find out why this might have been the case? Why would the Germans reduce the City of Plymouth to rubble?

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A great day was had by all - and we had the best weather all term!

Hoodwinked!

Woodford Junior School has always been proud of its musical and performance traditions. Every child has the oppotunity to take part in music lessons, instrumental tuition, choir, orchestra and each term a year group undertakes a performance. The summer term falls to the Year 6 children and is their final performance before moving on to the challenges of Secondary school. This year they performed "HOODWINKED" - a musical take on Robin Hood! We can't upload the whole 57 minutes but hope you enjoy this short preview. Listen out for the music and interviews in our iminent first pod cast!

Where in the World is Woodford Junior School?

The following is a short video to show where in the world Woodford Junior School is. Thanks to David Kinane for the schools logo animation and to Dan Hess and the Stray Relay for the backing track!

Comparing Climate Data

Year 4 have been comparing the temperature and rainfall data for Auckland and Plymouth. We have used excel to produce graphs and you can see here how clearly they contrast our opposite weather and seasons!

By looking at the rainfall graph you can see that at different times of the year the rainfall is completely different in the countries. - Sian

You immediately know that Auckland is on the other side of the world. As well when it is our winter it is their summer. - Francesca

The temperature graph shows that Auckland's summer is in our winter because the temperature lines go higher at completely different times. -Ciaran

We have lots of rain when they don't have much, because we are in opposite seasons. - Ben

In Auckland their winter is our summer. When we have our winter it is their summer.-Jack