2012 HOTs Wii Project by Oak Class

 

 

 

 

The HOTs project (Hold onto Sports), originally called the Wii-lypmics is the London 2012 Inspire Project for Hounslow.

It was first started in 2009-2010 by Dr. Jo Armitage and Sarah Hoyle from Together We Create and was created to get young people involved in sport through the use of  technology. The aim of the project was to help children learn how people become top athletes, how they prepare their diet,  look after their bodies and present themselves in the media.  The children would research different areas of the athletes: life as the trainer, dietician, physiotherapist, the PR Manager and the athlete itself.  They then present to the judges their project for judging and the children also learn how to play their given sport on the Wii.

This is the third year that my class has taken part in the The HOTS project. Here is our 2010 project and our 2011 project.

This year we again focused on Darius Knight, a London born 2012 Olympic hopeful in table tennis.

We will find out in the next few weeks if we make it to the finals. Fingers crossed!

More about Letters

Letters have been completed, signed, sealed and about to be posted! We have also created a secure area for Darius Knight to sign in and see the class’ page about him on the school’s Fronter MLE (Managed Learning Environment)….(what do I call this as it seems quite a mouthful at the moment!!!)

We did this because in the email Darius had originally sent me,  he had said that it might take a few weeks for him to respond as he might be competing in Table Tennis tournaments outside the UK.

The children discussed whether we should just attach the letters to an email but they came to the decision that it would be ‘Way cool to get a bunch of letters telling someone that we thought they were famous!’

By sending Darius both he will have a link to ALL their online work about him which he can see anywhere as well as getting physical copies of their letters.

Off now to post the letters and send an email to him with the instructions of how to sign in. ;o)

Letter Writing

Today we looked at letter writing and discussed some of the different reasons people write letters and the types of letters they write. There was some discussion about whether people would in fact write letters rather than send an email, which is a valid point. After accepting the fact that in fact people DO write letters at times we began to look at different types.

We looked at Informal Letters, Business Letters, Letters of Complaint and other Persuasive Letters. We talked about the language used in each type as well as looking at their layouts.

After looking at each of the types, the class decided that the letters they wanted to write to Darius Knight would be a persuasive letter because everyone wanted to persuade Darius to come for a visit, if he could.

I was very impressed with their first drafts and the focus that they had throughout the session. They were ALL happy to either read these first drafts out to the rest of the class themselves or else have me read them aloud. For anyone who has worked with children with poor esteem you will understand what a big thing this is!

To take advantage of the roll they were on we decided to carry on our writing into the second lesson and after making some quick edits and reminders of punctuation (again!) the children started to type up their work.

What quickly became evident was that they all were making further edits to their work as they went along. They were adding and adapting things that others in the class had put in their letters.

Whilst they wrote I had various videos playing on the IWB of interviews with Darius and clips from tournaments. The children started adding little bits from these, as well, into their writing. Some even enquired in their letters about the way he held his racket/bat.

They all thought very carefully about their word choices and what they might say to persuade Darius to maybe come for a visit and if that wasn’t possible then to have him send them his autograph.

I’m pretty sure that it is because Darius is a person that the children can relate to and the fact that they now know quite a lot about him that they are focussed and motivated to write. They can see a purpose to what they are doing.

Using 2Create a Superstory

At BETT 2010 I was lucky enough to have been able to take away an approval copy of 2Create a Superstory from 2Simple.

As with all their other software, it is very intuative and EXTREMELY simple to use. The layout is similar in all their software which allows children to quickly be able to work with it with very little instructions.

My class felt extremely special as not only were they the first to use the programme but they were also allowed to use my personal laptop as it is the only one with the software loaded.
(It’s amazing how long one can hold one’s breathe!)

We were all very impressed with how quickly their work went from a ‘normal’ Word doc. to being ‘published’ in an online book.

I really think this will be a real motivation to their writing and anything that encourages reluctant writers sounds great to me. I also love the ease in embedding it into Fronter/MLE pages. Now to convince the powers that be.

Note Taking and Biography Writing

Last week we used this TimesOnline article as our class text and to learn more about Darius Knight. We began by reading it as a whole class and highlighting new vocabulary. We then decided which bits were the most important and these notes were collected on the IWB in bullet points.

Darius’ early life touched a chord with many of them and a very interesting conversation about home lives ensued. It is during these unplanned moments that some of the most important conversations and incidental learning can take place.

The children used these notes to plan, edit and redraft their biographies of Darius Knight.  Their motivation to write was a pleasure to see.

The plan was to publish their work today but the children had other ideas……

To be continued…….

The Wii arrives

On the 1st day back in 2010 our class set up the Wii to the IWB with great excitement and anticipation. Setting up the console caused some small problems but a knight in shining armour came to our rescue and fixed it (thanks Chris).

Later in the afternoon we each created our individual mii characters. We also used an online avatar maker to make ones we could print off to be annotate and use in a future lesson.

During Literacy we watched the Wii Sports Resort Table Tennis advert starring Darius Knight and began to learn who Darius Knight is and why he was chosen to advertise the game.

I think Darius will be a FABULOUS role model for my kids and will hopefully inspire them to set goals and help them understand how to work towards them.