Well the first week of school is over and what a cute little class of 23 year ones I have this year! Check out their feelings on the first day back on Tuesday! Super cute and thrilled that they are mostly happy and excited!

We have started this week with going through daily routines and the school values. Here's a sneaky shot of my classroom. I am in a large open space unit, which holds 6 classes. There are a few walls, but no doors so the classrooms are very open! My classroom ends where the kid's drawers start at the back. Behind is where the JP big books live and the small group readers, as well as a couple of couches and desks for reading and small group work. My desk is right at the back too where the rainbow organiser is. 

On the tables, the children share a coloured, numbered pencil pot, and have a Jolly Phonics letter chart held up in an ikea serviette holder (a nifty idea from one of the teachers sharing my class!) The pencil pots are something new this year, it has been extremely helpful as we can call out coloured tables, or odd/even numbers to return to their seats after floor time! Last year the kids had a pencil basket, but I think these are MUCH cuter!

Every day our class does 'expert reading', where we practise building our stamina and strategies. Before we started this we brainstormed what it meant to be an expert reader. I love the ideas the kids came up with for "feels like" (especially the word "EPIC" hehe). I am going to turn this into a poster for our classroom to remind children what this time is about. 

We have also been working on some cute craft literacy and numeracy activities from Deanna Jump's "Names Unit" I've linked below to her TPT page. She has the cutest stuff!

Names Unit Deanna Jump

 I had to modify her activity a little as we didn't have the book she suggested on hand, instead we just wrote our name and something we liked :) They turned out so cute and it has really brightened up the classroom for the start of the year! 

We also did her chicka chicka boom boom activity by thinking about our names and how many letters are in them. They turned out pretty cute don't you think!? We also listened to the chicka chicka boom boom song from:

http://www.schooltube.com/video/2490bb8cd9848c3af3ec/ 

 This next week I am starting my Australian Curriculum co-ordinator position, so I'll have to blog about that next!

Right so I'm pretty proud of myself as this is the second time I have blogged this month!

We started back at school this week for our teacher prep days and WOAH we have been productive!

So last year, Deann (my teaching partner) and I decided to rearrange our wet area. We are pretty lucky in our classroom to have a lovely big space to use for art and storage. However... there has been several groups of teachers in our classroom for the past few years and A LOT of junk had accumulated.

We started by taking all the drawers out and everything off of the shelves, this enabled us to see what we had, what we could donate to other classes and what we could throw out.

A quick trip to IKEA was necessary to purchase 40 new tubs!

We then sorted the items into like groups and put them in IKEA tubs or the drawers underneath.

Tada! Everything has a home and we know where everything is! Such a good feeling to be so organised!

 

Hello Literacy 

I downloaded the awesome fonts on the signs from Jen Jones on teacherspayteachers. I have to say that most of my classroom signs have her fonts on them! They are just so darn cute!! 





Well there's my second post this year! Let's hoping I can keep it up! Next week I'll post some pics of the rest of the classroom (there's not much in it at the moment!)

Wish me luck for next week's start of the school year with my new babies!!

Wow. Talk about being a slacker!! 

One of my new year's goals is to knuckle down and really start blogging regularly! I think I've said that every year but I really want to try and do this properly!! 

So much has happened in the last year! I moved to a new school and was blown away by my amazing class of kids and even more so with my amazing co-workers. I'm right by the beach (ahhh amazing!) and I feel so lucky I work in such a beautiful, supportive, fun school. I worked in a big open classroom with another teacher, between us we had 50 year 1s.

On the first day I had them draw their face on a circle and we made a picture graph. This stayed up for the first few weeks and we were able to refer to it while we started our unit on graphing. It was nice to see how many kids were feeling excited about their first day in year 1.

The whole year was absolutely amazing, I had such a supportive bunch of parents, always wanting the best from their children, and would regularly visit in the morning for a catch up chat, or to ask how their kids were doing. (This was something I hadn't really experienced before, so it was a nice contrast). 

Something else I was blown away with was the amount of work and learning these kids were capable of. They soaked up everything they were taught and were always eager for more. It was so pleasing seeing them absorb and apply knowledge.

This little love made my day with her recount writing about lunch time play 

And this little fella had a maths brain so advanced! He always went above and beyond what was required in maths tasks. Clever boy! 

I love the detail in this labelled diagram!

I lost a whole heap of my school photos when my iphone decided to die earlier this year! Thank goodness for instagram hey! 

I loved some of our mother's day craft!

One of the highlights this year for me was going to the JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE CONCERT! He is an amazing performer, and even though I was pretty tired the next day at school, I couldn't stop singing his songs and buzzing about how amazing the whole night was!

Next year, I have accepted a curriculum co-ordinator position, I will still be on site at my current school, however I will be working week on, week off, so one week in the classroom, and one week co-ordinating. I will be focusing on effective teaching strategies and 21st century learning design. I'm not 100% sure on what I am doing yet, but am so excited (and grateful!) to be in this position. I am also excited to still have year 1s next year, we had a meet the teacher session in the last few weeks of school and I have the cutest class.
I WILL update my blog with what I am focusing on in the classroom, and in the co-ordinator job... even if it is just for me (is anyone out there reading?)

Anna