Remembrance Day

After what seems like a longer summer than usual here in the UK, the rain has finally started to pour, a cool wind has finally arrived and as always, people are building up to Halloween! What that also means is that it is around a month until Remembrance Day, which is on the 11th November.

We are so pleased to say that we have created a FREE Thinking Kit activity for this. More details about the activity are below, but for those of you who just want to get on and try it as soon as possible:

1. If you haven’t already, then download the FREE Thinking Kit App on the App Store (iPads only). Search Thinking Kit App on the App Store or click here.

2. Go to Educator or Learner > New Session > Download Task

3. Enter the Task Code 8386

This is all you have to do to get the activity onto iPads!

The task gives (primary/elementary/middle) school children 24 cards that have pictures, facts and story-based snippets on them. They are asked to read these together and answer the main question, ‘Why is Sarah attending the remembrance service?’ There are also suggested sub-questions too!

Sarah is a young schoolgirl herself and the cards tell a story about her link to Remembrance Day - in answering the question and sorting through the cards, children learn lots about the topic but also develop skills of collaboration, higher level thinking and discussion.

Here’s an example of how a task may go…

The activity opens with all of the cards in the ‘icon’ size, then children start working together to read some:

They could then use the Group tool to sort the cards into named groups, as well as the fun Sticky Tape to show connections - both excellent contributors to making thinking visible, which in turn is a great formative assessment tool:

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email info@reflectivethinking.com. In the meantime, remember, to use this task completely FREE (and you can keep it free of charge forever):

1. If you haven’t already, then download the FREE Thinking Kit App on the App Store (iPads only). Search Thinking Kit App on the App Store or click here.

2. Go to Educator or Learner > New Session > Download Task

3. Enter the Task Code 8386

National Poetry Day

The temperature has started dropping, people are discussing Halloween costumes and the layers are creeping out of wardrobes once again. That means it’s October! And in October, National Poetry Day is celebrated every year. (Follow @PoetryDayUK for updates and take a look at #nationalpoetryday.)

On 6th October, especially here in the UK, social media will be filled with extracts of poems and tales of favourites. To celebrate, we have created FOUR free poetry activities for iPads - especially for Year 10s and 11s studying for GCSEs.

Each and every activity relates to AQA English Literature Unit 2: Poetry Across Time, but focuses on a different element of Moon on the Tides. There are:

• Character and Voice (Task Code 1980)
• Place (Task Code 7931)
• Conflict (Task Code 4726)
• Relationships (Task Code 9626)

They are similar in how they are set up and are ideally carried out after students have studied all the poems in the relevant section of the anthology.

In each activity, there are illustrated titles of poems from on of the sections above. Students must look at these, discuss what each poem is about (if they know), then sort them into groups which they give names to. By doing so, this facilitates students toward comparing and cross-referencing the poems: an essential skill.

It will also encourage discussion amongst students about the content of the poems and their themes, as well as highlight possible gaps which need to be addressed.

All you need to do to download these activities FREE is:

1. Download the Thinking Kit App - click here or search Thinking Kit App on the App Store.
2. You or students can then go to the app, tap Educator or Learner > New Session > Download Task then enter the Task Code of the activity you want to try:
   
   • Character and Voice (1980)
   • Place (7931)
   • Conflict (4726)
   • Relationships (9626)

If you do use the activities, please share on social media and mention us @refthinking. We'll pick someone out at random to win a FREE individual subscription to the tool that lets you/students create such activities as these, the Thinking Kit Creator.

If you have any questions at all, please tweet us or send me an email at natalie@reflectivethinking.com.

World Maritime Day - FREE iPad activity

29th September 2016 marks the World Maritime Day Forum 2016. A large debate will be going on with four panellists, all about the challenges that global shipping faces. The information page on the day has lots of useful information  about the theme, so take a look if you are interested. You can also check out @IMOHQ, the International Maritime Organization's Twitter page, plus the hashtag #WorldMaritimeDay.

To join in ourselves, we have transformed one of our Digital Mysteries iPad apps into a FREE Thinking Kit activity: Captain Quint. Students are asked to work out what they think happened when Captain Quint and his crew aimed to sail round the world in 50 days. The activity is aimed at those around age 10-12 and works on a whole bunch of mathematics skills, plus collaboration, thinking skills and problem-solving! Cards include maps, tables, lots of story-based clues and hints about what the characters are like.

To download it:

1. Download the Thinking Kit App if you haven't already - search the title on the App Store or click here.
2. Open the app, tap Educator or Learner then Download Task.
3. Enter the code 7017.

A screenshot of the activity within the app.

Full activity description

This activity maps to the maths curriculum. Specifically:

• Number – addition and subtraction
• Number – multiplication and division
• Number – fractions (including percentages)
• Statistics
• Measurement

Although the calculation involved in Captain Quint requires precision, the task is open-ended and provides scope for pupils to come up with and justify more than one possible scenario.

The task will challenge pupils to decide and justify to each other which operations and methods they need to use to solve a multistep problem.  As well as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, some calculations also involve fractions and knowledge of percentage and fraction equivalents. Pupils will need to interpret information in tables, graphs and maps and be able to compare and calculate different measures, involving capacity and distance over time.

It could be used diagnostically within the maths curriculum to assess pupils’ confidence in recognising and applying these concepts.

This task was originally designed with three difficulty levels in mind. By default, the task is the 'hard' option as it has all cards included. In the Thinking Kit Creator, you can edit the activity. For Medium difficulty, delete card 26. For Easy difficulty, delete cards 21-26.

Students bring migration stories to life

Roots & Wings: migration stories in your community

This summer, we had the pleasure of being invited along to a local school’s showcase of students’ work all about migration. This was a celebration of the hard work put in by the year 7 children (age 11-12), as part of a project called ‘Roots & Wings’. Not only was it a celebration of their hard work, but also their parents and extended family and friends. There has been a vast amount of time and effort put into sourcing real stories of migration, and bringing those stories to life.

Another great piece of work

A fantastic model built by the students

This is part of a research project led by Vidya Sarangapani @saarangv, a researcher from Newcastle University’s Open Lab @OpenLab_Ncl (School of Computing Science and School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences). Vidya has been exploring how mobile devices could be used by students to develop learning resources through community collaboration.

Ahmed with two of the students at the Roots & Wings launch

The students worked independently for two terms on the topic of migration within their humanities subject areas (History, Geography and R.E.) They also worked with classmates, community members, parents, grandparents, relatives and friends to collect stories on migration. They then transformed these stories in various ways and their creativity shone through. Some examples of the brilliant work they produced are:

• artefacts.
• video interviews.
• research into political manifesto on immigration policies.
• news shows.
• models to hold migration stories, immigration houses and exciting board games.

Exploring a Thinking Kit migration activity made by students

They were also tasked with developing a mystery/story activity through our web-based tool, Thinking Kit (www.thinking-kit.com). To do this, they took one of their stories, researched ways of presenting it in an iPad activity format and sourced images/compiled snippets of information to add to the online creator. Once they were finished, they were given a short code. They - and those who would use the activity to learn about the stories - then downloaded the free Thinking Kit App, entered the code and downloaded the task. These will help users “develop knowledge and understanding on topics related to migration and its impact on a community.”

@Refthinking @GCMSCentral it has been fabulous using Thinking Kit. learned a lot and will be tweeting shortly on the lessons.

— V (@saarangv) June 21, 2016

A couple of examples of the activities created:

Task 1 in action

Example task 1

Main question: ‘Where did Anna move and why?’

Students told a story through their cards, whilst also weaving in facts they'd sourced and images which complemented the text. There was also a map included to provide geographical context!

Task 2 in action

Example task 2

Main question: ‘Why did Matt migrate to the UK?

This task used a brilliant background and had a narrative thread to engage users in Matt's story. They also sourced images that provided a visual representation of what they wanted their users to understand.

This project is part of the Digital Civics research on “working with individuals and communities to understand the impact of digital technologies in their everyday life.” The first phase of that project culminated on this open day.

The Thinking Kit App is always free. For a free trial of the Thinking Kit Creator, please go to www.thinking-kit.com.