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If I were the Easter Bunny

21 March 2013

With Easter fast approaching we have been doing lots of Easter activities.

Have you read the super cute book 'If I were the Easter Bunny'.

A little rabbit dreams of being the Easter bunny and all the things he would do. We read it then wrote about what we would do if we were the Easter Bunny.

I have been working super hard with my Pre-Primaries and doing lots of word work! It is finally paying off and after finishing our Easter bunny writing yesterday I am finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. (Hallelujah!!!)

Working in small groups of 5 I was able to guide and give those students who needed more support the time they needed, while just helping the more capable kids when they needed it. Sometimes its a fine line between 'helping' and 'doing it for them' with the weakest kids. I like to help but I also like their work to be reflective of their actual skills. How much do you help a child sound out a word and find the matching letters! I do lots of alphabet work, word work, sounding out, finding letters etc during my literacy rotations to explicitly teach them skills, so I like their writing to show how they are able to use some of these skills.

We used our 'If I was the Easter Bunny' writing template and 'Easter bunny face' template to create this cute piece of work!

We used our alphabet charts and spacemen to help with our writing. I find using the space man really makes it clear to them where they need to put spaces in their writing.

I would hide the eggs in the basket.

I would hide the eggs in the tree.

I would give the eggs to the kids.

This writing is from kids who were supported with sentence structure and the sounding out of words. Students are encouraged to sound out words on their bodies by touching their head, shoulder, hips etc. However students then had to independently record the sounds they could hear and find on their alphabet chart. If they were supported to sound out words but still could not hear all or some the sounds, they only recorded those they could hear independently.

A piece of writing from one of my Year 1's

Also check out our new Easter hat certificates if your class or school does an Easter hat parade. They are super cute!

'Remember keep calm and eat chocolate! (It is Easter after all!)

Top Teacher xx

Emergency! Emergency!

19 March 2013

We recently had an eventful day at school when the air conditioner on our art room roof burst into flames! We all had to evacuate the school and spent a 'lovely' few hours on the grass out the front. Luckily the fire was contained to the art room, and there was no other damage and everybody was safe! It did however provide a great opportunity to write about some real life action!

I am finding it very hard at the moment to engage my Pre-Primaries in the writing process and get them willing to give independent writing a go. This is the complete opposite from my Pre-Primaries last year who jumped straight into writing and we completed writing journals every morning. This kids I have this year are much more apprehensive to give writing ago without massive teacher assistance and I am getting a lot of 'but I can't do that'. I do have a handful of kids who are eager to give it a go and moved ahead in leaps and bounds due to this. Most however are struggling to write anything and will just sit there if not assisted one on one by a teacher. Now don't get me wrong... I am not expecting a perfect sentence, but I am expecting a go a attempting to write some words maybe even just with initial sounds. I also hope for them to be able to read their 'writing' back to at the end.

I was really hoping the excitement of the fire would kick their little behinds into gear and make them want to write something down!

We always begin our recount writing by using an event news telling plan as I find this helps them to have what they want to say in their brain before even having to write it down! From here my PP's are asked to have a go at a simple short sentence about what happened.

Our paintings, news plan and writing

This is one of my students who gives it a good go with some teacher support

I have students writing some letters

I have students writing lots of random letters

Students recording some sounds in words

Students attempting some a of sentence

My Year 1's on the other hand are going along great and I was happy with their recounts.

It is definitely hard at the moment having Year 1 students who are writing plenty and some PP's who are writing only a letter or 2!

'Remember keep calm and pretend it's on the lesson plan!..... I can make it to Easter break!!!

Top Teacher xx

More Dr Seuss

17 March 2013

We have been reading some more Dr Seuss books in our class!

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

We created our own fish using our handprints!

We also read 10 Apples up on Top

We painted trees and did 10 apple prints on them. My Pre-Primaries practised writing numbers 1-10 in them and the Year 1's wrote different eays to make 10 inside the apples.

'Remember keep calm and pretend it's on the lesson plan'

Top Teacher xx

Let's go shopping!

8 March 2013

This year our school has implemented a new phonological awareness plan in the hopes of bringing our school up to speed with the Australian National Curriculum. This means that in Kindy we are now teaching syllables and rhyme in term 1 (previously taught in terms 2 and 3 respectively). Phew! It sure is a lot to get through in a short time, particularly when you take into consideration we do half groups for half days for the first 2 weeks. Throw in public holidays (4 days this term!!), testing days (speech screen) and professional development courses there really isn't much time left in term 1!

With all of this in mind I have revamped the structure of my day to include lots of opportunities for the students to play quick syllable games. Some of the games we have been using include the syllable house game and a syllable flower game that I found on TPT by Young and Lively in Kindergarten. The students love picking flowers and then sorting them into the correct pot.

Still in need of another syllable game I created a syllable shopping game. Be honest, who doesn't love shopping?! Well now you can shop with your students while practising segmenting words into syllables!

To play this game I attached the 1-3 syllable cards (we left 4 syllable words out of it to start with) to a shopping basket, though you could use a box or brown paper bag - whatever you have to hand really! The students then took turns to go shopping for 1 item and brought it back and show their group. They then named the item (great for improving vocabulary too!) and body tapped the number of syllables in their item. For example potato was po (tap head) - ta (tap shoulders) - to (tap hips). They then counted the number of syllables and placed it into the correct basket. So much fun!

I found a large tub of plastic food at Kmart (I think!!) for less than $10 so this is what we used to sort into the baskets. However if you don't have plastic food I have also included 6 pictures for each number of syllables so simply print and laminate them!

For those of you who aren't members of Top Teacher we will also be adding this game to out TPT store so you can grab your copy there.

'Remember keep calm and pretend it's on the lesson plan!'

Top Teacher xx

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