Freebie product - Is this a triangle?

I've just uploaded a new freebie to my TpT store. It's a worksheet to help students revise the rules for a triangle.

Five for Friday on ANZAC Day

One of my favourite posts: it's time for Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching!

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This was our first week back after having two weeks off. I loved being back. I had such a productive/relaxing holiday that it was awesome getting back into work and seeing my little preppies.

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It was a three day work week! With the Easter Monday public holiday and the ANZAC Day public holiday we were only at school Tuesday-Thursday. We still crammed a lot in to the week (but I didn't take any photos...).

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I started reading groups with my preppies this week. They loved it! I thought they would. My students do two activities a day and we will be doing reading groups twice a week. It was awesome to sit with a small group and work on their reading, and some of my kiddoes really blew me away with how far they've come along in their reading. One of the activities used my coloured rice - I had put Scrabble tiles, plastic letter tiles and magnetic letters in amongst the rice, and they had to fish around for the letters then sort the letters into lower case and upper case. They loved it, and worked really hard not to make a mess with the rice. I will take a photo when I'm at school and post it, totally forgot!

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This week our maths focus has been on skip counting by 10s. My class has done a super job. We recited counting to 100 many times, and they just keep on joining in and trying their best. We have used our fingers to show ten, we have clapped with each number, we have marched around in a circle as we counted, we have taken fairy steps as we counted, we made a poster with 10 fingers on a card that shows the numbers we say when counting by 10s starting with 10, and on Thursday each child had an abacus and we practiced moving 10 beads at a time across the bar as we counted to 100.

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I did the first lesson of a new Science unit with my kids today. I had the help of my Science coach which was awesome. This term our topic is called "What is it made of?" For the first lesson the focus was on starting a TWLH chart. We focused on the questions "What do we think we know?" and "What do we want to know?". My kids pretty much amazed me. They have such awesome inquisitive minds! I'll have to take a photo of our two charts, because they had some pretty awesome ideas. I will definitely write some follow up posts about our Science unit, because I am totally enjoying teaching Science in such a structured/regular/consistent way!

I love the book corner!

I asked yesterday with Wordless Wednesday if you have a book corner/reading corner and how you used it. So I thought I would answer my own question, too.

This is my book corner:

I must have a book corner in my classroom. It is an absolutely non-negotiable inclusion when I'm setting up my room. I use it for lots of different things. Early on in the year I use it as the go-to spot for early finishers. They can browse books, play with construction blocks or play with puppets. Later in the year I use it as a reading group station, with the rule that students in the book corner must be quiet! No construction blocks during reading groups, and students must stay in the book corner during that time. I also use the book corner as a option during free play and inside recess time.

I think the book corner is really important because it shows the teacher's commitment to reading and browsing books. Books are always on display in my room. During term 1 the books in the book corner are my own books, but from term 2 onwards I take my class to the school library and each student gets to pick a book to add to our classroom library for that term. They love selecting the books that will be added to our room!! I don't sort out the books in the book corner, I don't really have enough of them to bother. The books are all just on a book stand.

Last year I also had kids magazines in the book corner, and this year they are still there but my class this year couldn't care less about them! They are totally uninterested in the magazines. This might change when I begin using the book corner for reading groups, so I'll wait and see.

One of my favourite things about the book corner, though, is watching our big buddies (grade 3/4s) sit with the little buddy and read a book to them. It is lovely watching cross-age interaction focused on the enjoyment of books!

Wordless Wednesday - Book corner

I'm joining up with Christina at Sugar and Spice for Wordless Wednesday!

Here is my pic:

And my question:

Do you have a book corner/reading corner? How do you use it?

My amazing cupboard

I am so lucky to have the most awesome cupboard in my classroom. In fact all four classrooms in my building have them. Let me show you this piece of awesome-ness:

It has three big doors (which are so heavy and hard to move that they are "teacher only" doors) and inside there is heaps of storage. Although, as you can see, I have so much stuff that I even use the space above the cupboard. But the bit that I love the most about it is that the doors are half magnetic whiteboard and half pinboard!! Yup, I can staple gun things into the blue bit across the bottom half! I love this cupboard. Actually, I probably love it a bit too much, but it is so handy.

Up until today the cupboard had a few empty spaces, but I added the rainbow word wall (the words are colour coded by the groups in Magic Words, and then alphabetised) and the big number cards.

Here it is again, and I thought I would tell you a bit about what I put on the cupboard because this is the main hub of my classroom, we sit in front of it for carpet time, and you can just see the edge of my mobile whiteboard on the left in the picture above.

 

Starting on the left. On the left door is our visual timetable and mini calendar on the whiteboard part, and a 100s chart, our five star listening rules and an emotions poster.

On the middle door is my school's "classroom noise management" system (white sound is no sound, amber sound is whispering, green sound is talking sound, and red sound is outside sound), the space where I write my learning intentions for reading, writing, maths and science, and also where I write our class behaviour goal (this week's is "To keep our pencils, textas, scissors and glue in our pencil cases", if they get to the end of the week and have achieved the goal they get a special treat), and on the pinboard part are anchor charts for Writer's Workshop (from Deanna Jump and Deedee Wills pack), my groupings for fine motor skills and perceptual motor program groups, and big number cards.

On the right side is where I write our successful classroom goals, then I have our class jobs, and underneath that on the blue bit is our new word wall.

Phew! We fit a lot on to one small space, which is why it's looking a little cluttered, but they all have a specific purpose so they all have to stay! And they also have to stay because if you looked around the rest of my room you'd see that I don't have another wall space that I could put this stuff on (I have lots of windows and two giant doors - the doors are the size of half a wall!).

So there you go, that's my amazing cupboard, the hub of my classroom, and what I use every single day!

Positive reinforcements in the classroom

Yesterday I linked up with Miss DeCarbo at Sugar and Spice for Wordless Wednesday. I'm going to explain more about my post.

I was talking to a friend recently who was concerned about some of the specialists in her school using lollies frequently as a positive reinforcement tool. It got me thinking about what I thought about using lollies for this, and also about what I do in my classroom.

I'm a big fan of stickers. Huge fan!! I have a mini-suitcase full of them. I can't help but buy a few extra packets every time I got to a "cheap shop". I use them as encouragement (read: bribery) for cleaning up the classroom, I use them to say happy birthday, I use them to say "well done" when students do assessment/testing work with me. I love stickers. They are a cheap and easy positive reinforcement of behaviour.

Along with my stickers, my whole school uses a clip chart model for behaviour management. Here is mine:

I got the template from someone a couple of years ago and I have absolutely no idea who it was. If you know please let me know!

Each child has their own peg and they start the day on green. If they make a good choice, they move their peg to blue. Another good choice and they move their peg to purple - then they get a sticker! The best bit, though, is that I bought customised address label stickers from Vistaprint for my "I've been on purple today" stickers. The kids love them. I get a new set each term, and they get so excited to see the new stickers.

I also have a 'treasure box', but I never use it. I had planned to use it many years ago when I first started teaching, but I have found the stickers have been enough for the students I've taught so far. There may come a time when a group of students needs a bit more encouragement/bribery, but so far I haven't needed that.

One thing I don't use as a positive reinforcement is food. Sure, if we have a class celebration we might have some lollies, but I don't like to use lollies as a daily positive reward. We don't have an official policy on this at my school, but as teachers we are meant to be good role models and I don't believe giving lollies to my students everyday is good role modelling. But that's just my two cents!

I'd love to hear about what you do in your classroom for positive reinforcement.

Wordless Wednesday - Positive reinforcement?

I'm linking up with Christina over at Sugar and Spice for Wordless Wednesday.

Does your school have guidelines (official or unspoken) about the kinds of things you can use for positive reinforcement in the classroom? eg. stickers, stamps, lollies, treasure box, etc.