Week 3!

This was our 2nd full week of school, and my 1st full week on class. Last week, I was on half days so I could complete the literacy and numeracy assessments. It was a pretty good week...until Friday afternoon. My cat passed away and so understandably, I was pretty upset. I'd had him for 7 years. He was a rescue cat, I adopted him from the storm water drain when he was half kitten/cat. So my plans of blogging and sharing what we had gotten up to, went out the window. I spent the weekend grieving and planning for the week ahead.

So here we go, here is a summary of what happened in Term 1, Week 3!

On Monday, I introduced our behaviour system. Here is what my behaviour wall looks like. You can find the rules and tablet posters in my TPT store.

There are 3 apples; Super Students, Think About It and Teacher's Choice (yes, it's basically a simplified version of the clip chart). Students start the day on "Super Students". I will give a verbal warning. After the warning comes the "Think About It" level. At this point, the student's caterpillar is moved down. I remind them to think about their actions, The next level is "Teacher's Choice". At this point it can go different ways; time in the thinking corner, sent to the supervisor or parent contact. Obviously this depends on what has actually happened. Students can move back up the apples if behaviour improves.

In terms of rewards I have student punch cards.

These cards have 6 boxes. They align with the class rules. If I see students following the class rules, they get a tick. At the moment, 3 ticks = reward card, which aligns with the whole school rewards system.

I also use Class Dojo. 10 points = a raffle ticket. At the end of the week, a name is picked and the student gets to pick from the prize box.

So far this system is going well :)

We continued with our activity rotations. Can already see how settled the students are in working in their groups. The only thing that we need to work on is moving to the next table. Transitions can be pretty tricky!

We also had a discussion about playground rules. I whipped up this 'Playground Rules' reader to help teach safe play in the playground.

This week, we learnt about green, blue, purple and brown. I varied the techniques. We did crayon rubbing, paper chipping, painting and sponge painting.

Monday afternoon was our first whole school assembly. So before we went, I read them my 'Assembly Rules' reader.

I probably seem a little bit obsessed with readers, but I feel that students are more likely to listen and understand if the information is presented to them in a book with visuals rather than me just talking at them. With each page, we stop and discuss WHY.

I was quite proud of my students, they sat up nice and straight and did not talk the whole time, even though it was kind of hot in the hall.

This week, we also did nursery rhymes. We looked at Humpty Dumpty and Jack and Jill. We covered where to start reading from, directionality and full stops. Now all my students can tell me the name and purpose of a full stop. Almost all of them can now tell me where to start reading from. Yay! for progress!

We did some sequencing as well as word matching. I used these fabulous resources. Click on the pictures to find them on TPT!

In Math, we started learning about 2D shapes. We sorted shapes using multi-attribute blocks. Sorted shapes on the IWB and played Crocodile Hop (which I absolutely love!).

We also started talking about finding shapes in the environment. I found this amazing song on YouTube to introduce the concept. It was a big hit. I had a squiz at their other videos too. This channel is fabulous. A must subscribe for any teacher!

Next week will be a busy week too! We are starting our numbers, letters and sounds programs as well as our 'Me' unit. Now that we are fully settled, it's time to get down to business! I asked my students what they wanted to learn about and they all named a bunch of wild cats. I am thrilled, not just because I am a cat person, but because animals are really interesting to learn about. Have found a nifty way to link it into the 'Me' unit.

That's about it for now :)

Enjoy the week ahead. Happy teaching!

Five for Friday!

Linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five For Friday!

School - Friday was the last day of Term 3. I am now on holidays for 2 weeks! :D My plans? scootering, swimming, days out and resource making. I am keen to get back out on the scooter as it's been ages since we've been able to do it. Next term I officially start my contract! woo hoo!

TV - We got the TV we wanted! Now our lounge room has a brand new, 50', 3D, smart TV. It's awesome. I love it, especially watching movies in 3D. We watched the Lego Movie and it looked pretty cool especially when there was lots of movement. Of course watching that movie got the Everything is Awesome song stuck in my head, which lead to random outbursts of "everything is awesome!" over the past few days.

There are also other neat features with the TV, like the ability to go online, download apps or even tweet from the TV.

Resources - I've been pretty productive with my TPT store lately. I've made a few new things as well as made different designs for some of my most popular products. This morning I revamped my 2D Shapes pack because I felt like it should be more colourful. It wasn't ugly or anything, I just decided that rainbow paper would make it even better! (did I ever mention I was a perfectionist?). Click on the picture to see it in my store :)

Text Type and Purpose - This week one of the focus points of my reading groups was talking about the text type and author's purpose. I introduced the three types; Informative, Imaginative and Persuasive. We then talked about how we know which type it is, e.g. whether it was giving us facts, about a made up person or telling us why something is good. These three types then link to the author's purpose; inform, entertain or persuade. To help with these concepts I created a few posters.

Comprehension - In my reading groups we are also using the Super Six Comprehension strategies. We do a lot of discussion, which is great but then I want the students to be writing/recording ideas so the classroom teacher has a way to see what we have been doing. So to cater for this, I am using my Super Six Journal Prompts!

These are great because I simply need to print off one or two copies of a page, cut out the strips and then the students glue the prompt at the top of their page. They then complete the activity. So now when the teacher looks back in their book they will be able to easily see what the activity was :)

That wraps up my Five for Friday. Will work on the next part of my Comprehension series sometime in the first week of the holidays.

Enjoy your weekend!

Casual Teaching on Year 1: Rhyming Words, Summarising and 2D Shapes

Today I was on the same Year 1 class as last week. Once again I had a pretty great day with them :)

Here are some of the things we go up to...

Rhyming Words
We reviewed the concept. Students were able to tell me that they are words that sound the same AND have the same sound/letters at the end of the word.

We did a choral read of Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss. This book just lead perfectly into it as it states the rhyming words before putting them into sentences.

After that I gave students a word and they had to brainstorm as many words as possible that rhymed with the word.

To end the lesson we played a whole class game; rhyming word dominoes. The dominoes joined by finding the pictures that rhymed.

Summarising
I introduced the concept of summarising by explaining that we take the most important ideas and say them in our own words. I related this to giving news, how we don't give EVERY single detail.

The text I was was Giraffes Can't Dance.

After reading the text I introduced the 'Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then' strategy using my retelling pack, which you can find over here.

As a class we went through each step;

Somebody? Who was the main character? Gerald.
Wanted? What did he want? To dance.
But? What was the problem? He couldn't.
So? What did he do to fix the problem? He practised.
Then? What happened at the end? He was able to dance at the Jungle Dance.

Then students filled out this graphic organiser, which is from my Super 6 Activity Pack on TPT. You can check it out by clicking here.

Students could either draw or write in the boxes.

2D Shapes
To start this lesson off, students brainstormed a list of all the 2D shapes they could think of. I was pretty impressed that they already knew of nonagons and decagons. We then played a game where students had to find things in the classroom that were a given shape.

After that, students made a shape pizza. In the morning I had cut out a whole heap of shapes from coloured paper. Students had to grab a handful of shapes from the bag, arrange them on their pizza and then count how many of each shape to complete statements about their pizza.

Tomorrow is the last day of term 2 and then we have a 2 week holiday. My goal for the holiday is to go through all my teaching resources and sort them out a bit better. At the moment I have bits and pieces all over the place.

Enjoy the rest of your week! :)