Chinese New Year Celebrations

We have had a whole heap of fun while learning about the Chinese New Year. I have used the posters I made to brighten up what is already a bright line of dragons.

We have read about how the New Year starts when the second moon is here, firecrackers and learnt that red is a lucky colour, money brings good luck and what year on the zodiac we are - we have a lot of pigs in our learning space.

Check out my resource as you can still celebrate this wonderful celebration for another 12 days. 

These packs are all about creating an understanding of a Chinese New Year - the traditions, the symbols and the zodiac. 

Chinese New Year - Interactive Note Pages 

Chinese New Year Posters and make a dragon

Chinese New Year Bundle 

Click here to see it in our store

This Chinese New Year pack is huge! There are posters and pages for Interactive Note Pages. Explore the zodiacs and understand what the traditions are that surround the Chinese New Year. 

This pack includes
• An introductory page for each section complete with detailed instructions.
• Options to print for sheep or goat at the end of the pack. The Chinese refer to goats and sheep. In English, it is based on a horned animal. In Vietnam, it is goat. In Japan - sheep; in Korea and Mongolia the sign can be sheep or ram. 

Tasks include - 
• KWHL – what do you know, want to know and what is your new learning?
• Our Class Word Wall – add to this while you are learning about the Chinese New Year.
• Posters for Chinese Zodiac Animals – information on each one. 
• Interactive Journal pages – to discover new information and record what you know.
• Fact sheets on all the zodiac animals.
• Venn Diagram – compare our New Year to a Chinese New Year
• Can-are/is-have/has on traditions that are significant to Chinese New Year.
• Graphic Organizers to help record learning. 

This is great for younger students....

Click here to see it in our store

Chinese New Year

146 pages

This Chinese New Year pack supports you to graph the year that your grade were born into according to the Chinese Zodiac. Build a dragon and match the animals on the zodiac to their name and number.

Ram is used in some parts of the world as one of the zodiacs. There are options to print for sheep or goat at the end of the pack as some countries use these instead. 

The Chinese refer to goats and sheep. In English it is based on a horned animal. In Vietnam it is goat. In Japan - sheep; in Korea and Mongolia the sign can be sheep or ram. 

This pack contains -

• Printing options for full color, save your ink and some tasks have black/white versions.

• There are a series of posters to display. These provide information for discussion. 

• Matching task – match the ordinal, name and the picture of the animal from the zodiac.

• Graphing task – use a sample group across your school as your grade will be only two or four animals on the Chinese New Year Zodiac.

• Craft task - Make your own dragon, photos provided to show you what to do. 

Matching collections

How gorgeous is this task? Sequence numbers 0-10 and then show the collection. Our Preps worked with a partner and did this task. We now know that about 95% of our students need to go to teen numbers. We used our data from week one and our Mathematics Online Interview to determine this, great evidence, and while they were doing this we could check out those who needed support. 

It was interesting how some pairs were organised to make a line to show the collection and others grouped on top of the numeral. 

We began with our Learning Intention - to sequence numerals and to add a collection to it. This was our first time using Learning Intentions with this group of students. 

The end of a busy week. 

Assessment gathering - tick. Now what?

As blogged about already we have been engaged in collecting data on our students for the last three school days. Now comes the part where we extract that information, group, plan, teach and keep that cycle of updating information happening. As leader of the curriculum team, as part of the coaching team and as prep teacher this will be a little different in all planning phases. I will keep you posted. 

Pancake Day

Pancake Day has snuck up on me! It is this Tuesday - like in two days time...

I knew it was a short term, Easter will be here before we know it, (my daughter and I are off to Ubud in Bali at Easter, so fully aware of how many weeks until break) but seriously Pancake Day this week?

I have uploaded my work on Pancake Day and I have taken into account that my Preps are actually not with me on Tuesday. Work on special days needs to realistic.

I am not sure if I have blogged about my other roles in the school this year. I share the teaching space as you know with three other prep grades - so there are four grades in our open space. In addition to this Kate is my teaching buddy, her and I are a team. Kate has our grade on Tuesdays so that I am released to coach other teachers in our school. I coach our Prep team while we are in the space as well as teach. 

We have three other coaches in the school. Our school sees this as a priority and has worked out our workforce management plan accordingly. So on Tuesdays I also coach the coaches. But I digress.....

So this week - Chinese New Year, Pancake Day, Stop Work and Valentines Day. Wow Friday is looking like weeks away.

Click here to see our pack on TpT

Happy Chinese New Year

In our Prep space we have looked at the occasions that are important to our current families. 

One of the celebrations is Chinese New Year. We have a list of special events that will help us to complete the work for our curriculum. 

These packs are all about creating an understanding of a Chinese New Year - the traditions, the symbols and the zodiac. 

Chinese New Year - Interactive Note Pages 

Chinese New Year Posters and make a dragon

Chinese New Year Bundle 

Click here to see it in our store

This Chinese New Year pack is huge! There are posters and pages for Interactive Note Pages. Explore the zodiacs and understand what the traditions are that surround the Chinese New Year. 

This pack includes
• An introductory page for each section complete with detailed instructions.
• Options to print for sheep or goat at the end of the pack. The Chinese refer to goats and sheep. In English, it is based on a horned animal. In Vietnam, it is goat. In Japan - sheep; in Korea and Mongolia the sign can be sheep or ram. 

Tasks include - 
• KWHL – what do you know, want to know and what is your new learning?
• Our Class Word Wall – add to this while you are learning about the Chinese New Year.
• Posters for Chinese Zodiac Animals – information on each one. 
• Interactive Journal pages – to discover new information and record what you know.
• Fact sheets on all the zodiac animals.
• Venn Diagram – compare our New Year to a Chinese New Year
• Can-are/is-have/has on traditions that are significant to Chinese New Year.
• Graphic Organizers to help record learning. 

This is great for younger students....

Click here to see it in our store

Chinese New Year

146 pages

This Chinese New Year pack supports you to graph the year that your grade were born into according to the Chinese Zodiac. Build a dragon and match the animals on the zodiac to their name and number.

Ram is used in some parts of the world as one of the zodiacs. There are options to print for sheep or goat at the end of the pack as some countries use these instead. 

The Chinese refer to goats and sheep. In English it is based on a horned animal. In Vietnam it is goat. In Japan - sheep; in Korea and Mongolia the sign can be sheep or ram. 

This pack contains -

• Printing options for full color, save your ink and some tasks have black/white versions.

• There are a series of posters to display. These provide information for discussion. 

• Matching task – match the ordinal, name and the picture of the animal from the zodiac.

• Graphing task – use a sample group across your school as your grade will be only two or four animals on the Chinese New Year Zodiac.

• Craft task - Make your own dragon, photos provided to show you what to do. 

A freebie

As I have 5000 page views I have just completed this freebie for you to access. Click on the cover to access it for free.
Thanks for looking at my blog and coming back to check what I am up to with my grade.

'read to self'

Day One of Prep - I had organised book boxes with all Level 1 books and they had either 3 or 4 students' names on them. They sat around their book box and practised 'read to self'. Each time I noticed that we were not doing 'read to self' correctly we stopped. 

This is what Joan and Gail (the 2 sisters) suggest. You model what you saw and ask is that 'read to self'? You re-focus and then try again. Each time we are trying to build stamina. On Day One we went for only 2 minutes. Day Two - 4 minutes, Day Three - 5 minutes and today which is Day Four 6 minutes. 

At the end you do a check in with your thumbs - did we ..... and go through each item on your anchor chart for 'read to self'. We are attempting to build to 30 minutes by the end of Term Two. I think we are well on our way.

Read to self posters

Last Monday - yes our first day as Preps! We got together and brainstormed our 'read to self' poster. As a few of our Preps have older brothers and sisters they knew about this as they saw it when they dropped them off last year. 

I have recorded exactly what our Preps said and we were amazed by what they came up with. Here are our efforts. 

The smaller ones around our large poster are our anchor charts for where to read, the three ways to read and what is a best fit book.

The posters are ones I have made and I am happy to email to you if you want them as PDF's. They contain the five components of daily 5 - contact me pjshaw2@gmail.com 

Initial sound work

Day three of school and we are drawing items that begin with 's'. I have been impressed with sound/letter knowledge and their ability to hear sounds within words. 

You may notice the girl and she is there because her name starts with the 's' sound. 

One of my Preps even said that bus had that sound on the end.

One of the other purposes for doing this task is to use the markers correctly including snapping the lid on. We need to practice holding the marker and putting all our equipment away. 

Great classroom organsiation helps but doesnt always work.

First full day

This was my day and the amazing thing is - I will get up in the morning and happily go through it again.

Today we had 85 preps start their first full day. They arrived with book packs, at least two adults each and wondering what today would bring. Our shared space was full to capacity and then at 9.15 we asked that the grown ups say good bye and go to the canteen for 'tea and tissues' with our parent rep group and Principal.
We had tasks on tables for children to choose and then toilet trip number one. Snack, read a book, talk about 'read to self' and start our first anchor chart. Toilet and snack, time for recess. Toilet and off to Art. Toilet again and fruit break. Draw and write about our first day, lunch, toilet and play outside. Read a big book, hand out prep bags, reader bags and pack our bags. Time to hand children over to parents.
Breathe and then off to run a meeting for the staff.
Home, dinner and then bed!