Educating the Dragon

On my return from school yesterday I had to stop and take this picture on my phone.

This foam was a result of the storms around 30 July 2008. This picture does not do it justice but cars were disappearing into the foam. mothers were taking pics of primary kids with only their heads visible.

With Will Richardson joining ULearn with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach this year now is as good a time to begin following him if you don’t already.

He has just flagged up a discussion he is having with Curt Bonk on his Ustream at 2pm (Wed) EST… What time is that in New Zealand?…. Wee small hours of Thursday morning I’d bet. Anyway, if you’re up check it out. His post with all the details is here . Here’s hoping I’m awake!

Here is were you come in… in Educating the Dragon.

My Clustrmap reads 28 in the last ‘day’. But when I consult my Google Analytics it only reads 15. There must be something special about the length of a Clustrmap Day.

So can someone out there please educate the dragon. What is going on?

The following is a transcript of a conversation between a Teacher (T) and student (S). (The *****’s indicate a word or phrase that was spoken but not understandable)

If this is the level of their explanation in oral form then why are we expecting them to be able to WRITE a recount evidencing “mainly simple and compound sentences but attempting complex sentences, varying the beginning and length of their sentences”.

T- Tell me about what happened in Duffy Assembly this week.

S- We got them on Wednesday, the Duffy book …….******* Wednesday.

T- What happened?

S- We all got our books in…… we got to go outside and have our picture done and then we get to go home.

T- Who came?

S- ssssss …. Ummmmm…… My mum? ……*******

T- Was there a special visitor?

S- Yes…. There’s a ********

T- Pardon?

S- …. And a lady.

T- Could you say that a little clearer?

S- A penguin and a lady

T- And what did they do?

S- they look after the penguins… They look after all the…. They look after the polar bear and the penguins.

T- And where is she from?

S- ummmm…… I forgot where she come from. We got our Duffy books (My teacher) said….I thought (My teacher) said my name but it want my name.

T- It wasn’t your name?

S (shakes head) It was Mark’s! …M..A..R..K..Marrrrrrrrk!

T- Is there anything else that happened? That you want to tell me about.

S- Ted does!

T- No, I’m asking you.

S- We…we…we … orrrrr….got our parents and then we went outside to have our picture…then we had to hold up our books.

T-Thank you very much.

Allanah and I got talking at Learning@Schools this year about us all going out for Breakfast. I will be checking out some early morning eateries for a Blogger/ Twitter Breakfast.

More info to come closer to the time. But please leave a comment if you want a place booking. URL and/ or Twitter link would be most helpful, too.

Ps. Get the word out too and perhaps we could take over a whole place. Look out Christchurch, here we come.