Lovin' bloglovin

 

I read somewhere in blogland that bloglovin was the way to go to check your current blogs you follow. I was dubious - but now convinced. When you search for bloglovin and log in (takes two minutes or less), it automatically picks up those you follow. I love the way you can mark posts as read or mark favourites and then come back to them later when you have more time. There will be no more missing posts now I can keep track in a much more organised way.

I just need a little more time in the day to blog surf.

                                                 There is also an app which does the same thing.

Cute baskets

Sorry these photos are not the right way round - I have tried and tried to get them to rotate and they are very stubborn and keep reverting back every time - you may need to tilt your device.........hehe

These Easter baskets were a hoot to make - our preps just loved them. One of the prep teachers saw this idea somewhere on the internet - so if they are yours please let me know and I will give you credit for this fab idea.

This is what we did
1. Cut the paper plate to look like a basket
2. Paint the paper plates
3. Glue onto card when dry, no glue to close to where you will tuck the eggs in
4. Decorate about six egg shapes
5. Add some sparkle to the eggs
6. Glue the eggs into the basket so they are overlapping and peeking out
7. Take one large egg shape and decorate
8. Add a bead of glue in a line and add special rabbit shaped confetti
9. Glue large egg on
10. Attach the special chick (they come in boxes of 20 from Spotlight and are cute and fluffy) and felt chick
11. Take home and enjoy

Freebie

A freebie link up -

My Daily Calendar  and

daily 5 anchor charts
are available as a free download along with many other downloads from other teachers.

I have been invited to be part of this as I am a Teaching Blog Addict (TBA) featured A+ blog. 

 

 They are having their second birthday - hip, hip hooray.

 

Happy downloading on 5th April.

 I will be posting a couple more freebies over the next few days....

Last day of term

Easter break and the end of Term One is here.

Our lovely Prep Team teachers celebrated the end of term by having our team meeting off site. I took the team to the 'Boat Shed' and we had time to reflect on what we have done and where we will go next term and beyond, while we enjoyed a nice glass of something together.

As a team we celebrated with our students by having an Easter Egg Hunt. Easter Bunny sent me an email (he is very high tech these days!) to say that he may be visiting the school sometime today and may leave us something, somewhere. So we had 82 Preps find 5 eggs each and then we did a recount - I will share this is a later post.

As a school we celebrated by announcing about 50 winners of many, many, many Easter Egg prizes which were all donated by our learning community.

We don't have school for two weeks and on Tuesday my daughter and I are off for a week and half to Bali. So my posts will not be as regular over the next few weeks.

Only two days to go until I announce the winner of my rafflecopter draw and who will get three of my units for free. Enter on the right hand side of my blog......

So to all those enjoying Spring break, Easter break or term break - enjoy, relax and be safe.

Drawings of our walk-a-thon

Aren't these cute? These drawings were done after our walk-a-thon last Friday. I love the detail they have included. We have done lots of talking about colour, background and detail. My preps are five years old and I love their enthusiasm and the way they are easily encouraged to draw and match a text to their work.

 

Pirate Day

Our Year 1/2's have had an amazing day today.

 

They have been learning all things to do with the sea.

 

They have been to the beach, studied sea animals, read, written and shared their learning.

 

So today was a celebration and a chance to dress up as a pirate.

 

Even the teachers dressed up!

 

There were puzzles, chances to build ships, decorate biscuits as pirate faces, word work, craft, writing tasks and a lot of aaarrggghh's

A great day and a super effort from all.

Easter planning

In our Prep space we plan very differently to other spaces. The tasks pictured are from my Easter unit.

 

I team teach with Chrissy, job share with Kate so I can coach on Tuesdays.

 

Jan and Pascale team teach in the other end of our open space.

 

Hope you are still all following.

Jan and I plan for Maths and Discovery Learning.

Pascale and Chrissy plan for English - reading and writing.

 

Hope you are still all following.

 

So Jan and I when planning maths for Easter we need to know

- where every child is to plan for differentiation in maths

- copy any worksheets for all groups

- organise all centres for  the space

- take the lead in delivering maths in both ends of our space

 

The benefits are that we know all 82 preps and where they are, we plan effectively as a team, we need to be super organised so we do not let anyone down.

 

These Easter tasks are part of my Hop into Easter Unit.

Help me celebrate!

These three units are the prizes for one lucky winner to help me celebrate having
10 000 page views,
40 followers and 500 places mapped.

I have been blogging since October last year and have had a whole new world opened up by visiting all the other great blogs that are out there and I want to say thanks for visiting my blog.

Enter via the rafflecopter on the right hand side.

Walk-a-thon

Today was our school walk-a-thon.

 

What a great day we have all had - we have walked (some ran), celebrated and received spot prizes.

 

Our end of week assembly had some great prizes for recognition of student achievement in terms of laps and outfits.

 

Each lap was about a kilometre and many of our younger students - ran almost all  the way for an hour and half. One of our senior students ran 12 laps!

 

We have done some recounts, which I will post later.

As the end of term is only a week away - I am off to an end of term celebration with the staff......

Word work

Last year we started 'daily 5' mid year. This year we have started day one.

Today we began to revise what is best fit and how this looks in 'word work'.

My Preps are all learning different coloured words using M100W's and this is the basis for our best fit word work. Some groups are working on silly sentences, which is a commercial kit and reading them independently.

Another group are using salt words to write their red words. This is in a container with about 2cm of salt in the bottom, like an old fashioned sand tray.

I also introduced LSCWC. They look at the word, say it out loud, cover it, write it and then check it.


They gave it a good go and I can see that I need to look at letter reversals and word reversals. I also noticed that we need to work on spaces between words too! An easy way to set learning goals.

There was also a group that are working on rhyming words and this was a lot of fun. There was lots of laughter about what else rhymes.

Some bunny loves you - link up

Christina Bainbridge has set in motion this gorgeous linky.

So check out 'bunting, books and Bainbridge' for the rules and how to link up.


My 'some BUNNY loves your blog' goes to "Down Under Teacher" why - because Kylie has been instrumental in motivating me to blog, have digital shops and she willingly shares her classroom with our blogging world. Thanks

 

Not my usual blog

Today I was at work later than normal. I arrived at 8.15am knowing I had a big day ahead. Plus the only time today I would see my own family.

I taught until 3.30, then chaired a team meeting until 5pm. Filed, sorted, marked and prepared until 6.30pm. I didn't get a break, recess I was chasing up netbook issues for the 3-6 students and taking a call from Mathletics. At lunch time I led a coaching conversation and had yard duty.  At 6.30 I attended the Annual General School Council meeting until 9pm and then home. As I sit down to a late dinner and read the local paper digitally and read a story and hundreds of comments about how slack our teachers are and how we are irresponsible in our current bargaining with the government.

We do not take work bans or industrial action lightly. We agonise and think big picture about the millions of dollars slashed from education, inequity of resources and funding.

This makes me sad, as teachers all across the world work hard and we put our heart and soul and often our hands in our own pockets to educate children to exceed their potential everyday.

Yet, I wouldn't have changed anything about my day. I actually go to work and love it and love everything I do. How many people can say that?

A morning of 'daily 5'

As I was walking to a coaching session today these are some snapshots of what I saw in our 1/2 Learning Centre today.

Some work on the most used 100 words.

Some handwriting practise and letter recognition.

Some 'listening to reading'. 

Some 'read to someone'.

Some 'read to self'.

Some teacher guided groups.
Some more 'word work using play dough.

Some running records.

Some teacher sharing.

Some writing using 'sticker stories'

Some 'listening to reading' in a pool - that contains them and notice the poster near the pool to reinforce great behaviour.

Have I mentioned how I love my job?