Casual Teaching on Year 1: Visualising, Mass, Rhyming and Craft!

Today was my first day teaching in 13 months!

I was excited to come back. As much as I loved travelling, I still missed being in the classroom.

I was given a Year 1 class, which I was happy about. I prefer teaching K-3 and feel more comfortable with that grade range as that's where I've had the most experience.

Seeing everyone again was nice. Lots of hugs and 'Welcome Back' moments :)

So what did we do today?

After the morning routine was taken care of, we did a lesson on one of the Super Six Comprehension Strategies; Visualising.

I started if off with a revision of the concept and read a passage from The Gruffalo's Child.

The passage described the Big Bad Mouse character. Students then drew and coloured their visualisations. Students were encouraged to label their drawing e.g. "long, strong tail" and "fiery eyes".

Students then shared their drawings with the class and I showed them what the mouse looked like in the story. If you're not familiar with the text, the Big Bad Mouse looks like a normal mouse. This was a great discussion point - Why was the mouse described as being big and scary when he was just a regular mouse?

At that point we had to pack up and go to the library, so I left them with that question and we would go back to it later.

Library was fun, I got to read a story to the two classes.

I had duty first half of lunch. They added a new duty area and I had no idea where it was. Awkward! I had a whole heap of students follow me around asking me where I had been and if it was really me, haha. I never thought that so many students would have noticed I wasn't around.

After lunch, I read The Gruffalo's Child. The students picked up that the Gruffalo couldn't remember exactly what the mouse looked like so he made it up.

We then moved onto maths. I brought in my own equal arm balance. A great purchase for only $5 a few years ago. We talked about what it is used for and how to read it. Then we had some fun by estimating how many 10's rods would be needed to equalise the balance with various classroom objects. Very important to make sure the students were counting each rod as they placed it in rather than just counting randomly.

There was only about half an hour till recess so we had a mini lesson on rhyming words. After discussing what rhyming words are, I read There's a Wocket in my Pocket by Dr. Seuss.

Dr. Seuss books are great for rhyming words. The students loved the story as well as picking out the rhyming words on each page.

After the story, we played a game. I picked a base word and then called out words that rhymed with the word. As long as the words rhymed with my base word, the students could move around the room. When I called out a word that did not rhyme, students had to freeze. Great way to get the wiggles out!

After recess, we did a craft activity. Students could make either a lion or a butterfly.

It was a great first day back and the day just flew by. Looking forward to more days :) I would love to post photos of the work, but to keep it simple and avoid any sort of legal drama, I'm refraining from posting. It's just not worth the potential trouble.

Coming Home

In just a few days I will be back home in Sydney, after spending 13 months overseas. It's a sad but exciting time for me. Sad that I will be giving up this traveller lifestyle but excited to return home and see my family, friends and home comforts again. Returning home also means that I will be going back to work and returning to teaching as a casual (sub/supply).

I'm looking forward to returning to teaching, though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't somewhat nervous about it. 13 months is a long time to be away and all sorts of silly thoughts are going through my head;

What if no one calls me for work? 

What if I have no idea what to teach that day? What if I have forgotten everything?

What if the lessons I plan are boring and the students run wild?

What if the teacher doesn't like the lessons I've done and then confronts me about it?

Of course this is all nonsense. I've had 5 years of experience, I know what I'm doing. I've kept up to date with things, gotten some great ideas off pinterest/blogs and have been making resources to use. I've also got a whole granny flat full of resources, I could probably open up my own store! So I can stop worrying about the not knowing what to do thing! I've got that covered :) 

I don't think the no one calling me thing is valid either. I was called in to work on the first day of school in January, unfortunately I had to turn that down as I was in Manchester. So chances are that if I got called for the very first day of school, I'll get called once I'm back in the country. I have a few schools that I used to work at on a frequent basis before having my own class, so I have backups if my main school has nothing for me. 

I'll have a weekend to spare once I return. I plan on using my weekend to recover from any jetlag, get my hair cut (I'm starting to resemble Rapunzel now) and gather a few resources to use for the first few days of work. I also need to organise something for my 26th Birthday as that's happening the week after.

Lots of things to look forward to, but for now I'm going to enjoy my last days as a traveller with my adventures in Bulgaria and The Netherlands!

I'm also giving the Twitter thing a go, you can find me with the username @talesfrommissd :)