Sunday 20 May 2012

Team Hero Vs League of Evil









This was the end of a great 4 week literacy topic all about super heroes and super villains. I ran this last year after seeing a talk about it at a LIME conference last year by Andy Dickenson. @Andyisatwork Credit to him coming up with the idea and finding the art work. Videos are my versions of his idea.

I will roughly summarise the work done here and link to any resources. If you want more of this please contact me i'm happy to share all the planning and resources.

Week 1



We started with the whole of the year group in the hall - stickers either a Team Hero or League of Evil and showed this video to get them thinking. We discussed what superheroes and super villains where and designed and created our own characters with their posers and abilities. The children where encouraged to think about heroes with gadgets as well.

Click here to look at a sample of the characters designs and application forms. 

We did some role play and by the end of the week where applying to join either the League of Evil or Team Hero.



Week 2

The children where accepted into Team Hero or League of Evil. This week we wrote diary entries and Newspaper reports on all the adventures and hijinks that happened. Diamonds where rescued , gold was stolen and  roads flooded. We supported this with drama work.

Week 3

We wrote a story about an adventure that we had had. The children had to pair up with a counterpart and decided that could when a plan was stolen. Wy did the Villain try and take it? How did you stop it. We did some drama work based on this and then wrote diaries or newspaper reports on the event.





We where also lucky enough to have an Illustrator, Amanda Pollard come into school to talk about how to illustrate. This lead into out final weeks work. Check out her blog.


Week 4

We had thought about our characters Origins for homework, so this week the children turned these ideas into a comic book story. They where planned the drawn, inked and then coloured. I'll update this later with our finished  work next week,




iPads are awesome.

I have been lucky enough over the last few weeks to have access to 10 iPads to use with my class.

They are amazing devices I will summarize some of the various activities I have done.

Numeracy

- We where investigating properties of 3d shapes. The children had to make models using straws and blue-tack. The iPads where used to make a quick record of their work. In 3s each group once they made the shape had to take a photo and then add it to pages and note down the faces, edges and vertices of the shapes. I showed the class quickly how to take a photo and then insert it into pages. A number of children had not used an iPad before but with minutes the class was on task discussing and working on the task at hand. The groups then emailed me the work at the end of the lesson.


Literacy
- As part of our super hero topic I used the Comixology App on the iPad to download some free comics that we could read and respond to during guided reading. This was a nice activity that ran independently. You can see some of the children's responses here. I didn't have to show the children how to use the app as we had used it the previous week for whole class comprehension when we looked at another comic. Credit fro this idea should be give to Anthony Evans read his post here.




History




- We have been studying the Tudors. One of our lesson was to research the wifes of Henry VIII. In previous years I had used the class laptops and provided a links to sites via the sever or fronter, This time I used the iPads and some QR Codes. It was great children opened the scan app scanned the code which was on the board and printed round the room. Scanning from the board didn't always work annoyingly. Children though quickly got to work and it was great seeing the devices being used like a textbook would.


I want more 30 in a class could be amazing.









As part of the Redbridge Games Network I have been luck enough to explore