Fairy Tales - My newest unit

We normally start the year off by doing some Fairy Tales and looking at characters, setting and plot. While this pack contains many writing tasks, for Preps at the start of the year most of these tasks will be modelled or shared.

Prep is the new Foundation in the Australian Curriculum and is our first year at school in Australia after three and four old kinder. I am not suggesting that you do all these tasks, but choose what best suits your grade and their teaching and learning needs.

In this pack (82 pages) are tasks for gathering what your students know, word walls, character/plot/setting, comparing, brainstorming, making a wand, I see/I think/I wonder, what characters do, rainbow words, change the ending, invitations, story charts, recounts and conflict/resolutions.

There are individual tasks for the following  Fairy Tales - they are my top ten Tales. They also fit with the Fairy Tales at 'Fairy Park' in Anakie that we visit for the day. (sheets for Mom/Mum favourite/favorite spelling too!)

Little Red Riding Hood: lists, sequences, character mapping, rhyming words, making a game, wanted poster, listing basket goodies

The Frog Prince: ‘fr’ and ‘pr’ words, beginning/middle and ending, reading and word games

Hansel and Gretel: design a gingerbread house, shopping list, labelling, decorate your own gingerbread house, problem solving

Snow White: characters and names, describing words, matching numerals to names, cause and effect

Goldilocks and the Three Bears: setting, matching, apology letter, describing feelings

The Three Little Pigs: speech bubbles, problem solving houses, record damage of houses being blown down, innovation for poems

Cinderella: before and after, lists, shoes, describing words

Rapunzel: story board, tower and ways to leave it, characters

Jack and the Beanstalk: problem solving, sequence of characters, cause and effect, change the ending, rhyming words

Three Billy Goats Gruff: rhyming words, draw/describe and action

Avaliable on Teachers Notebook and Teacher's Marketplace. Will be available also on Teachers Pay Teachers later tonight.

Change in Daily 5

Reading  and Writing Data

Do you use Daily 5 and Cafe Literacy?

I have been catching up on some professional reading and revisiting one of my favourite websites -the 2 sisters. They are now suggesting a slight change to the order of introducing the five components of Daily 5. I love that they have made this suggestion as I have always been a fan of what is called the 'reciprocity' of reading and writing. So 'read to self' is still first and then comes 'work on writing'. The order of the next three is now not in any strict order. As I get my thoughts together for this year and our new group of students I am comforted by this change.

Our reading results last year with 88 preps (first year of school) were amazing. We have one child who will spend another year with us at the same year level, another child who is very young but has made some improvement and one other child who is at the level. - but here is the exciting bit. We had the remaining 83 at least 6 months above their expected level with over 71% at least a year above. Within that  26%, 18 months to 2 years above where they needed to be. Together we worked very hard to achieve these results and are passing on an amazing cohort into Year 1. We will be tracking these students with great interest.  In wriitng we had similiar results. 74% above their expecetd level and within that 17% are 18 months to 2 years above! 

We attribute our success to using the strategies and teaching explicitly from Cafe Literacy. This is where the rigour comes from. If you haven't read either book I suggest strongly you have a read. Also get on their website as they have very helpful menus for each year level. These can be used for differentiation. 

Oh dear!

I needed to meet a colleague briefly at school today in our office to plan for staff profesional learning - more about that in a later post. I briefly went to our new class teaching space to pick something up and with the carpets being cleaned (by a great team of cleaners who are making sure the space is ready for us) - this is what I saw. As we are on summer break we have a bit of work to do before our students start on the 29th January.

As we will have a team of 4 teachers in this space I need to be patient and wait. It is not just me that needs to get the space ready but us as a team. We are meeting next week so I will share with you what it looks like then. Yes, that is my gorgeous daughter at the edge of the photo. Literally watch this space....... 

A freebie......

I guess I am motivated by having a colourful classroom. I know that there is some evidence around 'boys in education' that says we need to tone down our classrooms for our boys. When I continue to get positive feedback from students and their parents about how our learning space looks it does motivate me to continue to add colour and hopefully a vibrancy to our shared learning journey. I have such a strong belief around what a positive learning environment should look like. As our new shared space grows after our summer break I will share photos of our evolving space with you.

I have re-jigged these labels for my Daily Bulletin Board using some exquisite background papers from  - http://www.cocoamint.com/ 

There is a label for autumn and one for fall for my Aussie and USA followers. You can access this freebie through my digital shops - to the right; 'Teachers Notebook' and 'Teachers Pay Teachers'.

Let me know what you think about the cute graphics from 'Scrappin Doodles' for the weather icons.

Counting by 2s - Skip Counting

Skip Counting by 2s
107 pages

Click here to see this in our TpT store
Skip Counting by 2s is a necessary skill in basic number sense. Use these centers and printables to consolidate these skills. 

Tasks include - 
• Flip Flops or as we Aussies call them thongs. Students place cards in a sequence and then place the correct number underneath. There are sets of houses for counting patterns too. 
• Fix the puzzles – count by twos to put the picture back together.
• Cut and glue – place the numbers in the correct sequence.
• Sequence the houses and then deliver the correct mail to the correct house number.
• Missing flamingos – find the missing card by counting by 2.
• Houses for odd counting patterns - 4 sets. Sequence the houses and then deliver the correct mail to the correct house number.
• Counting collections by 2s. Use a dry erase pen to circle and count.
• Adding and subtracting cards by 2. Draw cards one at a time, work out the answer and the winner who has the most cards at the end.
• Skip counting ice cream flavours.
• Number scrolls counting by 2s from a given starting point. 
• Assessment – student and teacher pages

USA Common Core Standards
K.CC.2 Count forward beginning from a given number within the known sequence instead of having to begin at 1
1.OA.5 Relate counting to addition and subtraction (counting on 2 to add 2)
2.OA.3 Work with equal groups of objects to gain foundations for multiplication (by pairing or counting by 2s)

Australian National Curriculum
Year 1 - Number and Algebra – Develop confidence with number sequences to and from 100 by ones from any starting point. Skip count by twos, fives, and tens starting from zero (ACMNA012)

Year 2 – Number and Algebra – Investigate number sequence, initially those increasing and decreasing by twos, threes, five and ten from any given starting point, then moving to other sequences. (ACMNA026) 

Click here to go to our TpT store

New skill learnt! Editable PDF's

I have often been in awe of people who create editable PDF's as I had no way of knowing what or how they did it. But we live in the age of 'google' and when I don't know how to do something I can 'google' it.

I had made these cute name tags for my new grade and was asked for a copy. In an effort to always protect the clip art, background papers etc of items I have paid a license fee for I needed to learn how to make editable fields in a PDF.

After playing with a free version and then a $19.95 download of  'PDFill PDF Editor' and my set of instructions from 'google' - here they are. I guess it is like a new toy - now I am off to play with and convert some other stuff I had made.

Mail to go

We have 84 Preps who will start school in a few short weeks. One of our transition tasks is to send out 'Welcome Letters' to our new students. These are addressed to our students and even though we have met them a few times when they visited for transition visits and we saw them at Kinder as well it is nice for them to get this letter.

Each of our four teachers makes sure that they are personal and outline our 'Assessment Interview' time. We will have each new Prep one on one for an hour to do the Mathematics Online Interview as well as the English Online Interview. We get such great data from these two tools and get immediate feedback and can start differentiating our program as soon as we have completed them.

'Me and My Family Unit' is done!

I have put the finishing touches on my new unit - 'Me and My Family'. It will form the basis of my work this term and will be supplemented by Valentine's Day, Pancake Day, ANZAC Day and Easter. I think our Labour Day falls in their somewhere as well. 

I used my pen and paper brainstorm as I shared in a previous post and worked through my suggestions editing as I went. In total it is 110 pages long and contains tasks for Getting to Know You, Discovery Learning, Maths, Word Work and Writing tasks. There is a combination of Learning Centre tasks, worksheets, ideas and suggestions. Some tasks I have already done and there are photos to support this and other tasks that will be new for me as well.

A shout out!

I would like to say thanks to all the people who are visiting my blog. I am amazed by where you all come from. As you scroll down the left side of my blog to my map you will see the red dots on a world map. Make sure you become a follower as I love to see where in the world my little blog is being seen and read.

Holiday Reflections

In Australia we have a lovely long summer break that begins just before Christmas and ends around Australia Day, 26th January.

We also say goodbye to our grade before Christmas and then we have a new grade when we return in late January.

This time gives us a chance to see family, go on holidays and get ready for the new year to come. As I waited in plane terminals, sat on planes, relaxed on the Gold Coast I was able to reflect about what worked and what might need tweaking for a new start this year. I will be working with children who are 5 and 6 years of age and are in the first year of schooling in Victoria. My '2 sisters' newsletter (of Cafe Literacy and Daily 5 fame) arrived digitally and mentioned that they now suggest we teach explicitly 'read to self' and then 'work on writing'. This sits really well with me as I have always insisted that all children need to write every day. I am looking forward to setting up a new classroom space, discussing a new program and above all else working with a new group of students and their parents.