Google Sites - Take One!

Reflection from my week. In the short couple of days before our DFI course this week I have tried to use screencastify in class as well as explain everything with my class.I have used this with my lower literacy group who are still learning english as a way for them to get milage with their reading. One of the tasks that they have to do is record themselves reading the book away from me. So I have made a small start to using some of the new things that I have learnt and will continue to do so over the next week!

This week our group met a few days earlier as there is the Manaiakalani hui on this Friday. Today we got an in depth tour of google sites which was very helpful and let us get our creative hats on! It was really good to see how to work google sites. I am really lucky I work in a shared space and we have a site for our team that was created for us by an expert at making google sites. Matt has taught me along the way how to add things on our site and how they work but it was a great chance today to see why I do it and why Matt has made it the way it is. Toady we got let loose on a google site and got the opportunity to be creative and make it in anyway we like. Because I love the way our class site is set out and how we use boarders I have used this today in making my own site. Below is the site I created which I am really happy with!

We were given the task of reading the story "The Lion and the Mouse" and then brainstorming the amount of activities that we could create from this one text. I worked in a group where we looked at year 4-6 and what ideas we could come up with. At first glance it would seem that it is just a reading activity however it is a really rich book that can be used in so many different ways. My site is show casing the book at one that can be used for literacy in my class. I really enjoyed the opportunity to be able to have a play and muck around with the site and not worrying that I might mess it up (which I have been told is very hard to do anyway) but was still nice to have a chance to play around. I also today learnt about a very valuable tool on blogger called blog lists as a gadget. I have added this to my professional blog and is something that I need to do for my own class on my class blog! That is definitely something I will be going home to do tonight!