How exciting

I know for some people this is not really that exciting - but when you have waited a term for bag lockers and they arrive, it is something to celebrate.

Each space is big enough to house a school bag, lunch box, drink bottle and reader bag.

 

So now we are not lining up our bags in the corridor like soldiers and putting our food and drink in our tubs with our work.

 

For those of you who have worked with 5 year olds you will know that mess that happens when food, drink and work collide.

 

An extra bonus is that the back of them can be used as a display space and here I have put my 'daily 5' stuff.

 

Here Is Our Animal Farm Unit

My Farm Unit pack contains 121 pages and is full of ideas for writing and reading.

  

Getting ready for work

Late night flight back from Bali and trying to keep awake so I can get a proper night sleep tonight and get back into a routine for the start of school on Monday. I have some serious holiday brain and I am so glad we have planned for the next two weeks.
Before the holidays the Prep team had the planning all ready to go. Jan and I have planned Maths and Discovery Learning for two weeks and Pascale and Chrissy have reading and writing under control. With me away and Chrissy in Europe we needed to make sure we were ready. So I hope that Jan and Pascale have been able to have a restful break as well.
So a trip into work for about an hour to make sure the take home books are updated and ready to go, check that the tables and chairs are right and all will be good to go.
I can't wait to see my Preps, they change a fair bit over the Easter break and come in ready to continue with some serious learning.
I also have another batch of netbooks arriving for our Year 3-6's and with the help of our techs will have these ready to go out for parent leasing by the end of the first week back. There will be some excited students waiting for these.

Last post from Bali....

Today we leave to go back home to Australia, Ballarat. While I wish to see my husband and son, as I have missed them, it is sad to go. My daughter and I have seen many new things this time around.
It has been hot, hot, hot! A cheap fan has seen us get around without too much fuss. We have swum with dolphins, seen temples, watched a fire dance, been to the beach, completed a cooking class, caught up with friends, bargained and shopped until I dropped, checked out: Ubud, Seminyak, Uluwatu, Serangan and some villages.
A fantastic holiday, but by tomorrow morning we will be back in the land of reality and preparing for school to start on Monday.

Our learning space

                             Reflecting on how our space looks.

Our learning space is a great place to be.

There are many parts to our space where we can learn.

We have the flexibility to have students work on the floor, at tables and they choose where they work.

 Yes, even in a Prep grade.

We do not have names on tables - they choose where they sit and work. Teachers who enter our space wonder how this works. After our introduction the children just sort themselves out and if there is no space left at the tables they work on the floor, some choose to work on the floor at the start. We have not had to move anybody for poor choices or lack of work habits.

Our planning is working well. We have two teachers, one from each end of our double learning space, doing the maths planning and that means the timetable, the actual planning documents for the week, all the resources are collected and made ready to go - down to dice, counters and everything! One teacher takes the lead in the delivery of this program from each end and allocates groups, they introduce the focus and learning intention and success criteria for assessment gathering. The second teacher takes a group and gives feedback. The other two teachers do the same for the English planning. 

Data Wall - putting faces on our data

This book

'Putting Faces on the Data'

has been instrumental in helping us not only track kids but put in place strategies to get them to the next phase in their learning. 

We set goals and discuss the learning that needs to take place for us to help the learning of the child.

We put a photo of the child on top of this and then use a magnetic strip to attach them to a board. this way we can move students around and make groups for point of need teaching. Each year level is a different colour so we can see where our 3's are in comparison to our 2's, 4's and even 5's etc.

The same colour is used to show how each year level performs with teacher judgements.

We also do this for OnDemand scores so that they will drive us to triangulate data.

Across the top you can see the colour that indicates where the students need to be if they are at the expected level.  This enables us to see if we reached or exceeded our targets.

Our students are great and we are not only trying to reach potential but exceed potential.

Another post from Bali

This is day six of our Bali holiday. I cannot help but sneak a peek at my blog stats late at night or early in the morning. I cannot believe it but I have now hit 50 followers so when I get back home at the end of the week I would like to do something as a celebration and a thank you.
But until then I will leave you with a few photos of my day here. My friend and I having a cocktail or two in a place by the beach with our feet in the water and our girls enjoying some mocktails. Our girls thought we had gone mad and stepped in the water feature!

Animals from the farm

I am currently working on a unit for Farm Animals and I came across these great books the other day to support the work I am doing. Amazon has them, I picked them up in a local bookstore. In the USA 'A Squash and a Squeeze'" might have a blue

Click here to see this in out TpT store

Shared mission, vision and values

This is our staff working on developing a shared mission, vision and values.

We have a set of five values - Aspiration, Respect, Integrity, Accountability and Teamwork.

We are looking at how these fit into making a high performing Professional Learning Community.

We have been developing a shared understanding of what each of these mean by defining them, what they look like and what they don't look like. The discussions we are having are important so that each staff member can contribute and be heard.

Term 2 - Fairytales

I am so excited to be doing Fairytales with my group after the break. We will be doing setting, plot and character through English and Discovery Learning. I love this term's focus as we get to explore through role play, puppets, dress ups and of course reading and writing.

My Fairytale Unit supports our learning and I can't wait to use it. I will post work from my students as we complete it.

Fairy Tale Unit