Here are our costumes

 

I love the effort that all my parents went to, to make sure that we enjoyed our Fairytale Dress-Up Day.
 

I apologise for the quality of this photo, taken on my camera and I had to reduce the megapixels to upload and blur faces.

We had Alice in Wonderland, Princes and the Pea, Frog Princes, Knight, Dragons, Wolves, Jack in the Beanstalk, pirates and witches.

Fairytale Dress-up Day

We had a huge Fairytale Dress-up Day today.

All our students came dressed on the most amazing costumes. I have taken photos, but need to hide faces before posting.
 

We made wands, magic mirrors, collages and just enjoyed being in costumes.

 

Here are some collages - not yet finished.

 

The brief was to use coloured paper and design the costume you wore to school today.

 

They did an amazing job.

 

Can you pick out 'Alice in Wonderland'?

The Kinder came to visit us and walked around our learnng space to check out our costumes.

Inquiry Approach

I know that I have said this before - but I am so lucky to work in the place I do.

For my new followers - I teach for 4 days a week in a Prep space (1st year of school) and I am the team coach for this group.

I am the Curriculum Leader for the whole school as well as a Coach.

I don't work in the Prep space on Tuesdays as I coach staff and coach the other coaches.

It is busy - hectic - challenging but I wouldn't have it any other way.

So today the other coaches, our Principal and I spent 3 hours looking at Inquiry Learning.

Kate, who is Assistant Principal at another school led us in a discussion, information giving and helped us with a plan for action.

I have used this appoach before, but not at my curent school. We have Daily 5 and Cafe in most rooms and we are looking at upping the ante and exceeding potential. Our studenst show stamina, choose best fit, make decisons every day about learning in English - next step real Inquiry Learning.

So we have some reading to do.....watch this space!

A new word wall...

I was thinking of brightening up a word wall in our learning space.

 

The ones I have been using are at least 10 years old and not even worthy of a photo to share.

 

So I was working on this and it is so nice and bright.

 

I have made it in three sizes, so if you purchase it, you can use the size that best fits your space.

 

Click here to access TPT

 

I am going to work on some alternatives, then choose which one to use.

 

So keep your eyes on my stores for different versions.

 

Queen's Birthday tasks

Just a short unit - to assist in 'word work' and 'work on writing' around the 'Queen's Birthday'
 In Teachers Pay Teachers the download contains a freebie - well two actually for you to use on Tuesday. Download the whole thing and your students will have 12 pages that contain the following

Background to the Queen’s Birthday Holiday for Australia

Words to describe the Queen

What would you do if you were Queen for a day?

How do you celebrate the Queen’s Birthday?

If you could award an Australian on this day who would it be and what for?

Extra writing page

What words can you make? Using the letters from Queen’s Birthday

Venn Diagram – Australian Flag and British Flag

Venn Diagram – Australian Icons and British Icons

 

Students can choose which tasks they do as independent and best fit tasks.

 

Let me know how they go

Freebies......

Life is still about reports and I am being gorgeously distracted by my blogging friends - lucky I only need to proof read....

 

Anyhow - look what I found - free clip art - just check out the terms though when you use them in commercial products you may produce.

 

Happy hopping!

More 'daily 5'

Our Preps are finally doing 'daily 5' with all five parts and children moving through the tasks while I am able to take individual conferences, guided reading, running records, guided writing. I am so proud of my 5 year olds and our parent helpers are loving the independence, writing and reading strategies and how are space works.
 

Here are some photos to tell the story.....

Independent listening to reading - using Oxford Owl

 

Reading conference with me

Some word work, putting words into a sentence

Work on writing - doing planning pictures and choosing their own topic

Word work tasks - best fit

Word Work - reading the words, making with letters and writing them

Listening to reading - using a five splitter and sharing a story on the iPod

 

e5 and our teaching practice

Today I was coaching our coaches and we were looking at the 'new' e5 Teacher's Journal.

 

There is actually an app. I was so excited to find this!

 

We are going to be doing Learning Walks and looking at what our students see in our rooms to help them with learning.

 

This journal will assist us to structure this.

 

Sorry another short post - reports, reports, reports!

 

Samples of work

I have been looking at samples of work all last week.

 

It is lovely to revisit and see the growth that my students have made.

 

As I have been looking through portfolios and really noticing how far their writing has changed, how detailed their drawings have become and how much their knowledge about  numbers has increased.

 

I am constantly amazed how much they learn in their first year of school.

 

I have also reflected on the tasks I ask my students to do.

 

Because of our new curriculum and because I blog and because I now put my work on TPT, TN and TM my work looks different.

 

It is much more professional and I really think about the focus and the direct link is always made to the learning intention and success criteria.

June Goals @ I(heart)recess..

 

What a great way to set goals and share them and then come back and be accountable at the end of the month. Thanks to Jess @ I(heart)recess here are my goals.

I will revisit this in a month and see if I have reached or exceeded them.

This is a short post - but I am in the middle of reports.