Talia Carbis

Lesson Plans

I’m about to upload a whole heap of lesson plans that I’ve done over my three week block. The reason is because some other student teachers from my school needed to have a look at them, and I didn’t have my folder with me. Plus I thought it would be a nice little bank of ideas for everyone reading!

Brain Conference One

Brain Conference Two

Brain Conference Three

Computer Lesson One

Kindness Poster Lesson

Letterland- Harry Hat Man

Thinking Two

My Brain

My Holiday

Rotations Week 3  Rotations for weeks one and two are in a previous post.

Smart Pizza Choices One

Smart Pizza Choices Two

Smart Pizza Choices- Original Idea for doing it.

Thinking Box

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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.

Thursday Reflection

Jenny is away because it’s her daughter’s wedding on Saturday. Fiona was the sub, and she continued what Jenny had been doing all week- testing.

In my non-contact time in the morning I put together the kids ‘brain books’. This shows their progress of learning about the brain so far this term and moves into smart pizza as well.

We finished off a reflection sheet from the smart pizza activities that we did yesterday. The majority of kids understood about circling the faces to represent how they felt about an activity. Some kids circled two if they liked it (the smiley and the straight line) which I guess could indicate that they were in between? Some circled the sad and smiley faces- this was just confusing and they told me either one or the other when I asked them about it later.

Jenny organised a bit of a card for me, which I got the kids to stick bits onto and write their names in after they’d finished. Don’t you just love writing cards to yourself?

We did rotations after first break, here’s how they went.

Memory:  They’ve played memory before and so it was easy because I didn’t have to explain it or anything, just re-cap the rules. I was thinking it would be good to maybe modify it a bit so that they can learn and see how that happens,but I couldn’t think of a simple mod, so I left it.

Playdough: I’ve made playdough a few times, but this time instead of just writing their own names I thought it would be a bit more challenging to get them to write someone else’s name. They sort of did. They copied off the name tag dolphins, which was fine. It was what I expected them to do. The thing I find with the playdough though is that they like to make things with it, not write them, and so they get distracted easily.  Perhaps doing this when there are two adults would be good so that more of an eye can be kept on them? Or maybe even LETTING them make things out of it- surely that’s a good motor skill?

Letter H picture match: Starts With H: They quite liked this one (the pictures in this document might be a little off center… beware!). I had to be with the kids quite a lot for this one- sounding out all the words for them because they weren’t getting it before I did that. But that’s okay. A lot of kids really enjoyed it and got the majority right which is a good thing! The reason I did H is because we had just done the letter H earlier in the week for Letterland and I wanted to make it relevent for them.

Connex Stuff: SO many kids like puzzles and they had shown that to me in the smart pizza stuff we did yesterday. So I decided to make something similar part of the rotation. I noticed the other day that there are big blocks and those pieces of stuff that connect (I am calling them connex) in boxes. I thought that was using the same idea of puzzles- creating things, solving problems etc., but in something different to what they had done other times. They would have liked more time on this, I can tell, but a few kids really got into it and managed to make things in the time they had. Andre made a cube, just without the front and back which I thought was rather impressive. He had told me that he was going to make a square earlier when we were explaining it, and it was good to see him actually do it and they way that he did was interesting as well.

For the smart pizza ‘rotations’ that I’d been doing I was afraid that the kids might start to get confused between that and normal rotations. So this afternoon when I did smart pizza rotations I  put an “X” on the board instead of a Cross. This made it nice and clear for them. I think this was a good idea.

The activities that I chose for smart pizza this week were in the same smart categories, just different activities. I did this because I wanted to see if they chose and liked activities because it was fun for them, or because they were actually smart in that area.

We did snap, collage, writing a book, and shape jumping. I am yet to go through what they actually did and whether it was the same as last time, but it will be interesting to find out. I ran out of time for the smart pizzas a bit, and so I thought that I would finish that off properly tomorrow.

Wednesday Reflections

Overall feeling of today: *nods head* yep, pretty good.

I started the day by reading “The Rainbow Fish” by Marcus Pfister. I ‘read’ the book using just the pictures first, and then read the words. This took up a fair amount of time, but it was a really good book to get them thinking about sharing. Lately in their play I had been noticing people snatching and not wanting to share, and so I thought this was a good book to read to them to highlight how good it is to share. We brainstormed briefly what we can do to share during our play, and they responded well. I think they got it.

We had snack early and then got stuck into play. Once again I was running the show and it was pretty hectic. After first break Jenny told me that some girls had asked to paint themselves, this sent her on an expedition to get face paint, or at least permission to use regular paint. We got a thumbs up for the second option, and so got to it. It was fun, and quite therapeutic to paint their faces. Some of them weren’t the best, but I realised that they were probably better then some other people could do.

The kids really enjoyed being animals (they always do). The only problem is that it causes a few problems later in the day, when we’re not animals anymore. Today it didn’t though, which was good. I think it was because they were doing more structured things, but with a bit of flexibility. There wasn’t an option to be like an animal, and the things they COULD do were interesting enough to keep them occupied.

After second break I did my Smart Pizza Choices A lesson. It went REALLY well. I was so happy with the way that they just rotated though them themselves and didn’t make it difficult or anything like that. I took lots of notes and things, which was good. It was interesting that some kids chose to stay at the one thing practically the whole time, and others changed through them all, and again some changed only once. I will do the reflection part of the lesson tomorrow- this was Jenny’s recommendation, and what I’m going to do.

Tuesday Reflections

I think today, as a whole was one of my best days.Today we did letterland as a whole class. This worked MUCH better then doing it in the rotations. I set aside a whole hour to do it in, not including packing up time, and they used it all.

We went through it at the beginning and brainstormed words and read the story which wasn’t so good this week, but that doesn’t matter. I wasn’t sure if his name had been changed. Even though I have the sheet I forgot to check in the morning. I just used the name given- Hairy Hat Man, and that worked fine.

Their brainstorming is getting better, but they really need to be reminded to check if it has the ‘h’ sound at the start, before they give their word. Most of the time the kids are able to tell each other what letter it really starts with, which is good.

Some kids are a bit slow to get it all together- Mattie and James aren’t the quickest, but their work gets done in the end. Ben is always lightning fast, and a couple of others were fast today as well- I asked them to cut out another, different thing from the magazine, because H is an easy one- there’s lots of heads and hair in them!

After the official letterland I handed out a sheet with lots of words on it. They had to circle the words that had H in them. I was really a but unsure how they’d go with this, but I think they coped really well. Some people got it better then others, but most people could recognise a H and circle that. The problem was that some people just circled the H, and not the word, and therefore circled words that had a H IN then, not that started with a H.

They seemed to really enjoy this activity, so I might consider doing letterland separate again in the future and to do something like that after again. Recognising what letters look like is all part of early reading (which I am learning more about) and so it’s beneficial for them.

Rotations I thought went well today. I had exactly an hour, because of library, and so they were only short rotations. I tried to use a few different smarts and get them using different parts of their brains for each activity. I had planned to do up some smart pizza ’slices’ and display them at each activity so that they could see what smart they were being, but ran out of time last night because I went to work.

Each activity, bar the mothers day card, fitted in really well time wise. The children seemed to like the ‘jump shape’ activity, so I might do that again some time. There was a collision between Malakie and Ben, but it was all looked after. I took observational notes during the rotations and they’re available on the next page.

Library time went reasonable well. It is always chaotic trying to teach the preppies computer things, but they do it surprisingly well. I was surprised at the range of ability, though I suppose I shouldn’t be. In my previous experience computer knowledge is always like that, no matter what age group you’re with. It’s really interesting to bring down to as basic as writing your name, and it was almost a little frustration to have to work with kids who had no idea what ‘a’ was. I know that it’s hard with the capital letters on the keyboard, but they will have to learn that. I knew that that would happen though and so I did compensate for it during letterland by showing them the capital H and the little h.

Tahlia was really good at typing her name, and so I taught her how to hold down the shift key to do a capital letter. I considered teaching them caps lock, letter, caps lock, but decided against it. It’s not that hard to hold down the shift key, and they have two hands, so that’s not an issue- hand span wise. It’s easier to learn that was, it saves you learning something new again when you’re in an older grade. And Tahlia got it right and was fine doing capitals, so I’m not worried. The problem is that now I have to stay consistent, if I start telling them that there are two ways they will get confused and that won’t be good.

Malakie is a smart boy (and incredibly naughty). He listened to what I told Tahlia, and then copied me. I shook my head in amazement when I saw what he’d done, and congratulated him. Jenny and I spoke afterwards about maybe doing some extension things for him. I had the though of him maybe going into the Chris’ class so that he could do some prep/1 stuff. That might seem like I’m trying to get him out of my class though.

After lunch I we finished off the mothers day cards. That went well- some kids went over board with the glitter (as you have to expect some will), but it went well. The cards were nifty I thought, and I will use the idea up in kids church this weekend as well.

We also did a clean up after lunch which always seems to need to be done.

There was an incident in the playground that Linda told Jenny and I about. I wasn’t sure what happened and asked Jenny if she would like to talk to them about it. She said it would be good for me to have a go at it, so I did. I was a little scared when she said that, and lost my mind for a few seconds trying to think what I would do. Jen suggested I ask the kids what happened, so I did.

I think that the process that I went through with them was okay. I know that when I was doing that I was excluding the majority of the class from participating in the conversation, but they could listen. I did try to include them a bit more by asking what we could do as a class to help them make better choices next time. This worked well with people suggesting other games and things. I also tried to build up a sense of friendship in our class and caring by asking who would allow one of these boys to play with them if they wanted to make a good choice about their play. Everyone said they would let them play with them, so that finished it off well.

I really need to think of a new way to get the children’s attention, because I am sick of clapping my hands all the time. I am reading through some behaviour management strategies and trying to implement them. One I remembered from my primary school days was that when the teacher put their hand up everyone else in the class had to put their hand up and shut their mouths. Over the last few days last week and this week I’ve been teaching them that. Today I felt like it worked really well- other days they’ve forgotten to do it etc. It seems to work well, and I don’t have to yell, a good thing because I am loosing my voice a little bit! Another one I tried yesterday and today is getting them to put their hands on their head when they are finsihed and ready to learnt the next thing. They’re getting there, but still need to work on this a bit.

I FINALLY remembered to say ‘Good afternoon’ before dismissing them today. I have remembered the last few days, but forgot all of the first week and half of the second week. I am slowly learning!!

So today was a good day. I felt a bit more on top of it, and more in control. I also felt like I was more able to do things on the spot as well, which is good.