My first linky

I have always loved reading all the interesting stuff that comes up as part of linkies. And now it is my turn to join in!

I have joined up with Where the Wild Things Learn to share my daily schedule.

At the moment I am still on summer holidays (being an Australian teacher) but this is the plan for the 2014 school year. I am lucky enough to have 4 hours of specialists each week. My students get an hour each of Indonesian, Music, Art and PE. Those specialists happen at different times during the day, so the schedule above is a generalisation of what a day might look like.

My school is working on becoming a 'science-focused' school. This year we have two teachers who are going to become Science Coaches. This means that we have scrapped 'theme learning time' and now integrate Science throughout our core areas (Reading, Writing and Maths) as much as it can be done. Each term has a focus topic taken from our Science curriculum. For term 1 my kids will be learning all about the things that humans, plants and animals needs to survive.

I will be doing Morning Meetings for the first time this year. I plan to do a read aloud to start the day, then complete a version of Calendar Maths. I have been working on a SMARTBoard version of it because I don't have a great deal of display space in my room.

In term 1 I will be doing either PMP (Perceptual Motor Program) or Fine Motor Skills everyday. We will work on things like balance, crossing the mid-line and hand-eye co-ordination in PMP. In FMS we will work on pencil grip, wrist and hand strength, and pinch grip, etc. This is the first time I have planned this way but I'm really excited about it!!

Writing will be focused on recounts and responding to texts to begin with. Even though we have a Science focus, I still do a bit of 'All About Me' to begin the year. We will draw and write about our families and some of our favourite things during term 1.

I teach 2 letters a week as part of phonics. I will also be using the CAFE strategies to support our Reading curriculum.

Last year my school focused on our maths curriculum. I have learnt so much about how to teach maths over the past 6 months, in particular. I have decided to have 2 week focus areas in maths and really explore the topic. Last year I would do a different area each week and sometimes I felt like I was skimming the surface. We had a maths coach at our school (the amazing Andrea Hillbrick) and one of her key points was to allow lessons to 'travel' (or continue over more than one lesson) if they are really working well. I never did that because I was too busy racing through the topics.

Other things that we do during the week are Show and Tell (a favourite for my students, I do all of my class all at once in one hour, and we have a learning goal for the session), library, Religious Education, assembly, values education (You Can Do It is our current values program and we are starting a FRIENDS program this year) and buddies. It's a busy week, but I love doing it!