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Any feedback, ideas for improvement or comments are encouraged, particularly from our regular viewers! Please e-mail me at kdh.culturechat@gmail.com

May - 

April - France and French culture

March -  American/Native American Indian Culture

February:   We are learning about Maori culture and New Zealand.

Phase 1

We have reached the end of the original phase of our project. I would like to say a big thank you to all parents and carers, colleagues and educationalists who have supported us so far. We hope you enjoy the new direction that we have chosen to take Culture Chat and look forward to sharing our next update with you.

Week 5

Friday -It is the last time Ash class and I will do Culture Chat together in this way. I am sad about this but excited because I know they are keen to move onto the next part of the project and will keep what we've started going. We are also all excited about being in the local news next week and hope more people will come and join in the project...
 As a class we discussed the project and shared some reflections. In particular, the children's feedback and thoughts on the project. They were all positive and very keen to know if their blog would be continuing after half-term. We have organised that the children's blog will continue to be updated weekly, although the day of update may change from the Thursdays/Fridays we have been doing it on so far. Culture Chat will be run as a lunchtime club for Ash class only but anyone who wants to can join in the project by commenting, asking questions and interacting on the site as we have been doing so far. This will hopefully allow us to continue exploring the world and continue to generate questions and the fantastic thinking we have seen from Ash class so far.

I will post an update by 14.02.13 to begin the next phase of Culture Chat. 

Thursday -We looked at the statistics for our site and talked about what would be happening next in the project. We asked who would be interested in doing the project the way that we had thought of and were given a positive response.

Wednesday -The children took complete control and led their own Culture Chat today as I had lost my voice! We decided that we would do two updates for this week because it's been busy and the children had lots they wanted to post about. I nominated a typist and they discussed as a class the things they wanted to talk about. It was a philosophical, democratic approach as I sat at the back of the class and only intervened to point at children with their hands up! We listened to what each child said then as a class the children said which sentence they wanted to use or merged people's suggestions. It was a bit like watching parliament in session as they all had an input then made collective decisions. Once our time for updating was up, the children read through their writing as a class and edited by telling the typist of any changes that were needed. The typist did a brilliant job - he is only an 8yr old but managed to listen to suggestions, type and participate in conversation at the same time. I am very proud of Ash class.

Tuesday -We have been given positive feedback by the National Educational Trust! We talked about why people might like our project or be interested in it and reflected on the fact that we now have a following, particularly from America, Germany and Russia. We thought about how we may keep our audience engaged from now on and continue the project, and how this could be done as a collaboration between myself and the children when we won't be seeing each other every day after Friday! The project was initially to get people talking positively about culture and to engage with the world around us. Now we have begun to do that, none of us want to end our Culture Chat time!
 
Monday - We looked at our new comments and talked about the sites activity over the weekend. We had a few new countries view the site and have now reached so many that we can't view all of them in our stats! Our stats only record the top 10 visiting coutries and we are now upto 15. I added the connections page to make sure we could keep track of where we've reached and will continue to post any new countries onto it. As we did not know where all the countries were, we looked at them on Google Earth and considered where they were in relation to us. The children predicted which way the Earth would 'turn' to get to certain countries after I'd told the children of countries which bordered the one we were unfamiliar with. They were able to tell me where the UK was, where we were in the UK and point out nearly all of the countries we have looked at so far in the project.

Week 4

Friday - We updated Culture Chat late today because we wanted to tell everyone in the afternoon assembly about the project first. The children were really excited! In the afternoon, the children suggested things as a class that they could include in their update or wanted to talk about and then in mixed-ability groups, they each wrote a paragraph about a given aspect. The groups are different each week.We then composed an update as a class with each group reading out their writing and the rest of the class chipping in any extras or adaptations they'd suggest. We were a bit pressed for time this week so I did the pictures and emphasised words.
We are also checking our stats everyday now. The project is starting to become very child-led as the children are able to read the graphs and data shown within the blogger account. They have developed a responsible attitude towards the site and ask me to show them the 'inner workings' of the account several times a day. They have even asked if I will give them my password so that they can keep it going after I leave! Unfortunately, it is linked to my e-mails, but Mrs Drinkwater and I have been discussing ideas for what could happen next as we have really enjoyed this project too and the site seems to have developed a following. We like seeing our regular American viewers each morning who have signed in during the early hours (our time) and our German viewers who sign in each week. Stay tuned for more information on what will happen!

Thursday - We thought about the countries we had learned about so far and mentioned climate zones. We discussed any new questions as a class and posted them up on the 21&28 questions page.

Wednesday - We looked at Darion and Cody's update again and talked about what a 'chicken bus' is. To give the children a more realistic experience, we all stood up and enjoyed standing with a little space for a moment. They then gradually moved in towards each other, discussing how it felt as they did so (squashed! Can't see anything!). We did this twice so that the children who were originally on the outside could have a chance to be in the middle too. Whilst it was full of giggles, the children did also consider how that would feel if they were like that for an extended period of time. They also asked engaging questions such as how do you get off the bus and how does the driver know you'd like them to stop.

Tuesday - We read Verena's October update today and considered what Africa is like. We talked about the chicken bus and I described the experiences of buses I'd had in Nepal. We linked the picture of the chicken bus that Darion and Cody talked about with the buses that Verena talked about in her blog and children were quick to consider the differences and similarities between these buses and transport in the UK.
 
Monday - We read Darion and Cody's new update and recapped the countries they had travelled to so far. We also discussed the volcano, San Pedro and what it was like to be at the top of it. One of the questions the children have previously asked is whether it was hot at the top of the volcano. The answer from Darion and Cody was that it was cold because the volcano's not an active one but that they were hot from the effort of climbing it! Once we had discussed this we showed new comments that had been left over the weekend. One was from a member of our class who mentioned his great-aunt is from Guyana so we used Google Earth to find out where this was and considered which countries were around it. Some of the children were able to identify where it was in relation to America and Mexico, which we have previously talked about. We zoomed in and out of Mexico using Google Earth and talked about whether South America was part of America or whether places like Columbia, Venezuela and Guyana are countries. The children also pointed to some islands (Cayman Islands), wanting to know what they were called and why it said UK next to them when we zoomed in.

Week 3

Friday - Today I showed the children the 'inner workings' of the blog. Firstly, we looked at their week 3 update which had been uploaded. This week the children told me which pictures they wanted and which words were to be highlighted/coloured/bigger/smaller. The children were very specific with their directions and chose not only to have some of their own pictures uploaded but also images of the Rama and Sita story and snowmen from the internet. It was great to see them taking such ownership of their work! We also read some of the new comments that have been posted. The children are becoming very observant on when we've had new ones and are keen to read them all. We also briefly discussed why we're not putting images of ourselves on the internet and did a quick demonstration of lifting one of the pictures from our blog page and pasting it elsewhere.
 I showed the children how the blog looks when I've signed in and we discussed how many page views they've had so far (at 9am it was 675). They were very pleased with this! Using the stats page we looked at the graphs that can be created to show how many people are looking at the blog at certain times and within certain time periods. I asked the children if any of them were signing in at 6-7am in the morning as we seem to have regular viewing figures for then but we were all surprised and excited to learn that this isn't any of us looking at the site. We also looked at the countries people are signing in from and considered which of our pages is the most popular for readers. I am confident in saying children understand the purpose of a blog and that there is an audience for their writing.
In fact, the children were so enraptured about the information shown within the blog account that I said we'd check back at the end of our school day to see if we had any new views, because we really needed to begin our Literacy lesson! When we looked again at 2.55 we found that our page views had gone up to 688 - the children worked out the difference and wanted to see the pages which show the times we've had visitors and the countries they are form. Currently we have had views from 7 different countries, mostly in the last 3wks, which made us hopeful that we could have 1000 views by Monday when we next check as a class.....

Thursday - I showed the children the 'snow page' that we have added so that they can share their creations. We composed our blog update a bit differently this week. As a class we discussed things the children would like to include in their blog this week and made a bullet point list. In groups of 4-6, the children were then given responsibility for writing a paragraph about one of the aspects they wanted to include. They then read them out to each other and I typed them up in MS Word as they did so. As a class, the children adapted each other's sentences and put forward extra details they'd like to add in to each other's paragraphs. At the end, I asked the children whether they wanted any pictures included or any words emphasised. They were very specific and suggested that for some areas such as the Rama and Sita story (which we acted out) we didn't put pictures of ourselves up but used images from the internet that related to the story.

Wednesday - We looked at the photograph of the classroom in Nepal. In talk partners the children discussed similarities/differences between their own classroom and the monks classroom then we shared their observations as a class. The children made suggestions such as:
"there may be no carpet in the classroom because they don't want the floor to get dirty"
"there is nothing on the walls" (asked why) "..maybe it's because it helps them concentrate"
"there are long benches like we have in the dining hall"
"the windows are different and have a wiring/pattern at the top"

Tuesday - We looked at the questions page and discussed some of the answers that we have found so far...and some of the ones Miss Halliwell is taking longer to answer! If anyone can answer any of the questions you are welcome to e-mail and join in the project.
 
Monday - We discussed the photographs from Nepal. We considered whether we have flowers like 'the bird of paradise' in the UK and looked at the photograph of the classroom in Kathmandu with the monks in it. We then looked more in depth at the photograph of the Mundirs in Durbar Square and counted how many there were. We discussed that Durbar square was similar to what market squares in the UK were like historically.

Week 2 
*This week, we have added a 'scrawl wall' to our classroom. Here children can add thoughts/feelings/things they want to share to the wall throughout the week at any time. We will then use this to help us compose our own blog update.


Friday -No CultureChat due to snowy Britain!

Thursday -As a class we looked at our previous blog update and discussed what things would be interesting for our readers which we could include in this week's update. I gave the example of telling the children what I'd done the previous night in a very simple form (e.g. I went home, watched tv, used the laptop, had dinner then went to bed). The children immediately wanted to know extra details and began to think about how their readers would feel. They have tried to use this understanding of readers in their blog this week.
 They then composed their own update in groups of 4-6. The children shared their writing in groups and as a class chose sentences and phrases from each other's work that they wanted to use in their final class update. Some sentences or phrases were developed through the use of talk partners or guided questioning to reinforce the focus of how our readers would feel when reading our update. The class update is displayed on the interactive whiteboard as I type, so the children can all see and share ideas as the text appears. This week they were able to spot when words had been repeated (I type exactly what the children say) and were able to then adapt their writing so that it was more interesting and made sense. The aim is that these things will hopefully transfer into their individual writing in Literacy.

Wednesday - No CultureChat due to teacher absence. The children designed posters of the gifts they could make from recycled materials.

Tuesday -We showed the scale of different mountains by building towers of lego in class to give an impression of the differences in size! When talking about mountains and landscapes the children requested to watch the 'India/Nepal' video that are a montage of experiences from my friends travels. Whilst watching the video the children took interest in the architecture of Indian buildings and spotted the Himalayas which we filmed when visiting Nepal. We considered how high hills and mountains are in Britain and briefly compare them at certain points when watching the video. We then looked at Verena's blog and made comparisons between how Michael had recycled items to make gifts in Africa and how/what we recycle in the UK. We touched upon why people may recycle in both the UK and Africa but this discussion did not really develop today so we considered what gifts we could make from recycled materials here. The children had some great ideas so we have made a list of them which will be posted onto the site. I told them of the chandelier made from recycled bottles and we decided that we may attempt to make our own at some point over the next few weeks...
 
Monday -As a class we talked about whether the internet is 'real'. Children discussed their ideas, sharing their reasoning for their thoughts. We looked at pictures of Guatemala (where Darion and Cody are now) and make comparisons with the landscape, firstly around our own location and then with the UK generally. We discussed the fact that Darion and Cody are about to climb/currently climbing a volcano and thought about what it would feel like to be there. The children were very eager to know when the volcano last erupted!

Week 1

Friday - As a class, the children looked at the list of what they wanted to include in their update and the feelings they'd experienced over the week. They briefly considered how the world was going to know who they were and how they were going to keep themselves anonymous. Ash class decided that we would not mention the name of our school or any person's names because people would be able to find us. They then went off in groups of 4-6 to compose their own update. After 10mins the children returned to the carpet and each group shared their writing. As a class, we looked at each point they'd wanted to include in their update and chose sentences and phrases from each other's work. I typed the text they'd chosen. This week the pictures and font presentation were inserted by me.

Thursday - As a class the children discussed things they could include in their blog update. They considered the things Darion and Cody had included in their blog and some people had questions about Mexico which are posted on the 'Questions 1 page'. In talk partners, children chose 3 things from the week that they wanted to include. We discussed them as a class and made a list of the most common on the IWB. In talk partners, children discussed feelings which they could include in their update and we shared ideas as a class. I recorded their ideas in a list on the IWB.
During the morning we used Google earth to see where India was and to find out which countries were next to it for topic work. The children were quick to spot the space buttons and were eager to view the Moon so we spent a few minutes exploring the Moon, Mars and the stars too. The children wanted to know if the star swirl on the stars view is the milky way or if it is a wormhole...

Wednesday - As a class we discussed where Mexico is. We then used Google Earth to look it up again and the children pointed in the direction the world would turn to reach it. As the world turned, some children were able to identify New Zealand. We read some facts about Mexico on the internet and the children were particularly interested to learn the pupils in Mexico attend school in shifts! Next, they discussed the meaning of 'climate' in talk partners. As a class we discussed the meaning of tropical and temperate. The children wrote 3 sentences about Mexico.

Tuesday - In talk partners, we discussed what area of the world we'd looked at yesterday and what we'd learned. As a class, we then used Google earth on the IWB to find out where Mexico was as nobody knew. When using Google earth I asked the children where we were and zoomed out from our location gradually. The children commented on how small the UK is compared to other countries. When looking at Mexico some children asked what the country above it was and whether Mexico is part of the USA. As a class we discussed how America is divided into states. 

Monday -This is the first day we all met! We talked about what the project was and I introduced the children to the aims and outcomes. The children then worked in groups of 6 to create a poster about everywhere they'd visited and anything they knew about other countries. They discussed their current knowledge and experiences with enthusiasm! The posters were stuck up on our Culture Chat display.
 We looked at Darion and Cody's blog and thought about the similarities and differences between how Christmas was celebrated in Mexico and how it is celebrated in England. In particular, we talked about whether the shops in England were open and whether this differed between cities and villages.