New Blog!

I have decided to make a new blog with a more fitting name!! This blog was originally going to document my day to day life and ended up being all about teaching so I definitely needed a new one just for teaching! Come and join me over at Lifelong Learners in Prep to stay up to date with everything that's going on in my teaching life =)

I considered just changing my name and links here but then any links will be broken. All of my posts are over on the new blog too - it just means I have to build up my followers again but I know you will all join me over on my newly updated blog.

I'm still sick!

I went back to the doctors yesterday to get a medical certificate and was ordered to spend the rest of the week at home resting. I was a bit bummed because I really wanted to go back to school today to check up on my kiddies and my stick insects! I am a bit worried about what I will find when I go back on Monday. I am glad that the doctor gave me another day of rest though because I also had a small toe operation yesterday and it's now very painful this morning. I am definitely not the healthiest I have ever been at the moment and I have the biggest dark rings around my eyes!

I have been trying really hard to just rest at home but I can't tear myself away from school work. On Wednesday afternoon, I was booked in to a Jolly Phonics PD so I went along to that and got some fresh new ideas for my phonics program. I have made some neat little picture and word cards [and used a few pictures from google, so they're a freebie] to play a game called 'Choose my picture.' Basically, I put 2, 3, or 4 pictures up on the board (based on the kids ability) and sound out one of the words like c-a-t orally with the actions and the kids have to pick which word I am sounding out. This game is great for the level my Prep kids are working at currently. Down the track, I can sound out the word just using the actions with no sound and have the kids try and work out which word I'm sounding out. Later, we could write the words on the board or use the word cards and have the kids read and match the images and words. We could even use one picture and three words that might have similar sounds and have the students find the right word. Click the image below to download my file from googledocs.

 I also finally made my grouping cards for rotations! I have 25 students in my classroom [such a good number] so we generally have 5 groups with 5 kids in each. I made these cards so that I can randomly group my students for their rotational activities. Each student receives a card from the deck and then I decide whether I will group by colour, shape or number. For example, I might group by colour and have all of the blue shapes work together, pink shapes together, green shapes together etc. I might group by number and have all the 1's work together, the 2's together, the 3's together etc. Or I might group by shapes and have all the triangles work together, the squares together, the hearts together etc;

These cards are perfect for my class because I have 25 students. I might make some more for classes of 20 and classes of 30 so that other teachers can use these cards too as I understand that not everyone will have a perfect class of 25 like me! Click on the picture below to purchase a copy of my sorting cards for $1 on teachers pay teachers.

I am now working on finalising my daily plan to make sure I'm fitting in enough time for everything I need to do! I am currently not fitting in the 5 hours of scheduled maths each day but that's a whole other blog post for another day!

Science Activities

Today I am spending the day at home due to Doctors orders! I was sick only 2 weeks ago with a cold and now it has flared up again and become a viral ear and throat infection. I am starting to lose my voice so the doctor suggested I stay at home today and rest my voice before it goes completely. I felt a bit anxious about leaving my class with no warning today but I left a 4 page plan for my relief teacher so hopefully they are all working super hard today and are on their best behaviour.

Our Science unit this term is about living things and their needs. We were supposed to go on nature walks around our school and collect animals to observe in our classroom. It turns out there is nothing interesting in our school and it is also very hard work trying to escort my 25 preps around the school grounds quietly (and alone) with only 2 hands when I really need 10. We have also had a lot of rain recently which also put a damper on our plans. I also found our mandated curriculum unit to be incredibly boring not very engaging. I ended up purchasing the Primary Connections unit which has been modified to fit in with our C2C units perfectly and it's much more interesting and engaging! I'm finding our C2C units are too difficult to implement and take much more time than the 1 hour that it suggests.

I posted on facebook for help finding insects for my room which led to a lady on gumtree that sold stick insects for $3 - bargain!! Hubby and I went and got 4 stick insects for my room, cleaned mums old mouldy tank and collected sticks and leaves all in the space of 4 hours on a Sunday afternoon.   Don't you think the tank looks amazing?! He also made some crafty DIY lids for the top of the tank using fly screen, cardboard and velcro dots lol

On Tuesday, hubby took the morning off work and followed me to school to help set up our new friends in my classroom. Apologies in advance for the terribly unfocused photograph of our science table lol but you get the idea! I'm wanting to add some more magnifying glasses and maybe some little textured bits and pieces for touching.

We have just started to talk about the needs of living things. We made a chart comparing what animals and humans need to live then the kiddies completed a graphic organiser showing what they needed to live. Most of the kiddies copied my example exactly but there were a good little handful that really thought hard about what they needed to survive (apples to eat, water bottles to drink from, a house to live in.)

We also took a little notebook each home this week to fill in some observations about our pets which the kids will share with the class during show and tell next week. We will begin to talk about pets in more detail next week! I also suggested turning home corner into a Vet [hoping to get some of my noisy boys away from the blocks and into some dramatic play] and before I knew it, the entire class were happily (but still noisily) engaged in some fabulous play!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

This week we are going to do some work with the fabulous Bill Martin Jr book, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. I only discovered this book earlier this year on Pinterst and ordered my own copy from The Book Depository straight away!

I hopped onto Pinterest to see what I could find and noticed this fabulous letter counting activity from Kinderdi which I loved!

Basically, it's a fun craftivity where the kids count the number of letters in their name. We're working hard this week to distinguish the difference between letters, words and sentences so the activity is perfect!

I've actually had the craftivity ready to go since Week 1 but my kiddies just weren't ready for all the cutting and instruction following. I just need to decide whether to let the kiddies go wild with watercolours [even though it almost always ends with spilled water] or to take the easy road and have the kiddies colour with their crayons. Our classroom walls are very bare at the moment so we desperately need to inject some colour and student work into our space so I'm leaning towards the paint option. We might do this activity in small groups during our Learning Play time over the course of our week.

You can download a copy of the printable aspects of this activity by clicking the link. I have included the trees and sentence strip but you will have to type up your students names in a word doc and print those yourself. Enjoy!

The honest truth!

We've just finished our forth week of school and boy was it a tough one. I had my first teacher meltdown and had to ring the office in tears. A few of my kiddies witnessed me at breaking point =( The principal and deputy both came to my aide instantly - one taking my class and the other taking me for a debrief. I've been trying so hard to stay strong but I have never felt so stressed in my life! I was spending most afternoons after school crying and even woke up last weekend bawling my eyes out thinking about the terrible job I had been doing. I have been blessed with a particularly tough class with a group of defiant students who just don't seem to 'get' school, our rules or our routines. There is rarely a moment that I have all students engaged unless we are reading a story, using the interactive whiteboard or playing. I just got to the point where I had no idea what to do and even considered leaving for good. I've only been teaching for 1 year so I was absolutely heartbroken that I was already having doubts about everything.

If you know me, you would know that teaching is my WORLD. I spend every waking moment thinking about school and what I can do to become a better teacher. I have already clocked up my 20 hours of professional development for the year and couldn't imagine my life without school.

Luckily, my meltdown seemed to be a turning point for me. I ended the week with a renewed love for teaching and a plethora of strategies to implement. Yesterday I had our amazing behaviour specialist come in to observe my class [my beautiful teacher aide took my class for the 30 minutes so that I could sit with our speciailist and talk her through my problems]. She made me feel 100% better about my abilities and gave me a lot of fantastic advice and strategies to help my little preppies settle into our routines a little bit better.

 So this is what I'm doing at the moment. The yellow chart is something I am starting next week. We will all have a common goal (this week we will be working on joining in on classroom activities) and every time ALL of the students are doing this, we will add a smiley face to the chart. Once we reach our goal, we will get a reward that the kids will decide on themselves on Monday. I got this awesome idea from Coffee, Kids and Compulsive Lists earlier this week. Her reward chart is much more awesomer than mine so go check out her post.

The top picture is my cool down table. I originally had crayons and paper here but they were being thrown at students on the carpet more than they were being used correctly. I plan on sticking some visual prompts on the board but not really sure what to include.

The middle picture is my green choice/red choice necklace. I used it a lot in the first week or so but not so much now. I'm going to attach it to my keys so that it's always on me! We also did a picture sort of green and red choices which is now displayed on the whiteboard with my peg chart.

So basically, children that do great move their pegs up (and get a special jewel for the peg once they are 'off the chart') and can also add stickers to their own personal sticker chart. Every 5 stickers earns them a prize from the prize box. Students doing the wrong thing get a warning, then move their peg down. If they still make negative choices, they move to the cool down table and move their peg down to consequence. If they continue the behaviour, they go to the buddy class. I need to be more strict though and plan to add a visual reminder of this sequence to the whiteboard which has become our behaviour board!

I guess my purpose here is to find out how you manage those tough behaviours! I just want to get on with some teaching and stop spending soooo much time redirecting and moving students to our carpet space or back into the classroom.