Moments from my day

 I started my day with the Year 5 and 6's. 

I am working with two teachers and their grades to introduce Daily 5 and Cafe. 

I am enjoying this time and helping to set up these routines. 

We used the netbooks today to start a series of slides to set our own goals for two parts of Daily 5. 

They are doing an amazing job with 'Read to Self", 'Read to Someone','Work on Writing' and today we looked at 'Work on Words'. 

Next week we are introducing 'Listen to Reading'

We did an anchor chart together, we explored where we can get our words from, what tools we need and how we need to work. 

Then I went back to Prep world and we were preparing for our Teddy Bear Picnic. 

The weather was lousy today - rain, hail, sunshine, wind and more rain. 

So we had our picnic in our buddies room. 

Before we went for our picnic we designed a sun hat and made it for our bears. 

There were some unusual hats. 

I will post some pics of this over the weekend. 

Grouping bears

We have been continuing to  use our teddies in Maths this week. 

Today we grouped them. 

The Fozzie Bear group and I grouped them according to 

- colour

- size

- doll or teddy

- clothes

- tags

- writing

- paws

The language we used was important, we sent about 30 minutes just talking about different groups and then we drew pictures of them. 

Measuring bears

These are amazing! 

Our kids have their teddies at school this week. 

Our maths is around the teddies all week. 

We have hefted them - to see which ones are heavier and lighter. 

On Monday I coach other staff in our school so Bri takes our grade and this is a task they did together. 

We measured them with streamers

Glued the streamer on the page

We drew the bear to scale - checked the size of the head, arms and body against the streamer

We then checked how many unifix cubes it took to measure their height

I think we did an awesome job. 

Focus on words

My kids need to practise reading common words (here in Aus we spell practise when we need to repeat things to learn them and spell practice when we talk about a Doctor's job or our own teaching way of doing things ie our practice)

So first up here is a pack that I did for my USA blogger buddies - in my TPT store and currently 30% off for the next day and a bit. 

Contents - 46 pages in total

What do you know, want to know and what is your new learning. This can be done individually, in groups or as a grade

A page to record your notes

Pumpkins have – are – can: to be completed as a grade

Poster for the ‘Life Cycle of a Pumpkin’

Sheet for sequencing the pumpkin life cycle

Write a procedure for ‘Planting a pumpkin seed’

Procedure for ‘Making a Jack-o-lantern’

List what we use pumpkins for

Narrative – Read Cinderella and change the ending. There are five different writing line pages

Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater – change the words and there are five different writing lines to choose from

Write a Cinquain poem + 5 writing lines

Venn Diagram – green and orange pumpkin

I see, I think, I wonder

Simple, compound and complex sentences

*Roll and Read – Pre primer, primer Grades 1/2/3

*Base board for CVC words using pumpkin seeds

       

 My next pack is Pumpkin Bingo 

There are 60 pages in total

There are 17 pages of coloured cards that you can copy in colour and laminate.

Use these cards for flashcards as well as for the bingo cards

Each of the 12 sets of words have 6 bingo cards. (36 pages = 72 bingo board)

I use two sets of cards.

I keep one set permanently with the bingo cards.

The other set are in our word work tub to be used for other tasks.

Allow access to counters to cover words when called out.

There are also labels for you to place on containers or bags.

This one is a roll and read for 

    

There are 17 pages

Use a six sided dice and one game board with a partner

Copy and laminate as many game boards as you need

Use ‘best fit’ board for each partner group

Take it in turns to roll a dice and use a dry erase marker to put a line through a word in the column you have rolled.

Your buddy and you need different colors – count the colors at the end to see who the winner is

If the word is incorrect you miss a turn

100+ followers in my TPT store

As a way to say thanks-  there is a flash freebie on my facebook page.

It will only be up for a day.

I have just hit 100+ followers in my TPT store

So thanks for supporting me and my work

Have a great day everyone - you have all made mine a great one!

    

This is part of a small series I am doing - there are Bingo cards as well. 

Sunday night linky x 2

WOW -TPT has hit 100 000 likes on their Facebook page and to celebrate I am joining up with a whole bunch of sellers for this flash sale. Everything in my store is 20% off and you get an additional 10% off by entering the code FB100K

The sale is for two days starting 13th October (USA time)

Now for my link ups. 

Another Sunday night and I am linking up with two blogs tonight

First - a math linky with iSURF(c)

Here is my game for this week -

The old game called '21' is great for consolidating addition. You can change the total they need to get and start with 10 and then make the total larger as they become more efficient. 

The dealer hands out two cards each. Add them together and you may ask for more cards, if you go beyond 21 you are out!

I have this dislike for the word 'sum' - it does mean the total of two or more collections, but so many teachers use it when they are doing subtraction, division and multiplication. They are equations or operations not sums. We need to teach our kids the correct terminology.

Playing cards are an under utilised resource in our classrooms. 

Now for a Peek at my Week with Mrs Laffin

I have a nice slow week this week - we are planning a Teddy Bear's picnic, we are measuring bears, making hats for them, making a Corduroy Bear, doing some great writing to describe bears, writing invitations and postcards, sequencing heights of bears, drawing bears to scale and comparing bears. 

We gather assessments as an ongoing process at our school - I need to benchmark five more of my kids in reading, look at my portfolios (I have been a bit slack and haven't glued everything in from last term), I am planning on doing a "Writing Vocab" test and some spelling tests for Oxford Words with two groups. 

I want to finish my work on pumpkins and and get that posted - but I don't think that will happen.

I need to clean up a cupboard that I am putting off ......

What I need is a massage and pedicure!

Loving catching

Today was the first of four Fridays that students from our local University will be doing some PE lessons with our kids. 

The pre-service teachers are involved in a mentoring program and there is a 1st year and a 4th year pre-service teacher working together to mentor and deliver program for our students. 

So today we did a warm up, established some rules and played some great games which all involved catching. 

One game was called cleaning your room. There are two teams and you have to use under arm throws only to get as many bean bags out of your space and into the other space. They needed to work as a team, be strategic and use skill to get the beanbags from their space to the other. 

The task was about throwing the balloon in the air and catching it before it got to the floor and when the whistle blew they had to swap balloons and then keep going. 

We cannot wait until next Friday - thanks Mick and Mitch!

Back into Daily 5

Here is a photo post all about our first week back and doing Daily 5 - we rocked this!

 

Digital Pensieve - loving the new updates

It has been almost a year since I mentioned the Digital Pensieve. 

I used it a little last year and found it great to use and easy to use but this year I love it even more.

I have just my own grade on it, even though I share a double grade. I love the new features it has. 

I am able to keep track of Reading, Writing, Word Work, Science, Social Studies (here we call it Humanities) and there is an 'other' tab. 

These two screen grabs show my grade in green by name and then in groups in grey.

When I am conferring - it looks like this. The coloured tabs across the top are the different subject areas. 

These show the detail I have entered for each child or group. 

Then there are links to the Cafe Menus

As we share kids for reading and maths - on Friday when I get my notes from the other three teachers it only takes me about 20 minutes to enter them in. When parents ask questions, I can answer straight away. When I write reports - it is easy as my goals are already done and the strategies are already done. 

This post is not sanctioned by the 'two sisters' nor do I receive any compensation for writing it.  I just love using it.

Planning for Term 4 - Toys

We started our last planning session with an audit or summary tool of what we had already covered. 

This has our Curriculum Areas and Domains across the top. 

The grey areas are the areas we do not assess against but still need to teach. 

This ensures our kids have the necessary skills when they go up into next year's grade. 

Next step was to look at what we hadn't taught against what we wanted to teach and then see what curriculum areas it addressed. 

The white column that hasn't been coloured at all is PE. 

We have a PE teacher who addresses this for us. Lucky us!

This pages below show the Inquiry Process headings with question prompts. The pile of sticky notes waiting for us to place tasks and assessment on them from what the kids wanted to explore. 

As we are holidays at the moment I haven't yet typed it all up. 

But it will be exciting - I will share when typed.

Here are the sheets with our ideas on them - we also spent time looking at our discovery learning word work, writing tasks and maths planning in detail.  A very fruitful day.