Sight Word Tracking & Assessing

Keeping track of sight words has been a lot easier with my Sight Word Track & Assess tool.

Click on the picture above to check it out on TPT.

There are three different ways this can be used;

1) Track on a whole class sheet

2) Track on individual assessment sheets

3) Track on a whole class sheet and an individual sheet

I prefer doing option 3. Yes, it means more work for me, but it means that at the end of the year, I'll have a sheet which I can pass onto the next teacher so that they don't have to start again from scratch. It also means I can easily see trends on the whole class sheet to plan my guided sessions.

Here's a peek at whats included in the pack;

Whole class tracking sheet

Boxes are highlighted when students can read the word. I use a different coloured highlighter each time to show progression. I record the key at the top of the page.

I love this, as it's easy to see which words need to be taught/retaught and any common patterns.

Flashcards

I prefer holding flashcards up rather than having students read of the sheet. I find that some students become overwhelmed when they see a sheet full of words. Print on coloured card if you want to sort them into different levels or look a bit more exciting than plain white.

Individual Assessment Sheet

This can be used to keep a record that can be passed onto the next teacher. Hold up flashcards and highlight if the student can read the word. Once again, use a different coloured highlighter if you want to track progression.

Click on the picture below to find it on TPT.

Five for Friday!

Once again I am linking up with Doodle Bugs for Five for Friday! 

I really need to get back in the habit of doing weekly blogs, but I never have the time! So here are 5 things that have been happening since I last posted :)

The prize box in my room has been introduced. This works in two ways; raffle and Student of the Week. On Friday afternoon, I pull a name out of the box and the student gets to pick a prize (10 dojo points = 1 ticket). I also have Student of the Week, where the student gets a fancy award and gets to pick a prize and I make a little speech about why the student earned the title.

The things in my box are just simple party nick-nacks that can be picked up for a couple of dollars. I always have; mini trophies, medals, bracelets, wants, dinosaurs and ball animals.

We have been working a lot on our letters and sounds. My alphabet packs have come in handy. The best part about these is that the activities are the same so that once students are familiar with the activity, they build confidence in completing it by themselves.

That is my hand and my example sheets :)

We are still working on our numbers. The most popular games are Roll & Build and Number Fishing.

We also created Number Dalmatians!

This week was senses week. We learnt about our five senses by doing various sensory activities and discussion about each.

I am super excited because next week we are learning about animal senses and linking it to our senses. Have spent the past couple of hours researching and making Glogsters with lots of pictures and videos. I think animals are very interesting to learn about.

I don't have a picture for this one, but this week we have been focusing on the sight words; I, am, a. We have a box of guided reading books in our room so I picked out the ones that follow the structure "I am ...". I told the students that they would be able to read it now that they know two of the words. They were skeptical at first, but then once they actually read a page they were quite proud of themselves. Seeing their faces light up in excitement when they realised that they had read the book by themselves was awesome! Proud teacher over here :D

That's it from me, have a great weekend! Check out the other blogs in the linky!

Comprehension - Part #5. Questioning

Questioning involves students asking and answering questions about a text. I'm not talking about basic questions like "what colour was the house?". I'm talking about deeper questions like "I wonder why the character....".

To get students familiar with asking the deep questions, introduce the thinking stem "I wonder". This automatically lends itself to deeper questioning as it requires students to come up with a question where the answer is not immediately obvious.

When introducing this strategy with my year one class, I used the wordless text, Window by Jeannie Baker. Any wordless text would do, but I love Jeannie Baker books as there is always so much going on in every picture.

As we looked through each page, I gave students a post-it note and asked them to write down their "I wonder..." questions. I got responses such as;

"I wonder why the birds are flying away from the park"

"I wonder why the boy is playing inside and not outside"

We then shared our questions with the class, and used these questions to start a discussion and hopefully find an answer to them. For the question about the birds, one student suggested that the birds were flying away because trees were being chopped down to make room for the houses. Pretty awesome for a year 1 class right?

By providing students with a thinking stem, I helped scaffold their learning, as opposed to just telling them to come up with a question about the text.

Once we had this down, we moved on to other thinking stems that promote deep questions, such as

What would happen if?

Why would...

These stems work best with a rich text, simply use the same procedure as introducing the "I wonder..." questions.

After the introductory lesson/s implement deep questioning as part of your guided reading groups. These questions also link really well with any scientific investigation!

You can even set up an "I wonder..." wall in the classroom that can be used throughout the year.

I have a bunch of Comprehension resources in my store that are very useful for implementing the strategies in your classroom :)

Next up, Summarising!

Comprehension - Part #4. Making Connections

Making Connections is a great strategy to get students thinking about the text and how it is similar to themselves, another text or the world in which they live in. Making connections helps develop a deeper understanding of the text and the characters.

The easiest one to start with is Text-To-Self Connections.

To introduce this, I would pick a basic book that is about a situation that pretty much anyone can relate to. For the younger grades, any Charlie & Lola book is perfect. Before reading, tell students that you want them to listen to find a part of the book that is similar to their life. Read through the book and then have students talk with a partner about how they are similar to book/character.

Put up the prompt "This reminds me of..." on the board and have students use this to guide their answer for reporting back to the class.

In terms of bookwork, have students draw a picture and then write a sentence/paragraph about their connection. You can use the following sentence starters;

* This reminds me of...
* The character is like me because...
* I remember when...

Once students are comfortable with Text-To-Self connections, move onto Text-To-Text. Make the connection (ha!) between what they have just done and what they will be doing now (listening to connect). Good texts to use for this;

* The Gruffao and The Gruffalo's Child
* The Three Little Pigs and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs
*  The Stinky Cheeseman & Other Fairly Stupid Tales and any fairytale covered in the book
* Little Red Riding Hood and The Wolf's Story

Once again have students discuss and then write. This time use the sentence starters;

* The character _______ reminds me of ____________ in ________ because...
* The text ____________ reminds me of ___________ because...
* This story is like _______ because...

Teaching Text-To-Text connections provides a great starting block for comparing texts.

The last connection to teach is Text-To-World. Any text that is about a global issue would be fine. One of my favourites is George Saves the World by Lunchtime. This text is also great for reminding students about recycling and disposing of rubbish thoughtfully :D

Use these sentence starters to guide student responses;

* This reminds me of _________ because...
* This is like when....
* Something similar happened....

Once you have introduced these strategies, you can then use them as reading response activities. A great way to practice writing and encourage deeper thinking about what students have been reading!

I have a pack of posters and thinking stems in my TPT store that would be a perfect companion for teaching this strategy;

Next up: Questioning!

Back to School + FREEBIE

I've kind of neglected this blog over the past week or so. Whoops!

The school holidays are over now. I didn't spend that much time on the computer, hence the lack of posting. My goal for the holidays was to spend at least an hour each day doing something active outdoors. The area that I live in has quite a few parks and walking/bike tracks. So my boyfriend and I went for lots of walks, runs and scooter sessions. Our building has a pool too, so on the hot days we went swimming (i.e I learned to swim). It was nice being able to do things outdoors during the week. On weekends, it's always a bit hectic with all the bike riders and dog walkers.

Aside from doing outdoorsy things, I went shopping and bought an iPhone. I got the 5c in blue. I love it! Now I finally get to hear the magical Ka-Ching that all the teachers talk about on the forums :D

School is back for the final term of 2014. I am still working with the same classes and focusing on reading groups. This week, we started with new texts. One activity that we have been working with is a Predict-O-Gram. Click on the picture to get your own FREE copy on TPT! (celebrating 300 products freebie).

Before reading, we fill out the boxes. Students make predictions about the vocab, characters, setting, problem, events and resolution. After reading, we look back at the predictions and confirm or reject as well as discuss the similarities and differences. Great activity to get students thinking about the text!

Will try and find some time this week to add to my Comprehension series.

Enjoy your weekend!

Comprehension - Part #3. Predicting.

Predicting is also an easy strategy to teach. Chances are, you are already doing it with your students, but the aim of this is to;

a) get your students to look closely at the clues in the text 

and 

b) get them to do it automatically, rather than have the teacher prompting all the time

To start off, define what predicting means. Explain that we predict before, during and after reading. Talk about what students can use to make a prediction; cover, titles, illustrations, blurb and text.

Pick a text and have students make a prediction. Give them the sentence starter "I predict". When they tell you their prediction, ask them why they think that. What clues from the text did they use? The sentence starter now becomes "I predict.....because.....".

You can use the above discussion for during reading predictions too.

As for after reading, the discussion turns to talking about what would happen if the author were to write a sequel. Students will use the events from the story to make this prediction. The sentence starter would be "I predict that......would happen next because.....". This can then turn into a writing task if you wish.

It is also important to confirm or reject predictions. That is, talking about whether they were right or wrong. Confirm or reject is just a more technical and nicer way of putting it. At this point, emphasise that it's totally okay if their predictions were rejected. Build up esteem by talking about how well they used the clues from the text :)

A neat way to set up this activity is to use three columns. My Prediction, What Happened and Confirm/Reject. The first two columns are pretty self explanatory, the confirm/reject can be completed with either a tick or a cross, or a C or a R.

If you want students to write about their predictions, here are some ideas;

1) Sentence starter "I predict" or "I predict....because..." Students can draw a picture to support their writing

2) Two columns. My Prediction and Clues From The Text

3) Have students predict what the characters will do, what the problem will be and how they will solve the problem.

My all time favourite activity is to stop reading just before the big ending. Have students write what they think will happen and draw a picture. Then read the ending and compare. It's one activity that the students absolutely love and it's pretty interesting seeing what they come out with.

That's pretty much it for predicting. If you are looking for some graphic organisers they can be found in my Super Six Activity Pack;

Next up in the series; Making Connections!

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!

Lost my voice!

This is my first week on the support job and I am already off sick! Yesterday my voice was pretty croaky all day and by the afternoon it was gone. So I decided to take the day off and rest my voice in the hopes that it will come back asap.

I am being a bit of a workaholic by making, printing and laminating resources to use in my new role :)

Here are some things that I have done so far;

This week has been good so far. On Monday I started the Year 6 Reading Program. We worked with the text Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type. Our focus for this week is on Vocabulary. After the reading program, I spent the day with people from Stage 2 and we talked about the teaching of Writing. I picked up on a few interesting ideas. One idea which I thought was pretty cool is the See, Think, Wonder strategy. I am going to try this out with my little groups. You can check out one of my See, Think, Wonder resources by clicking the picture below :)

Yesterday, I got to work with the 2 classes I have been assigned to. I didn't get to work with the year 4 class as they had a guest speaker come in, but I did get to do some reading with the year 3. We focused on Fluency as that seems to be a common need.

In terms of TPT, I have been creating different designs for some of my most popular products. This is because I realise that people have different tastes in terms of colours and themes so I am trying my best to cater for everyone.

In personal news, I have sent the boyfriend out to buy that huge TV that we have been wanting. I'm hoping that it's still in stock and that he comes home with it :)

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Comprehension - Part #1

One of my favourite things to teach on a relief day is something related to comprehension. When I say comprehension I'm not talking about those 'read a passage and answer some basic questions' activities, I'm talking about metacognitive strategies.

One of the biggest impacts on my teaching was the 2 year long professional development program that I participated in while on year 1. The things I learned in that program have stuck with me and have changed the way I teach. I noticed a positive impact in my students growth, so of course I am passionate about it and keep on finding new ways to implement it in my teaching. This is reflected in my TPT store as quite a few of my products relate to comprehension.

Over the next few posts I will be sharing my knowledge and experiences as well as some teaching ideas :)

The Super Six Comprehension Strategies
Obviously this is the starting point as the rest of the ideas all relate back to the strategies. A while ago, I wrote a post about how I introduced them to my year 1 class. You can read all about that over here.

I recently revamped the strategies into 'Super Powers'. Kids love Super Heroes, so I thought that it would be cool to have a 'We can be reading superheroes by using our Super Six Comprehension Powers' theme. I think it works pretty well as by using these "super powers" they are able to have a deeper understanding of what they are reading :)

If I were on class, I'd have a wall with each poster hanging up and student work on display underneath each poster to form a wall that teaches. The work would rotate regularly to keep it fresh and be relevant to the topic that we are covering. Sounds like a lot of work, but it's really not that hard. The pride the students have when their work is up makes it worth it :)

My role is different this year, so what I do with these strategies is sort of the same but different. I'll use all the strategies with each text that we read, but I'll have a focus lesson on one of the strategies. In the lesson we define what the strategy is, what we do with it and how it helps us. Why do I do a focus lesson? because I think it's always beneficial to brush up on these skills! As a classroom teacher, I loved when a relief teacher would do a lesson that recapped key skills because there are always some kids that could do with that extra practice.

Examples of focus lessons for each strategy;
Visualising - read a section of text and have students draw what they think the character/scene/object looks like. Students label their picture and then write sentences to describe. By getting students to label you can what clues they used to form their visualisation (i.e it the text mentioned that the monster has red, bloodshot eyes and the student uses that exact label you can see that they have been paying close attention).

Making Connections - read the text and students use a sentence starter to write and draw their connections.

Predicting/Inferring - Have students orally tell or write down their predictions throughout the reading of the text. Get them to back up their predictions with evidence from the text.

Questioning - Have students come up with "I wonder..." statements and then have other students answer the questions. Great way to encourage accountable talk!

Summarising - Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then. I love this strategy for summarising. It's a great way to introduce it and a starting block for moving onto more detailed summaries. Have the younger grades draw a picture for each, the older grades can use it as a writing prompt. e.g ______ wanted to ____ but _______, so ________ and then ________.

Monitoring - Fix up strategies. This is probably the hardest one to do as a relief teacher, but if you're on class start off by introducing each strategy then slowly start integrating them into your reading groups. The more practice, the better :)

If you're on class, you'll notice your students using these automatically, once they have got the hang of them.

To help develop these strategies, I made two resources. I am finding this first resource very useful in my new role. As a relief teacher, I'm never quite sure if the class teacher would mind if I let students use their books, so naturally using paper is the easier and confrontation free option. Of course, if you're on class this is also very useful in developing the strategies with your students.

This pack is full of graphic organisers for each strategy. There are variations of each activity to cater for different grades and abilities. Each page has a cute border and heading that can be decorated at the end (because students always want to colour in and make it pretty).

Not only do these serve as an activity, they can be used a part of a comprehension journal, a portfolio, an assessment or even as part of your wall that teaches.

Another thing that can be done with the strategies is a Comprehension Journal. I created a collection of journal prompts that can easily be printed and stuck in student books. This will benefit students who struggle to copy off the board as well as combat those "Miss, I only copied the question" moments. Each prompt has a reminder of the strategy at the top for quick reference.

This is also a big help for teachers who face photocopying restrictions. Only a few copies need to be printed as opposed to a full class set :)

Visuals are a very important in student learning. I love walking into rooms full of anchor charts and walls that teach. However sometimes it's not practical to have students roaming around the room so this is where bookmarks and a quick reference page come in handy!

Simply print and laminate to have a colourful bookmark that students can easily refer to at their desks. The quick reference page can be stuck in their workbooks.

An important part of using these strategies is incorporating them into classroom discussion! By modelling these to your students, you will be encouraging them to use the strategies in their own conversations. Here is a fun way to get it started; Question Sticks!

These require little preparation! Just print, laminate and attach to a paddle pop stick. Alternatively you can just print, laminate and put in a jar. Make asking and answering questions a little bit more exciting by having students pick a question from a jar and have a class discussion. Think about it, what's more fun? sitting there being asked questions by the same person? or hearing from a variety of people? You'll also find that once students become familiar with these questions, they will start asking them without the prompts. Remember, modelling is the key!

Comprehension can be a lot of fun, integrate it as much as possible. The only time it should be a stand alone lesson is when you are introducing the strategies! Once your students have got it, they should become a natural part of your lessons.

The next couple of posts on this topic will be talking about specific strategies. Stay tuned!

A Week on Year 4

This week I was lucky enough to have one class for the entire week! I had a lot of fun. It's nice when you can plan a series of lessons that connect, rather than just turn up and do random, one off lessons.

So this post will be about my favourite lessons of the week, because if I write about everything, this will turn into a TLDR post.

For Literacy, I focused on The Gizmo by Paul Jennings.

I love his stories, I remember reading them as a kid and would spend hours reading them in one go. The Gizmo is a great story to do with the older grades as the story is interesting and has themes the students can relate to. If you haven't read this book before, it's about a boy called Stephen who is pressured into stealing by the school Bully, Floggit. Stephen feels guilty about stealing so he tries to make it right by returning what he stole. However he can't, so he tries to rid himself of the item in different ways. Along the way he faces a few entertaining mishaps and by the end of the story he has learned his lesson.

I had only read the first chapter, when the students started to ask and answer their own questions about the story (by themselves! I didn't even have to ask them to!). The main question; "Why would Stephen hang out with this Floggit guy when he is such a jerk?". So that started a big discussion on how sometimes people hang out with people they don't necessarily like because they don't want to be an outcast or seen as a loser.

Throughout the week we did a few activities around the book such as; coming up with excuses to tell Floggit to avoid stealing the Gizmo and character profiles. The character profile activity produced some great responses. I let the students design it however they wanted. So some of them did it as a wanted poster, some as a profile and one student drew a picture of Stephen and wrote paragraphs about his personality around the picture.

We finished the book on Thursday and I told the class that if they liked the story they could go to the library and check out other books by Paul Jennings. I also mentioned how he wrote a few other books about The Gizmo, so they begged me to bring them in for Friday.

On Friday I read The Gizmo Again.

Which, automatically lent itself to Text to Text Connections. Similar theme as the original; nice guy gets influenced by the bad guy to do the wrong thing and so he learns his lesson to not listen to the bad guy.

We also did some Reciprocal Teaching. I got to use my Reciprocal Teaching Pack (don't you just love shameless promotion?).

The text we used was Possum Magic by Mem Fox. To start off I went through each of the roles, the class was already familiar with this strategy, so it was a quick recap. Then as we read the text, students practiced using the roles. The text was good for the clarifying strategy, as it involved a lot of Australian terms and since some students were from different cultural backgrounds they didn't know what some of the things were. The internet was used to help with the visuals.

Another great Literacy lesson was about the book, A Little Election by Danny Katz.

After we discussed the story, I gave the students the task;
Imagine you want to be the 'Prime Minister of (insert school name here)'. What policies would you introduce and why? Develop a campaign to convince your teacher and peers to vote for you.

Students were allowed to work in groups or individually. They were allowed to develop their campaign however they wanted. Some students wrote a speech and some designed a poster. They used paper, computers and iPads to present their ideas.

I was pretty impressed, they came up with a lot of good ideas as well as justifying the reasons behind them. Was pleased to see that no one came up with the 'We will just play all day' idea :P

Our Art topic was 3D Illusion Art. Last week, I did the 3D hand activity and they were pretty impressed, so I did some research and found two more activities. On the Monday we did this one;

(Image credit; http://www.frubilledkunst.dk/)

On Tuesday, when I came back (on Monday, I had no idea that I would be back on that class for the rest of the week), a few of them had taken them home and completed them to show me. So, I knew that I had to find another one to do with them on my last day. We did this one;

(Image credit; http://www.teachkidsart.net/)

The thing I love about 3D Illusion Art is that it looks complicated, but it's actually quite simple and the kids just love it! It kind of makes me want to start up some kind of Art Club if I get a job next year...

I really enjoyed my week on the class. I've always seen myself as an Infants Only teacher, but I think I would quite enjoy having a year 4 class. I kind of wish I had put different preferences on my EOI for 2015. The kids kept asking me if I could be their teacher next year, lol. I wish!

Next week, I have work on Monday and then I am back to waiting eagerly by the phone. I seriously think I am the only nutter who is up at 5am each morning so I can be all ready to go if I get a call after 6am :P

In TPT news, I have uploaded a bunch of new products and revamped a few of my older ones. I'll write about them next time.

Enjoy what's left of your weekend :)

Casual Teaching on Years 3 & 4

So far this week, I have been working with Stage 2 (years 3 & 4). It has been a fairly good week so far.

On Monday, I had a year 4 class. It was a really great day, everyone was well behaved and enthusiastic about the tasks. That made the day go by smoothly and quickly. Sometimes, with the older grades you get the few students who like to test you by acting up and complaining about everything. Not the case with this class :)

Here is what we got up to;

* Literacy - Point of View with Dear, Mrs. LaRue.

Okay, I admit that I recycled the lesson I did with year 5 a few weeks back. However, when the text is this good can you really blame me? :P My favourite part of the lesson is the part where students have a discussion about why the illustrator has divided each page into two parts; b&w pictures and colour pictures. Some of the great responses were;
* the b&w shows the sad parts and the colour shows the happy parts
* the b&w shows what the dog is thinking about because you can see the thinking bubble
* the b&w shows what the dog is writing about

I'm always amazed with what responses students come up with!

We did not get time to do the reading response part as we had library at 10am. I had something really awesome planned with the iPads, but I can always do that next Monday :D

* Maths - Coordinates
 I introduced this lesson with the question; What are coordinates and why do we use them? The most common answer? Minecraft! To help introduce this topic, I showed a map with no grid on it and asked students to find a street. They struggled. Then I put up the same map with a grid on it, and asked if they could find it by going to the grid reference. They found it within seconds. We then went through how to read coordinates and played a game on the IWB.

After that it was time to play Treasure Battleship! This is a fun game that allows both students to get some practice in using coordinates. One player places their game pieces on the grid and other player (who can't see the grid) asks "Do you have a piece on ________?". The student with the board, then checks that coordinate. If they have a piece, they must remove it off the board. Players swap when all the pieces have been discovered.

We finished off the lesson with a worksheet and marked it as a group afterwards. I like group marking because you can always clarify anything students are still unsure of :)

* Art - 3D Hands
I have seen this on Pinterest for a while now and have been dying to try it out!
If you have no idea what I am talking about, check out this YouTube Video;

The students were impressed with the images I showed and were trying to work out how to do it. Some of them couldn't believe that the paper was completely flat!

A few of the students finished and theirs looked great! The rest who didn't finish kept asking me if we could finish it next Monday when I have them again. I will have to find another awesome art activity for those who finished.

On Tuesday, I was called in last minute to cover year 3. I was thankful that I had had year 4 the day before, so I recycled the same lessons. I only had 30 minutes to eat breakfast, make lunch, get ready and pack my bag! It was an interesting day, with some challenging behaviours at some points.

When I first started teaching, I used to take these days rather personally and as a reflection on my ability to teach. Now I have a more positive take on it and I chalk it up as experience. I think it's good to have to handle challenging behaviours because you learn pretty quickly as to what works and what does not.

Yesterday, I covered two classes. The same year 4 class and a year 5 class. For year 4, they did genius hour. I had read about it online, but never seen it in action. I ended up sitting with a group who were working on their drawing skills. We found a cool website that showed how to draw cars, step by step. I had a go at it too :P

Year 5 involved playing Multiplication bingo and taking them to the library.

Today I have a day off. Will spend it relaxing, scootering and swimming :D

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Scooters, teaching and etc!

This week has been busy!

On Sunday my boyfriend and I bought scooters. The area we live in has a lot of outdoor areas, so it seems silly not to have an outdoor activity. Bikes would have been too bulky to store in the apartment and I don't think that I would be that great at it. Scooters seemed like the most practical option. We went to a whole heap of stores to find a scooter that would be appropriate for an adult. We were not having much luck at first, everywhere seemed to stock the Razor scooter, which was way too small. We were about to give up, when we found The Commuter Scooter at Kmart. It's a lot bigger and sturdier than the Razor as it's made for teenagers/adults. I was a bit wobbly at first, but after a while I got the hang of it. It's so much fun and a good work out too. My arms and legs were feeling the burn after the 2hr ride. We did attempt to go riding after work during the week, but I was too tired. I think it will be a weekend/no work day activity :P

On Monday, the technician from the internet company came out to fix the connection. Turns out the people who lived here before us took a cable out of the network cupboard, so that's why it was not connecting. There was also a cable that needed to be swapped in the building's cupboard. So we were not charged a fee as it was not our fault. Win!

On Tuesday, I had a year 3 class. I was originally told that I was on a year 5, so I had come prepared for that, but then it was changed. The teacher left work so I did not have to do any last minute emergency planning. It was a good day, especially because I had a bunch of students from my 2012 class :)

On Wednesday, I had the same year 1 class as I have had previously. It's nice to come back to the same class because you learn their names and get a picture of what their abilities are. Here are some of the lessons that I did with them;

* Reading Response - I love Dr. Seuss books, my all time favourite book is "I Wish That I Had Duck Feet". If you haven't read it before, it's about a boy who wishes for various animal parts because they would benefit him, however along the way he recognises that they would also cause problems for him. In the end he just wants to be himself.

After reading the book, students had to draw a picture of themselves with an animal part that they would like to have. Once the picture was drawn they had to label it and then write about why they wished for it. Students used iPads to look at pictures of animals to help them with their drawings. In the end students shared their response with the class.

* Time - Years ago, I bought one of those educational clocks. It's been very useful for casual teaching and even in my own class. I brought that in with me and we did o'clock times. After I did several examples on the clock, I picked students to come up and make some times for the class to read. Then we played a whole class matching game, matching pictures to the correct time label. Then they worked independently on a worksheet and then we finished off with a game of bingo.

*  Comprehension, Summarising - Elmer books are always popular with students, so I brought in Elmer and Wilbur. The version I have comes with a CD reading off it, complete with sound effects. After hearing the text, students summarised the story by completing a story map. They then used the story map to help them retell the story orally.

During the day I used GoNoodle. I love this site and the kids do too. It's very useful for brain breaks between lessons and the kids love watching the character grow after completing a few activities. The Frozen song was the most popular activity. If it were up to the kids, we would have sung Frozen all day :P

On Thursday, I was on Kindergarten. The teacher left me work. It was tiring, but a good day overall.

On Friday, I was called in to cover classes while teachers went to help prepare for the big school celebration. I ended up on Kindy for 2 hours and then spent the rest of the day making displays. It was a lot of fun. If I wasn't a teacher, I would be a graphics designer. Taking requests and fulfilling them made me feel like I was working as one :) I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out, they looked fabulous! I will make a modified version of the pennant bunting and upload them to TPT at some point.

I have also been working on new resources for myself, which I have added to my TPT store. Here are some of my latest products;

This activity pack contains 11 activities that can be used with any fictional text. This is pretty useful for me at the moment because I always use fictional texts on my casual days. Some of the activities include; designing a different cover, book review, creating a character, character profile and writing tasks.

I love doing the morning routine on the SMART board. This file includes your typical pages; days of the week, calendar, number of students, weather chart and days at school.

This activity pack contains resources to teach recount writing to your students. Alternatively it can be placed in a folder as part of a writing center. Includes a poster explaining what a recount is, an example text and word wall cards.

Check out my TPT store to see the rest of my new resources.

So far I have one day of work next week. I have a year 4 class on Monday. I have almost finished planning my work for the day. I like having the older grades because you can do more independent tasks with them. I am going to be using the iPads as part of one of my literacy lessons. Should be fun :)

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!