SA Public Teaching Awards

Earlier this year, I was absolutely blown away when I was sent an email saying that someone had nominated me for a Public Teaching Award. I felt so honored and humbled.

The person who nominated me wrote:

"Anna is currently a Reception/Year 1 teacher at **** Primary School. **** Primary School is a low socio economic school and many of Anna's students come to school with little or no literacy skills. Anna is able to engage all her students in a caring and compassionate manner and her students are always enthused and excited about their learning. Anna has taught a blind student for the past two years and this student has been successful in his start to school due to the hard work and dedication of Anna."

WOW. What an honour.  

Around August, I received a phone call to my classroom from our Aboriginal Education Teacher, he said "I wanted to congratulate you for winning teacher of the year..." I was confused - was he playing a joke? I told him I wasn't, and that he must be confused. He told me our local newspaper wanted to interview me for a story, and a press release had my name on it! I checked my phone and mum, dad and my brother had all messaged me to tell me my name was in the state paper! I had won my region's award for Early Years Educator. Wow. I was absolutely blown away. 

In October, I was invited to an awards dinner, where the state award winners were to be announced. It was a great night!

Kim & me at the awards dinner. We went to high school together and now teach in the same country town! Small world! She is an amazing teacher!

 The table - they had pencils with names attached for place settings. Our awards were placed on the table in front of us. 

My daddy! I took him with me to the awards night. I hope I've made my family proud. 

I didn't end up winning the state award, however I am absolutely thrilled to make it down to the regional awards. What a great way to recognise teachers in our state.

In the Garden

I just finished my last blog post, but feel motivated to continue writing!

This term, we have been learning about 'The Garden' - all about bugs and plants. My kiddos have loved it! Especially since we get to use scientific vocabulary! 'thorax' 'abdomen' etc.

This theme has been one of the most fun I have done - I have loved seeing my class get so excited about their learning - observing their seeds grow, using a magnifying glass to watch ants. Amazing!

A view of my classroom at the moment - each table has a different insect above it which helps with classroom management - e.g. "Ants - you can get your book out now"

Close up of part of our theme board

The back wall has some of our work from Science and Maths, as well as our word wall. The maths board has some pizzas we made to develop of cutting a shape in half. The kids pick up halving shapes pretty quickly so I introduced halving amounts - the majority picked this concept up immediately and we made some bugs with spots (I just noticed the green bug had a spot fall off! Oops!)

Our spotty bugs!

This term it was SSO week - I have three SSOs that work in my classroom - I made them some gifts that I had seen on pintrest - super cute! I love pintrest!

Earlier this month I ordered a classroom organiser from "Lakeshore Learning'. I was soooooo excited about it having seen it all over pintrest and other teacher's blogs. I live in Australia and we don't have Lakeshore stores here - so I had to order it online (it ended up being REALLY expensive - almost 3x the price it is in USA! oh well). I am able to organise my week (sometimes fortnight) by having the resources I need for each lesson in the coloured box. I used to have a folder in my filing cabinet - but this is so much cuter!

The last thing I have to show you is the dragonfly craft we did the other day - I'm really happy with the way they turned out! I'm also really impressed with how well the kiddos did working independently on their dragonfly!

I think that'll do for now!

Blogging catch up!

I've been thinking a lot about blogging lately - I can't seem to do it regularly enough!! I really enjoy reading other blogs, however I find that what I have to say isn't very interesting!

I thought I would start adding photos of my classroom and activities we do - maybe then I will stay motivated to keep blogging on a regular basis! We have iPads in our classroom, and I often take photos of what we do - what better way to share than over the internet!

It has been FOREVER since I last posted, so I might do a big share of what's been going on!

Last term in my class, our theme was "Dr Seuss". I chose this as I found many of my little cherubs were really struggling with the concept of rhyme. We read a different book each week, then completed some activities around the book. The kids picked up rhyming SO QUICKLY! They really enjoyed the silly words and stories of Dr Seuss. I would read a passage and stop just before the rhyming word - having them put one in. This showed me if they could produce a rhyme on their own and hey presto! They sure could! I found the activities that accompanied many of the books on TPT. Thank you to the creators! I don't know what I would do without teacherspayteachers!

Below is a photo of my classroom with some of our work up on the board.

We also had Sports Day last term. Our Sports Day starts after recess - so I needed an activity to fill in the morning (I had a class of very excited 5 & 6 year olds!). We started off our morning normally - I then read them a book I found in our school library Sports Day by Nick Butterworth & Mick Inkpen.

It is a cute little story about a school's sports day - we talked about the concept of winning and losing and trying our best. Then we made these CUTE Sports Day people using a template I made up. Aren't they just precious?!

 

I think I'll leave this post here for now!

Play is the Way

On Friday we had a student free day to complete 'Play is the Way' training. I was blown away at the presenter - Wilson McCaskill. He was absolutely amazing. He had so much energy and kept the entire room of teaching staff awake all day!

Play is the Way is all about teaching social and emotional learning through co-operative guided games and using appropriate language choices to encourage children to think about the behaviour choices they are making.

Working in a low SES school, I have seen how children have difficulties managing their behaviour and using 'self-calming' techniques.  Our school has decided to implement this program next term - and hopefully over the next year we start seeing results in how students deal with different situations - and realise that anger isn't always necessary!

Something Wilson talked to us about was how children are given praise for everything! He encouraged us to stop and think about why we are giving the praise out. I don't know how I feel about this as I am a HUGE believer in providing positive praise and feedback when children (especially my little ones!) do something right. He encouraged us as teachers to use the word "BECAUSE" after giving praise - e.g. it's easy enough to say to a child "WOW that's fantastic!" but to stop and tell them why is the valuable part - "WOW that's fantastic because you wrote those letters all by yourself without help!" I feel I can justify any praise I  give though! Hehe "That's amazing because you couldn't do that yesterday!" "You are SO clever because you have learned all your letter sounds this week!" I see how my little loves respond so well, why not give them praise! A lot of them wouldn't get much at home!

More information on Play is the Way is on the website: https://playistheway.com.au/

I am very excited to start this program over the next year, and I hope my class and I get a lot out of it. I love giving kids the best start with their schooling, and if this is one way to do that I'm all for it!

Bye for now!

Jolly Phonics

Last year I started teaching Receptions (aka Kindergarten in USA). I was very interested in starting a phonics program in the school as I had taught children up to grade 4 in previous years with very little phonemic awareness and this worried me! They couldn't read a simple text and had no idea how to sound out words & blend to read! ahhh! Something needed to change!

I had been to a Jolly Phonics training in 2010, and found the program very interesting. I researched by talking to teacher friends, purchased a handbook, and last year started it in my classroom.

I couldn't believe the results, in the 9 weeks the program took to teach (one letter sound a day), every one of my class had learned pretty much all the sounds (some had forgotten some of the trickier diagraphs). They were blending to read and segmenting to spell. I was absolutely amazed at my clever kiddies! By the end of the year, most of the class were on reading levels (something that wasn't usually seen at our school!) and were spelling at an age appropriate level!

This has been so successful with our kids, and I know there are other synthetic phonics programs out there, I wonder what other teachers use....

Ok,

So I haven't posted for over a year. One thing I would like to do this year is blog a bit more! I love reading other people's blogs, and find them so interesting, but I think it is overwhelming and I don't really know where to start!  I need to set aside time each week or so to do this!

I'll fill you in on what has happened in the last year:

Last year I had the most amazing class. I miss them a lot this year. They picked everything I  taught them up so quickly. They were also very mature for 5 & 6 year olds! They were like little 'old people'. Everything interested them. They learned so so much and I was so proud at the end of the year with their results. My little girls still come in and see me almost every day at recess and lunch.

At the end of the year I travelled to America to visit my family in Oregon (and had Christmas there), spent time with friends in NYC, Vegas and LA. I had a great time. While in Oregon I went to Lakeshore - the store that I read about on the blogs I follow! We don't have anything like that where I live in Australia. I spent over an hour just walking around looking at everything. I am so jealous!!

 At Disneyland! Last time I went the teacup ride was closed due to rain! I was so so excited to be able to go on it this time!! I was like a child again when I was Minnie and Mickey mouse!!

 At the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park. Loved seeing this - Alice is one of my favourite stories!

This year's class is a bit of a shock - most of my class are brand new from kindy. I have had to teach them school routines, how to sit on the floor, how to ask to go to the toilet, how to walk around the school sensibly. The first couple of weeks were really hard - I compared this lot to my class last year. I had to keep reminding myself that this was all new for them, their first few weeks ever at school. After 3 weeks I have seen improvement and they are starting to show emotion (the first 2 weeks I would say something and get blank looks back - instead of giggles like I was used to!!)

 A picture of my classroom before the first day of school!

We are using Jolly Phonics again this year, and that is again showing its amazing-ness!! The kids are picking it up, but are slower blending sounds together. I will have to do a lot of work on this, perhaps in small groups as there are already many different ability levels showing.

Ok so I hopefully will write again very soon! I'll set a goal to write again in the next week!