2019 - Ashdale PS / Winthrop Australia Ongoing Professional Development Programme

The students in Mrs Brackenreg's, Mrs Johnston's and Mrs Francis's class learned to create a music track for their CYOA stories using Garage Band app on the iPad and MacBook. The students learned to use the loops, short 2 / 4/ 8 bar sounds grouped by instruments, under the Rock genre to create a 2-4 minute rock track by using the 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and Full markers of each loop to make sure the timing was spot on. After creating their rock track the students learned to create their own loop on their track. The first example being a voice recording or 'vocal'. Then the students explored loops from other genres such as Electro Funk and Traditional Chinese to create tracks that are suite directly to their CYOA story.

Audio blocks - Green. Loop block - orange. Speech block - purple. Direction blocks - blue. The students in Mrs Sampson's class learned to create algorithms using the block code language in the Scratch Junior app. Responding to a challenge to programme the sprite (character) Scratch to move around a room without touching the red mat and communicating his success to another character, students learned how to use directions, loops, appearance, text, start and audio command blocks to create their code, activate it and de-bug it (fix any errors). The class responded well with some very successful programming to solve the challenge.

The students in Mrs Allam's class learned to use the Pages app on the iPad and MacBook to create a journal to record, self assess and hand in their Reading Fluency work digitally. The class reviewed templates that used clear titles and some image placeholders. The students then learned to take a good quality photo of their reading fluency rubric and insert two to their image place holders - one for their self assessment and one for Mrs Allam to assess. Further, the students learned to edit the mask of their rubric so that it is clear, at least for Mrs Allam 😎. The class also learned to create and insert their reading fluency videos and use inking and audio to describe their process of self assessment referring to their words per minute. Lastly, the class learned to hand in their work by turning Air Drop on and Air Dropping their work to Mrs Allam's device for marking.

The students in Year 3 continued their learning of persuasive texts by creating Keynote presentations about various topics such as 'Easter is Better than Christmas' and 'Cats are Better than Dogs'. All students learned to develop slides in the Keynote app with text that provided a 'short guide' of their opinion, supporting arguments and summary. The students then learned to deliver and record their persuasive arguments by recording them with a friend. Finally, the students learned to use slide transitions and one animation per slide to add emphasis to their arguments without distracting the audience. It was impressive to see the students blend presentation skills with their persuasive text knowledge.

Popplet online for MacBook users.  Popplet app on the iPad. A CYOA story cover in Book Creator (iPad). Links in Book Creator eBook. The Year 5 and 6 students in Mrs Brackenreg's, Mrs Francis' and Mrs Johnston's class learned to use Popplet app for iPads or Popplet online for MacBooks to plan their Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) stories. After planning their narratives and learning how to create links in Book Creator and Keynote, the students then created a branching plan using Popplet. These plans specified all the potential pathways that their reader audience could pursue including happy and sad ending branches. Further, the students learned that they could link their endings to other branches within their story to keep their readers engaged and following their story pathways further. We are all looking forward to seeing the final pathways (5 maximum for the 'real ending') in a fortnight. Well done Year 5's and 6's!

Listening hands after logging into the Padlet. Logging into the Padlet via QR Code. Posting matching online communication guidelines with reminder questions. The Year 3's all learned to communicate appropriately in an online environment by logging into a Padlet wall created for their class. The students learned protocols such as labelling their posts to make sure all posts can be identified, that what goes online stays online, that posts can be formal (no emojis or slang) and informal (with emojis and abbreviations) and that good posts are about the topic. The students synthesised 10 guidelines by matching them to reminder questions. The 10 guidelines will be able to be printed and displayed as a class collaborative agreement. Well done Year 3's!