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Welcome to Kindy!
2 April 2013

This is a post that I have been meaning to share with you all for a while now, a tour of my classroom. Those of you who follow us on Facebook you would have seen what the room looked like before it became a Kindy. Here's a little reminder...

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Now go on and tell me, who doesn't love exposed red brick and dusty pink pin up boards? Beautiful!

The brief back story to this room is that it was a Pre-Primary for many, many, many years. We then had a new building built as a part of the "Building Revolution" and the Pre-Primary moved to the new building along with the Kindy - which was in it's first year onsite having always been held in an offsite location. This room then became the unofficial furniture graveyard. The place where you send wonky tables and broken drawer sets to die. After only 18 months the room was full and filthy! Thankfully we have a super cleaner who helped get the room back up to scratch.

This is what the room looks like now...

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Looking from the same place as the first photo

 

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 From the front door...

 

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 Books and puzzles area

 

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 Construction mat

 

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 View from the mat area

 

And just because it's a rare occassion that my desk looks like this I thought I'd document it!

I can confirm that spray and wipe was used in the cleaning of this desk!! Miracle!

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So there you have it! Hope you enjoyed having a little peek into my room.

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

Top Teacher xx

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.

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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.

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

 

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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.

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I would hide the eggs in the basket.

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I would hide the eggs in the tree.

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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.

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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!

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'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.

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Our paintings, news plan and writing

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

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I have students writing some letters

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I have students writing lots of random letters

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Students recording some sounds in words

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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!

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'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!

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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.

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

Top Teacher xx

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