Self-portraits & self-awareness

As I was trying to explain the personalities in our classes last week, I realised we don't have much to go on in the school! We do a lot of stuff with the children but don't display enough of the their work in the classrooms.

I saw a blog post by a new twitterer & frog collector I like called Juan Alberto Lopez Uribe @jaluribe
on this topic recently, and it made me decide we need to do a bit better this year. I strongly recommend following Juan on twitter, and giving his blog a good read.

So today in classes we made a nice poster of ourselves, and the things we like - favourite animals, food, our height etc. I am also going to print a small picture of each of the kids so we can compare our artwork! I think this is a very nice way to get back into the English mood without being too much of a shock to the system :) It will be cool to compare self-impressions too, as students get older! I was glad we did not get any stylised pictures - often very 'manga' images become prevailant in Japanese kids' drawings.

I have recently started using Class Dojo on my phone to try & keep track of students at the kindy I go to, but the problem I have with the app is that I cannot add personalised icons or avatars for each child. As there are about 200 there, I can never remember more than a few names (but I do recognise all faces!) I would like to exploit this app more, as there are cool parental functions as well...for now we stick with Edmodo (which I wish parents would engage with more!)

Grumble over - come & see our new wall art!