Talia Carbis

Monday

Today was a really good day, and I was proud of myself. During second break it rained, and so the outside play that was planning couldn’t go ahead. I spoke to Jenny about it, and then decided to work on the big house we’re making. In the groups I took out we drew up plans, and moved around the boxes. We spoke about what rooms were important, how we wanted the doors and windows to be, and what we would use for various aspects. It worked really well. The kids were really excited about it, and I let them move through the house and explore the rooms so that their excitement about the project was heightened, and so that they were more and more keen on doing more work on it.

 
I felt that the art lesson that I did at the end of the day was a HUGE success. I was so glad and proud that it worked out and that the children created such brilliant prints. I would love to do more art with the children. I am trying to think of ways to incorporate it into other things that we’re learning about. But I do think that art skills are important to learn even all by themselves.

 
I have received a fair few parent help forms now, and have made up a vague timetable of when people are available. I will talk to Kenny about contacting one or two parents about helping with perceptual motor rotations this Friday. See if she thinks that that’s too soon or whatever.

 
I want to do some cooking with the kids soon. I think that would be great. I am not quite sure how to bring it in yet… maybe ANZAC biscuits because we’re learning about what’s around us in Australia?

 
I was also really glad that I was able to help Jenny and Margie this morning with the photos. I had never seen that program before, and so it was good that it did what I expected it too! I would love to get in and clean up all those photos, but there’s just not enough time in the day, or in my case the night either…

 
The kids are really into their play at the moment. Which is good. This morning they didn’t need anyone helping them either. I went out and ‘did the rounds’ and was so pleased to see James and Jayden had created car parks on the concrete for their trucks! It’s great that they’re moving forward with it. I want to take them for a walk around Chancellor Park later in the week so that we can have a look, as a class, at some road signs and things like that. Then hopefully we can be applying more real life aspects to our play!

During play, inside, Ben, Tommy and Elyce were making a museum out of blocks. They even put little dinosaurs inside and things like that! It was really quite spectacular. I took lots of photos!

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Tuesday

Today was an experience.

I was a little disheveled this morning when I was told that I was taking the day all on my own. But I got my act together, and made the morning happen.

I really am a planner, I swear. I NEED to be. This was obvious after today. I had  heaps of ideas for the morning session running around in my head, and a few things planned out- but nothing on paper. I hated working like that.

I should have planned, but circumstances the night before left me with little time.

 

I am still getting my head around the whole ‘ability’ of Preps- it seems to be such a rapidly changing environment. I am always conscious of not ‘pushing’ anything on them, and I find the balance involved in the negotiated curriculum a really hard thing to achieve.

 

As always rotations went pretty well. I love the structure and predictability of them. I am using a bell for behaviour management purposes with rotations, and that is great!

With the rotations, I wanted to really cement what we had done the previous week, and so I did some similar activities- just with a variation. I was really trying to work on their early mathematical understandings, and some letter recognition.

The activity where they match the capital letter to the little letter, to the picture is to help them with their key board skills. I noticed again in library today, when we were on the computers, that some children are having trouble putting in the right letter, just because it’s a capital. Hopefully just a couple more focus lessons on that will help that a bit.

I want to work on number recognition (hence the dice rotation)and some basic math skills from the number strand. I have heard Chloe H tell everyone that 1+1=2, and the other day we were talking as a group and everyone was just ecstatic about working out what two plus two might be, on our fingers. So I think that they are ready for that, and definitely interested, which I guess is that key.

 

The bigger/smaller, and odd one out sheets was a bit of a pre-test. I really didn’t know what level they were at when it came to things like that, and so I wanted to see. It was interesting- the results. Everyone knew big/small, and the majority knew which was the odd one out. This might be something that I could look at as well, because it’s a really interesting subject.

 I am still at a loss as with what to do with spare ten minutes. It’s such an awkward time… In the afternoon today I read a story, which was good, but even then there was about 3 minutes after the story. I need to search for some good books that we can have more of a discussion on.

I am trying to make an effort to think of some short little, MEANINGFUL activities that will help fill in those awkward gaps.

 I find it really hard to think quickly on my feet- always have. And so that part of Prep in really challenging. I haven’t found it such a challenge in the other years I’ve been in, and so to combat that I’ve decided to have suggestions in my head, or in a book, to help me think of quick activities.

 Back to the morning sessions. My thoughts are that it was really unstructured, and this was my biggest fault. I didn’t enjoy the lesson so much because of that either. I thought that I had some great ideas- google maps, The Sims, drawing the plans… all good ideas, just not put together really well. I’ve learnt from it though- plans, plans, plans. Particularly on days like today when I’m really able to do that.

 I had to get seriously angry a few times today. But I think that overall my control is improving. I am really trying to mix up my ways of getting their attention. I hate to yell, which is inconvenient, and my voice is not very loud, which is also inconvenient. When I talk loudly for any length of time my voice starts to leave and I go croaky- the pain of never fully getting over the worse cough of my life, which I had for a month and only left the week before school started. Every now and again I still cough.

 It was a bit hard to concentrate today, and harder to keep everyone’s attention because of all the moving, but I kept them when they wouldn’t get in the way, and we dealt with it.

 Another really overwhelming thing I’m finding is how BIG the curriculum is. We are doing SO many things, and it’s really blowing my mind a bit. I was proud of myself for continuing on with the ‘designing a house’ that Jenny had started the other day. I was not 100% sure what we were meant to be doing with that, ’cause it wasn’t my idea, and nothing was really ’said’ about it yet. But I thought that it was important to keep on it, and I remember Jenny saying, after we’d done the activity the other day, that we needed to follow it up and make it meaningful. Students are still struggling with the concept of a ‘plan’, as opposed to a picture of the outside of their house. We’ll need to work on that.

Like I said, SO many things happening. I had really grand intentions of starting the site word chart on Monday, but it’s Wednesday tomorrow and I still haven’t done it.

 To be honest, with a lot of the ideas, and things we’re doing, when i go home and think about it, I always come up with ideas to present it to older kids. I wish that I had seem more ‘teaching’ in my observation times, and less play. But what’s done is done, and things couldn’t be changed back then.

I am learning lots when Jenny does take over and do things with the kids. I think one of the things I need to improve on is making things SOUND more exciting and amazing then they really are. If I do that then the kids get excited about it. Jenny made home readers sound SO exciting today that even I wanted to take one home! But this doesn’t come naturally to me, and is yet another thing for me to work on.

 

Week One

My first  week back at school has been interesting. This week I tried a new behaviour management strategy. A bell. I used it for rotations- so that the kids would know when to change, and so that I didn’t have to raise my voice. I had found, last term, that when we were doing rotations everyone would be really engrossed in what they were doing and sometimes not hear me when I would ask everyone to change. I would do the ‘clap, clap, clap’ thing, but I think that they might get immune to that if I do it all the time. I got the bell idea from Helen Kurtz- a supervising teacher I had last year. She was great.

All holidays I had a really terrible cough and am still not 100% over it. Because of that my voice isn’t very loud (it’s not really very loud at the best of times). So that was another way to combat that situation. I am finding voice projection to be a real issue for me. I have always known this, but is more apparent with the preppies, and also, the fact that Jenny has such an animated, and much louder voice, means that that’s what they’re use to.

On Friday I wrote down some notes about how I could work on that area, and my over all behaviour management, from observing Jenny with the kids. Here’s what I learnt:

Use lots of expression in my voice. This often gets the kids attention, and makes them interested in what I have to say.

Reward good answers and be positive.

I realised this week that I like plans. I like to know what I’m doing and where I’m going. Wednesday was a bad day for me. We were starting our play- new for the term. I thought that the children would give me some ideas of things that they wanted to play and then I would work with that to hopefully make it work with the ‘international’ theme that I was hoping to go with. But the children didn’t really give me what I wanted- they said lots of things that they liked doing, like face painting, and playing outside, and things like that, but no themes. Riley did want to do Australia Zoo again, but I tried to discourage that. Jenny eventually took over and worked it so that we’re playing ‘aboriginals’. I guess the problem with that, that I see, is that they don’t KNOW anything really about aboriginals, and while I know that they’re meant to be learning, it’s hard to hook them in, and to keep them interested if they don’t have any previous knowledge. I was relating it to the Australia Zoo play in term one, and the reason (I think) why that was so successful was because they had already watched Steve Irwin do his thing on TV, they’d already BEEN to Australia Zoo. They had the Bindi DVDs at home, and already knew about Wildlife Warriors etc. It was the finer details, things like how to milk a snake of it’s venom and create anti-venom that were the learning parts of the play- not the play focus itself.

I think that that’s why the museum wasn’t a huge success with the rainforest play either. They didn’t know what it was like in a museum, they didn’t know what to ‘play’. So that’s what I have picked up about play. From my experience that all is.

But what did I learn from Jenny taking over play planning? Apart from Prep being hard, I learnt that the teacher needs to have a pretty pivotal role in planning, even though it’s a negotiated curriculum.

Prep is hard. I am finding the flexibility issue a real challenge- if only everything could be planned and done to plan. This stuff is crazy. I like Tuesdays and Thursdays- rotations days. I like them because I plan what is going to happen, and then that’s what happens. I don’t mind so much if something unexpected comes up, or if something takes more time then I allowed for it. That’s all okay, because I generally have some sort of back up plan as well. My struggle is on play days when it’s so much more up to the kids. When they don’t know what they want, but I have to do something. I find it hard with the three sections that they’re in as well- three groups to manage, encourage and work with. It’s okay when there’s an aide, or when Jenny is able to help as well, but otherwise there is a lot of wasted time.

I am thinking of finding some youtube clips of aboriginals that I can show the kids so that they have a better idea of what they’re playing.

Funny

Sometimes as teachers we need to stop being serious, and just have a laugh. Check out this site and some of the funny answers kids give on tests.

Funny Answers.

Friday Reflections

First up we finished off our smart pizza rotations from the day before. I will collate the information later and see if there are any definite signs on one particular smart in any kids.

We played outside with the Sharing Seahorses after break which was really nice. I think it’s really important to play outside and was great for them to play with the other class. I think that that really helps them to understand that they are a whole grade- together.

I was reminded at lunch that we had to make our friendship chain longer- 5 meters in fact. So straight after lunch we made some more links and the children practiced their writing and copying skills and wrote the words on themselves. We made it a little more colourful by putting coloured paper in it as well. Then we did a play plan and worked on play on their rainforests until second break.

After second break we  had group time. We talked about kindness some more and about Gaby Get-a-long. As a class afterwards we sung the Gaby Get-a-long song again.  There were a few requests for Snooklefry, and so I played that. We talked about it as it went though and talked about friendship and related it back to Gaby.