Classroom reveal 2016

I'm so excited to share my new classroom! It has been a journey to set it up.

 

 

 

This year I moved from teaching Prep (aka Foundation, kindergarten, the first year at school) to teaching a grade 2/3 composite class. I'm so ready for this new challenge! As well as the grade change I moved buildings at my school. I'm now in a 60 year old building, with lots of quirks and issues and my new room is smaller than my old room.

The most exciting thing about the building I'm in is that it will be demolished at the end of the school year because we are getting a new school building!! So, I was given free reign over what I wanted to do to my room - and my first decision was to paint it!

It was a pale blue to begin with, and I had it painted white. I love how bright and light it looks!

I decided to stick with a pretty simple colour palette of blues, greens and beige/whites. 

 

 

 

I'm so glad I did, because I got the brightest primary coloured tables!! Super fun!

After I got my tables it was time for the fun bit of rearranging the furniture, setting up my book corner and organising my 'teacher desk' (or lack of teacher desk). Two years ago I got rid of my teacher desk, instead I use an IKEA trolley to store all of my stationery, I have a bench that I put my planner and computer on when they're not being used, and I use my small group table as my desk when my students aren't around.

Here's my teacher desk area:

Here's my book corner:

Here are my awesome storage tubs with labels on them:

This is the front of my room, where my students sit for whole group instruction (I love love love my IKEA teacher chair!!):

I've got my tables set up in groups of six students:

These are some of my display, ready to go! This is our Wondering Wall (during our Inquiries students pose 'I wonder...' questions which we endeavour to answer over the course of the Inquiry):

I hot glued thumb tacks to the back of glitter pegs to make displaying student work easy:

And, this is where I display our subject buddies (the person they pair up with for different activities in reading, writing and maths, and they are of mixed-ability) and where we'll display our goals for the week (that will be another blog post):

All of these photos were shared on Instagram over the last few weeks, so if you'd like to stay up to date with my classroom I'd love it if you'd follow me on Instagram @jemluck

My 2015 classroom

 

I absolutely love setting up my new classroom each year. This year I have moved back into the classroom I was in during 2013. It felt a bit like coming home. I wanted to give you a tour of my 2015 classroom. I have preps (5/6 year olds) again this year. I have 22 students in my class.

Here is a panorama photo of my room, taken from my doorway.

My small group teaching area/teacher desk.

What the whiteboard above looks like now.

My whole group teaching area. Love me Ikea chair!!

My timetable and mat rules on my portable whiteboard.

My amazing giant cupboard, tables, door to outside and trolley with resources on it.

 Close-up of my trolley with resources on it.

This is where I write up my learning intentions for the week.

Book Corner area.

Close-up of the Book Corner. My students LOVE spending time here.

I use these for my Reading Groups activities (on the right) and the ones on the left will be used for Maths Groups.

The view from my desk area.

Five for Friday - End of a busy week!

I've had a pretty nuts week. Extra meetings, first aid training, and a tough time with a couple of my students. As a debrief and unwind, here are my Five for Friday.

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I received my first BellaBox subscription box in the mail today!

I received four lip products and one eye product. I'm really interested to try the eye product because it's a waterproof topcoat for mascara. My most favourite mascara is by Arbonne, but it's not waterproof so it'll be interesting to see how they work together.

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We have been madly GoNoodle-ing in my class the past two weeks, and we have graduated one champ and we are on to our second. My students beg for Let It Go, Everything is Awesome and Happy every chance they get! Let It Go works like magic when I want them to calm down and sit quietly for a minute or two. I'm going to do a proper post about GoNoodle at a later stage.

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My hair is finally long enough to go back into a ponytail!! I've been growing it for a while, so this is very exciting!

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This weekend I'm going to be prepping for our 100th Day celebration. Due to timetabling and other events we are having our party on our 102nd day of school. But I'm going to make it extra special! I might even squeeze a bit of celebrating into the days leading up to it given that we are celebrating on Thursday. I've read some awesome posts today from Books, Bugs & Boxes and Rainbow Lily Designs about their 100th Day celebrations and I'm very inspired by all the fun ideas!

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I've joined the Outlander by Diana Gabaldon band-wagon. I'm reading Cross Stitch (which is the first book in the series on the Australian iBooks store) and I'm really enjoying it!! I'm terrible at accents but I sometimes find myself reading the dialogue of the Scots in my head with a Scottish accent (or as close as I can manage). I'm late to join in, but I'm already excited about the new TV show that is coming!

After a doozy of a week, I'm very glad it's Friday!!

Back to school

Term 3 starts tomorrow. I have had 20 days off! The extra four days were the ones I took off to have my wisdom teeth removed. It's a big chunk of time, and if I'm totally honest, I've got those 'first day of term' butterflies in my tummy. I'm organised and planned for the day, I've been into my classroom to make sure it's tidy, but that first day back when you have to get back into the swing of it is always a bit strange.

This term I've got quite a bit planned already. My class has two excursions (one for a gymnastics session and one about science), we have two party days (ABC Party Day for finishing the alphabet and 100th Day Party), my school is celebrating both Science Week and Book Week on the same week in August, and we are also having an Art Exhibition. It's going to be full on! I'm excited about it all.

Curriculum-wise we're knuckling down on reading strategies (I'm going to start using the CAFE Menu strategies as a way to focus my guided reading instruction), try to get my kiddies to write more (even my 'best' writers are only writing 2 sentences and we're now in the second half of the year) and we're going to go nuts on all things measurement this term (think mass, length, capacity, duration). Our science unit (which I'm super excited about) is called Weather in my World and looks to be lots of fun (I haven't taught it before).

This means lots of potential blog posts. I need want to blog more because it's fun. This term I will try to keep it going throughout the term.

I'm also starting a new 'health' goal. I got super slack last term with exercise. So this term my goal (though small and simple) is to go for 4x 30min walks each week. I've decided that if I manage to do it for the entire 10 week term then next school holidays I can go on a holiday that requires an airplane - thinking Western Australia or Tasmania. I've even made a 'Walking Log' to track myself.

So, here we go! Term 3...

Meet Me - The Teaching Tribune Linky

I know I'm super late joining in with this linky, but I've so enjoyed reading other bloggers responses that I decided better late than never.

1. I have always loved reading. My mum is a trained art teacher and she loved to do crafty things with us when my sister and I were little. We often had friends over to have craft parties.

2. Well, I wouldn't necessarily want to change my name to this, but I found it so hard to think of anything else that I thought I'd share this - my mum had been tossing up between Jemima and Pleasance for my name when I was born, and it's always fascinated me that I might have been Pleasance instead.

3. I've had a few doozies. I teach prep (5 and 6 year olds) and they are not normally very quick at getting to a bin before they vomit, so I've had quite a few instances of vomit on tables, in laps and on the floor. One of my students in my first year of teaching decided to spin around in circles, then stop right near our bag lockers and whack his head into them. There was quite a lot of blood, and I was very glad there were a few parents around to help. On an excursion last year one of my students missed the step getting onto a train and he fell down in between the train and a platform. Thank goodness I was holding his arm at the time (trying to help him get on) so I was able to catch him. And, last one, the same kid who hit his head on the bag lockers also got right up in a visiting dogs face and the dog nipped him on the nose - the kid was hysterical about it, and the dog never visited again.

4. My most favourite children's movie is Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium, and I would love to meet Mr Magorium! He's super cool!

5. I have one sister and she is 3 days short of being two years younger than me. This meant we had a lot of joint birthday parties growing up. Not always my favourite thing, but it meant that the budget for the one party was that little bit bigger - one year we had a jumping castle in our backyard!!

6. I love pancakes with maple syrup, but on a cold morning yummy warm porridge is also amazing!

I haven't linked up much with The Teaching Tribune Summer Blogin' Series, but I've loved reading everyone elses posts!!

 

Monday Meet Me!

It's a long weekend here and I'm loving having an extra day off!! I've been so productive, and thought I'd be even more productive by writing a blog post on a Monday! What better way to blog today than to link up with The Teaching Tribune for Monday Meet Me.

Here is the picture:

I teach... prep. That is the first year at school, so it would be Kindergarten in a lot of places. I'm the only prep teacher at my school, I've been teaching prep for three years and I just love it!!

I have... so much fun at school! My teaching degree wasn't my first degree. I started a Scientific Photography degree straight out of high school and hated it! I was miserable. I took a year off, volunteered a bit, and worked a ton, and through the volunteering I discovered my love of education. I enrolled for the following year and found what I was meant to be doing. It can sound so corny, but it's true! I love being a teacher and I have heaps of fun at school with my students and my colleagues. I work with a super team!

I watch... too much TV 'full stop'. I don't like reality TV. I love most of the stuff HBO makes, a lot of the USA channel stuff, I'm a softy for some of the Hallmark shows (specifically Signed, Sealed, Delivered) and love lots of what comes from the SyFy Channel. I actually only like two 'made in Australia' TV shows - Offspring and House Husbands. Otherwise, it is all American and Canadian!

I listen... to heaps of music, and I love indie/folk music and blues. At the moment my favourite Pandora radio station is the Indie Folk Revival station. I'm also an avid Triple J radio listener.

I read... heaps. Every night before bed I read; it helps me sleep. At the moment I'm reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower but I generally read sci-fi/fantasy novels, and some general literature (like The Fault in our Stars and Mitch Albom stuff, or Jasper Fforde stuff). I also LOVE reading blogs!

I do... basically what makes me happy. I'm possibly too good at giving myself "me time". I've got no kids and no partner so that's pretty easy!

Hope you liked learning a bit more about me. I'm off to read some other blog posts with this link-up! Love them!

Five for Friday

It's time for.....

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This week I took my preppies for their first excursion!! We walked to our nearest kindergarten to visit the 4 year old group. In their room they had live chicken eggs. Three chicks had hatched the night before we visited, and about 30 minutes after we left another chick hatched. My littlies were absolutely fascinated watching the babies chicks. And they also loved playing with the kinder stuff! I took heaps of photos, but I left my camera at school - whoops!

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I've started doing a teacher photo a day challenge on Instagram. It's at #padteacherchallenge. I love sharing photos of my classroom, and I love seeing photos of other teacher's classrooms!

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Our Science topic this term, as I mentioned last week, is What's it made of? This week we walked around the school and discussed some of the items in the school ground. We talked about what they are used for, what they feel like, and what we think they are made of. Next week we are going to map out where we walked and what we saw. In the lead up to the work on maps we did a fun lesson about treasure maps. I read a pirate book which had a treasure map in it (it's called Captain Teachum's Buried Treasure), then my students made their own treasure map. It had to have an island and some water, an 'x marks the spot' for their treasure, a pirate ship to show where to start looking, a path to follow, and an arrow to show which way up the map goes. Based on this we also touched very briefly on north, south, east, west and compasses. They LOVED it!!

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I'm trying to be healthier and lose a bit of weight at the moment. I bought myself a Fitbit One and I've just started using MyFitnessPal. Hopefully tracking a few things will help keep me on track!

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I've been sick this week (which is why I haven't blogged). This is my third year as a teacher, and over the first two years I had about 20 ear infections! I know... I was building up my strong teacher immune system. This is my first cold for the year, so fingers crossed I'm developing my ability to withstand 5 year old's cold/flu germs!

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!

My first post

Hello blog land. Welcome to my new blog. Eeek, that's a bit of pressure.

I have been thinking about starting a blog for a while. There are some amazing teacher bloggers whose blogs I read, and they are so inspiring! I decided maybe I could try my hand at it. I've got a few products up on TpT, have been obsessed with Pinterest for a while and have been putting photos up on Instagram, so this is the next step.

I am a Prep teacher in Victoria, Australia. I love my job! I love everything about it - yep, even meetings. I see myself as very lucky to have found a career I love and a job which is so enjoyable. I didn't always want to be a teacher. In fact, I studied photography straight out of high school. But it wasn't for me. I have found that photography is more suited as a hobby for me. I didn't know what to do after I left my photography degree, so I started working part time jobs and looking for 'a purpose'... A family friend is a primary teacher, she had a grade 1/2 class at that stage, so I asked to volunteer in her room for a bit (not really thinking that I'd like it - too many kids...). But I loved it!! I volunteered one day a week for three terms. Yep, it totally changed my life. Sounds a bit lame, but so true! I got back in to uni, studied my butt off, and got a job at a beautiful school. This is my third year teaching, and my third year at that school. Love it!

I'm looking forward to getting into the world of teacher blogging, getting better at making products to put on TpT that will suit my kids and maybe some other kids too, and learning from the amazing teachers out there. I'm a bit of nerd and just adore reading about other people's classrooms and teaching.