Google Mapping

As part of our Rugby World Cup country study, our students have researched local attractions. The information and photos were then used to create our own personal Google 'My Map'. These were then embedded into their blogs. This is surprisingly easy to do, with the connectivity between the Google products. For this activity we used a Google sheet, Google My Map, and Blogger which all work beautifully together.

Here is Shakira's map.

Rugby World Cup 2015

During the second half of Term Three, we gave students the opportunity to work on their own projects again, but only on presentation of an adequate plan. Three small groups took this opportunity and are managing well on their own.  The remainder have been divided into small groups who each represent one of the 20 countries participating in the upcoming Rugby World Cup.

We then allocated each 'pool' to a teacher who will be overseeing these groups throughout this project. We began with an information gathering exercise where students worked individually to find information about their country and team. A lot of this information is to be used for future parts of this project eg mapping local attractions, designing a new shirt, cooking an international dish, learning a little of the language.

Go the All Blacks!!

Year 9 Magazine

Our first projects in Term Three had a literacy focus. Students opted in to either create (write and illustrate) a children's book, or contribute an article towards a teen magazine. The students who chose to write magazine articles also received a crash course in using Publisher and were able to produce high quality articles. Interestingly there was an immediate increase in the engagement level once we moved from paper drafts to computer and we were very pleased with the final result. Here is a copy of our finished magazine.