Run, run, run

Today was our junior sports day. Our Preps, Ones and Twos wore their colours proudly and ran, skipped, threw, balanced, stepped, hopped, balanced their way to a great day. 

For the first three hours we did a tabloid sport program and moved through ten tasks. These challenged us and we worked together to have heaps of fun. 

Our senior sports captains manned the tasks and guided us at each station. They did an amazing job.

In the afternoon we sprinted in heats to see who was the fastest. We jumped over hurdles and ran with encouragement from our team mates, parents, grandparents and special visitors. 

This was a great school community event. 

And there was no rain to stop our great day!

Germs, germs, germs

On Mondays I do not work in the Prep space - I get to support and coach staff across the school. 

Today as part of my coaching role two of our teachers got together to look at teaching practises and I covered one grade and got to something amazing.

The teacher asked me to read this book called 'A Germ's Journey' and then we would do a writing task about how germs got from on place to another. 

We talked about how germs pass from one place to another. 

The stories were amazing. 

Then later they added the craft at the top.

How amazing does the display look?

PE and jumping

Gotta love jumping. Last Friday my lovely Preps had two hours of PE. 

I was at my son's last assembly and my preps joined some other grades and then when I came back we had our own hour. 

I am guessing my lovelies slept very well that night. 

We have great facilities and our gym is fantastic for when the weather is not so nice outside. 

We have our assemblies in here too. 

This PE session is run by two PST's - pre service teachers who are mentoring each other. 

My kids absolutely love the sessions - we have one more of five to go.

Daily 5 and Grade 5/6

Two of our Grade 5/6's have been working on introducing Daily 5 and Cafe. 

So my work on Thursday has been coaching the two teachers and the students to do this. 

Today was our fifth session and the teachers have been working on this between visits. 

Their anchor charts are evolving and will continue to do so. 

Today we talked about the impact of Cafe and how to assess and conference while the students are being independent. 

As a double grade they have got 'read to self' and 'read to someone'. They do this with a sense of urgency, community and trust. As teachers we need to work on 'staying out of the way'.

So have all four components working well. We only need to look at 'listening to reading'

We even walked through the Prep space I team teach in and looked at how preps are engaged in their tasks. 

It is an exciting time in our school. 

The anchor charts are available for free in my TPT store  - click here

Power outage

No post tonight due to no power. Our teenage kids are worried about charging devices, computers running out of power and lack of Facebook. Fancy having to sit together and talk!!

My husband and are laughing which isn't helping the teenage lack of link up. 

Too funny!

We have just had a successful Information Night for next year's group. More on that tomorrow night. 

Telling time

We have been working on time this week and are assessing for point of need teaching. The different colour groups show the differentiation that will be coming our way. 

The tasks for solo maths are shown with a dice that has a 1, partner maths had a two on the dice and small group maths has a six on the dice. 

BAR Key for Teddy Bears

We have been busy inventing new teddies. 

We have used the BAR key to do this.

In the first box we put a picture of our teddy. 

The second box we made something bigger.

The third box we added something. 

The last box we re-arranged something on our teddy. 

This gave us a new design for a teddy bear.

This is part of my Teddy Bear Pack - click here to see it in my TpT store

We enlarged ours to A3.

Halloween and being boo'd

I have just been boo'd

by Gary at Scrappy Guy and he wants to see as many people link up and he will have a sale according to the number who join the linky.

I have also emailed two people and asked them to link up too.

Happy Halloween

The whole point of this is to see how Halloween is celebrated around the world. 

Please go and read his post as it is about the changing times of this celebration.

In Australia we do not officially celebrate this, but increasingly we see merchandise for sale from early September. 

Some families have started to decorate their homes - on the inside!

Some families allow their children to go 'trick or treating' but it is not very common.

Our school had traditionally had a 'trivia night' late October and the venue is decorated in a 'spooky theme'

Personally though - I could get right into the jack-o-lanterns, spooky decorating and dress-ups! It looks like great fun. 

Like seriously - this looks like fun (from pinterest - see my boards)

Bears with hats

Happy Sunday everyone!  

 Last week we had a Teddy Bear Picnic, but because we are in a SunSmart school our teddies needed hats. 

We used paper and tape to make them. 

We discussed what was needed to make a great hat that would be SunSmart. 

We had so much fun making them. 

Then in typical Ballarat spring weather we had a day where our temperature didn't get above 8 degrees and it hailed. 

So we borrowed our buddies room, took our picnic and bears and had a great time inside. 

We then wrote about our picnic and got some amazing writing. 

As you can see we were a bit obsessed with the terrible weather.
These photos show a range of abilities and each group has a different page to write on - the borders show which group has what.
Some groups do write on the back and they have finished their sentences on the flip side.