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

Swap Share Give - A linky for all seasons

I am very lucky to have made some Aussie blogger friends over the past couple of years. Last year these friends held a Swap Share Give link-up that I was part of (my first link-up like that) and we are doing it again! We have been paired with another teacher by the lovely Tania. The pair has swapped a product, used that product and will write a review about it. We each also have a freebie to share, and there will be a giveaway of all the products that were reviewed! Pretty cool.

I'm very lucky to be paired up with Alison from Teaching Maths with Meaning.

 She has amazing products, and I own pretty much all of them! For this link-up I am reviewing her Number Detectives product.

I printed it, laminated it, and chopped it up ready to use. I decided to use it as our maths focus wall, and I have one number up each week. As part of our Monday maths lesson (or sometimes Tuesday) we take down last week's number and put up the new number. I love it, and the kids love it! You get heaps of different elements to display which you can see in this picture:

I have had some excellent opportunities for incidental teaching with the clock face, the tens frame and the odd/even word cards. I have also touched on reading skills when we try to find the number word. During the week we look for things that show our Number Detectives Number, and either discuss it or add it to the wall.

As well as using it as a focus wall, you could also collect some of the bits and do a sort. For example, the focus number might be 2, so you would find all the representations of two in the bundle, and put them together. It could be a maths groups activity or a warm up activity.

I love the clear graphics, and the easy to cut out shapes! My students love the birthday candles, and regularly walk past the display to blow out the candles.

The product I have as a freebie is a play dough mats set all about teen numbers. It has a spring theme, and it is bright and cheerful. Each of the bloggers who linked up has a seasons-related freebie, some are Spring-based (currently in the Northern Hemisphere) and some Autumn-based (which is the current season in Australia).

You get 10 play dough mats with the numbers 11-20. The mats are bright and clear, and students are asked to make the number out of play dough and make the number on a tens frame with play dough. But you could use counters instead of play dough, or you could use whiteboard markers on them once they have been laminated. The mats are really focused on the concept that the teen numbers are 10 plus some more.

          

Alison is reviewing my product ABC Foldable Readers (available in Victorian Modern Cursive and print font) on her blog. Go there now to check it out!!

Now for a giveaway! Enter below to win each of the products that were reviewed.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

An InLinkz Link-up

Five for Friday

What an incredible week!!! We celebrated both Book Week and National Science Week. Here is a snapshot of the week and my Five for Friday.

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We started off Science Week with some theme writing on Monday. During the week the preps added to a booklet that I'd made called Weather in my World to go with our current weather unit in Science.

The book had three pages (one for each of the 'normal days' of school this week). They had to write about their favourite type of weather, what they like to do on hot days and what they like to do on cold days.

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On Tuesday to celebrate Book Week we read some of our favourite shortlisted books. My kids loved the winning book in the Early Childhood category:

Tuesday was also eventful because one of my little guys was swinging on his chair, overbalanced, fell backwards and smacked his head into the window. He was fine (thank goodness) but the glass looked like a giant spider web. I have an appreciation for safety glass now!!

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On Wednesday we had a visit from the Star Dome, which is a mobile planetarium. A giant dome is filled with air, you have to crawl through a dark tunnel to get inside, and then footage is projected on to the inside ceiling of the dome. It was INCREDIBLE!!! We got to watch a video about weather (links to our unit of work) and then got to look at some of the constellations in the night sky. My kids were absolutely in awe of it - such an amazing experience. I forgot to take a photo of it...

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Thursday... what a day!! We held a Forensic Science Day to celebrate National Science Week. It was the Case of the Missing Chocolate Cake. One of my school's science coaches and our art teacher organised it. They planned out the 'crime', made a video which they showed during Junior Detective Initiation (30min assembly with the whole school), planned 7 different forensic science related activities which the kids rotated through, and then had a video ready to show the 'culprit' being apprehended. The activities were fingerprint analysis, handwriting analysis, powder analysis, cloth analysis, hair analysis, footprint analysis and money analysis - all based on 'clues' left at the 'crime scene'. The staff were the suspects and we all had a Suspect Data Record sheet showing our fingerprints, handwriting, shoe length and a suspect statement. The discussions about evidence and innocent until proven guilty were fantastic. The students ended up solving the crime and the 'culprit' was brought out in handcuffs (he is an awesome teacher and was a great sport on the day with all the finger pointing...). It was a phenomenal day. Absolutely amazing.

To top it off, we then had our first Science Fair and Art Show accompanied by hands-on Science and Art activities. We had great support from our school community, and the displays were awesome. I took some pics of the art work, but forgot to photograph the science stuff.

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Friday was our Book Week celebration day. It was a dress-up day, and we had a parade in the morning. I was a pirate:

Every child in my class dressed up! The standout costume for the day was a grade 6 boy who dressed as a pink flamingo princess - such confidence, and he looked amazing!! We also had activities that the kids did. We had three activities for the prep-2s and three for the 3-6s. The prep-2s got to make some Dirty Dinosaurs, some Windy Windmills and some Cute Chickens. At the end of the day with had a Book Swap. Children had to bring in books they were finished with, and for each book they got a token. They could exchange their tokens for new books that had been donated by other students. I always make sure I donate a few extras so that I can hand out a couple of extra tokens to my students who can't/didn't bring their own in - it's always nice to participate!

It was a super amazing week!!! I do have some photos of the Forensic Science Day but I left my camera at school. I might write another post when I have the photos and explain a bit more about the activities. It was just awesome.

Personal goal - take more photos!!!

Five for Friday

It's Friday, yay! Time for Five for Friday.

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It's been a relatively normal week at school, which has been really lovely. No excursions. No days off. No extra stuff. Just classroom, curriculum and time with my students. I love that after it's been so busy. It certainly wasn't the easiest week with a couple of my kiddoes, but the tough stuff is always balanced out by the cute things they say and do. One of my preppies wrote me a very cute note in their diary this week - love deciphering prep writing!

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We are working on a Science unit called Weather in my World. Last week we made paintings using air because we had been learning about wind. The preps put blobs of paint onto cardboard, then blew through a straw to spread it out. Some over did the paint and I had to hold the paint over the sink to drain off some excess. I think they look fantastic. I love how unique they are. They also look amazing in my room - the bright white background with the bold colours looks awesome.

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This week the preps have been learning to count by 5s. We've been using stacks of five unifix to help us remember that counting by five means counting five numbers at a time. We also made this awesome chart as a class:

And we loved singing along to this fun counting by 5s song:

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We are a GoNoodling class! We have done 185 minutes so far. My preppies love it! This week some GoNoodle stickers arrived in the mail. I was so excited to get the cute pink envelop, and my kids were beyond excited to get a massive GoNoodle Champ sticker. Of course, I forgot to take a photo of the sticker, but I took a photo of the envelope.

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We have a VERY busy week coming up next week, part of which is a dress-up day. Here is the start of my costume:

I'm going as a pirate. Next week is Children's Book Council of Australia Book Week and it's National Science Week in Australia. My school is celebrating both. We are having a visit from Stardome Mobile Planetarium during the week. We are running a Forensic Science Day, a Science Fair and a Family Science Night. We are having an Art Show. And then our Book Week Day is a dress-up day with activities for the kids based on the shortlisted award books. Whew!! I'm going to have heaps to write about next Friday (just have to remember my camera!).

Last week I was part of the Swap Share Give link-up with some fellow Aussie Bloggers. Thank you for your support, it was my first link-up of this kind. I also ran my first Rafflecopter giveaway and the winner has been announced - congratulations Kirsty!

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!

New product: Number Playdough Mats 0-20

I've just uploaded the set of Number Playdough Mats that matches the Alphabet Playdough Mats I put up yesterday on my Teachers Pay Teachers Store. These have the number, the word, tens frames and pictures. I'm going to print them, laminate them and use them as part of Fine Motor Skills.

Hope you like them!

New TpT Product: Alphabet Playdough Mats

I have just uploaded a new product on Teachers Pay Teachers. It is an Alphabet Playdough Mat set. There are two sets of the alphabet included. One set uses Victorian Modern Cursive as the font, the other is in Comic Sans MS. The awesome clipart is Graphics From the Pond - I love that stuff!!

I think I will make a numbers set to match this one tomorrow!

Five for Friday link-up

I'm joining up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

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Our second week of school went very well. We did our first Science lesson this week. The lesson was about listing things that we need to stay alive. We compared what chickens need and what people need to stay alive. This was our T-chart (sorry about the glare):

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We started learning letters this week. I start with S then M, and do two letters a week. I always start with a brainstorm of words that start with the sound we are learning. Here is our circle map for /m/:

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After the brainstorm the preppies do an initial sounds sheet from my TpT product. They love that we do the same thing each time we learn a new letter - it gives them a sense of routine:

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Then we do a craft that links to the sound/letter we learn. Here are our /m/ monsters!

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We practiced subitizing, recording, using dice and writing numbers in maths this week. The group I've got this year are stronger in maths than in literacy so far. It has been really interesting.

So that's part of my week in pictures. It was a fantastic week! Looking forward to next week. We are learning A and T.