Visual Word Wall

The visual word wall has always been the most used 'interactive' wall in my classroom.

What is a visual word wall and how does it differ from a word wall? The cards have a picture to match the word. This assists students in finding the word that they are looking for. Working in a school with a high population of ESL students, I can't ever imagine using a word wall with no visuals.

Here are some pictures of my Word Wall over the years;

These aren't neat because these walls get used everyday. Let's be honest no working word wall is ever going to stay tidy!

I've had different ways of organising the cards; no organisation, nouns/verbs/adjectives and alphabetically. Overall my favourite way is the alphabetical method. This saves a LOT of time when finding words and aids in reinforcing letter/sound relationships. 

Sorting the cards alphabetically also lends itself to playing fun games such a word hunt - say a word and have students find it on the word wall.

The word cards are based on words that students would use most often. I update the cards when I see a common need or when words keep popping up in student writing.

Check out my Visual Word Wall by clicking the picture below. The cards with items like iPad, PlayStation and Mc Donald's are not included. However I've left blank cards in the product if you would like to make your own for use in your own classroom.

FLASH FREEBIE!

In celebration of reaching the first TPT milestone, I am offering a Flash Freebie! Click on the picture below to get your own copy.

These are a great visual reminder for "Turn & Talk" times in your classroom. I have these stuck on my mini whiteboard and refer to them all the time.

Enjoy!

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!

May: My First Month on TPT + a Celebration FREEBIE!

May was my first month selling on TPT. I would say it has been a success based on units sold and my earnings :) It was a slow start but once I made my first sale things took off and I was making a couple of sales a week.

I was surprised, not because I didn't have confidence in my products, but because I thought it would take longer to get noticed. I'd been participating in pinning parties and collaborative boards but my repins were nothing compared to the other products that had been around for ages. When I first started my store, I had no expectations. I was just giving it a go to see what would happen. I'm always making resources and refining them and it seemed silly not to put them out there for others to use too.

To celebrate my first month and my success, I am posting a FREEBIE! This bunting is bright and colourful, the perfect addition to any classroom! Click on the picture to get your copy on TPT :)

 

If you like the bunting, there are also a-z/number bunting packs in my store in the 'Classroom Displays' section.

That's about it from me for now. I have to get back to emptying and cleaning the apartment. Only 10 days until I am back home in Sydney! Eeek!

Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy the rest of your weekend :)

Say Something! Comprehension Strategy

Today I am sharing a comprehension strategy I used and saw a lot of success with. It's called Say Something! Click on the picture to see the resource on TPT :)

This strategy works by giving students a series of prompts to use when participating in discussions. The prompts help them to articulate their ideas.

I started off by introducing a few prompts each day. We used them in whole class discussions about texts and what we had been learning about. Students would use the prompts to share their ideas with a partner, in small groups and then to the whole class. Once they were confident in using them, I incorporated the prompts into my guided reading groups to have a discussion about the text.

I created a "Say Something! Superhero" display on my wall with the prompts so the students could refer to it. After a while, I noticed that the prompts were being used automatically in their responses, both orally and written. Students who were a bit shy in answering questions, started to respond more often as they had the prompts to help guide their response.

It was also pretty good to hear the students using more sophisticated language.

For older grades these prompts can be used to facilitate discussion during literature circles.

This resource can be printed full size or scaled down for individual student cards.

Freebie: What is a Text? poster

One of the most influential professional development programs I have undertaken was about reading. It was a two year program that really made me think about the way I taught reading.

One of the things that was brought up, was the importance of students being exposed to different types of texts (e.g poems, movies, songs, posters, photos, websites, articles e.t.c). We were asked to create a survey to find out about the reading habits of our students. One thing that came up was that all of my students only saw reading a book as 'reading'. When discussing the results with other teachers, this was a pretty common theme.

So we had a few lessons on "what is a text?". One of the resources I created, was a "What is a Text?" poster. This was used when introducing the lessons and then hung up on the wall for reference. The students were pretty impressed when they realised that they do a lot more reading than they thought they did :)

Click on the picture to download on TPT