It's okay to have a bad day . . .

Do you ever have one of those days where you think to yourself I am done!

Like that’s it I am done! I am going to go join the circus or start working at the local supermarket because I am done with this!!!  

You are convinced you are walking out of that classroom and never coming back!

Someone once said do something you love and you will never work a day in your life.

Well the reality is even if you love what you do there are going to be days where it does feel like a job rather than a vocation.

I think everyone has those days every now and then and you know what THAT IS OKAY!!

Just because you have those days does NOT make you a bad teacher, it does NOT mean you don’t love your job and it does NOT mean you are not good enough.

It just means you are human.

Teachers are wonderful people but we tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be perfect.

We feel if we have a bad day in the classroom it is because we have failed or are inadequate.

We put so much time, effort and love into our classroom that often we forget to dedicate this same time to ourselves.

So these are just a few of my own rules I am (trying) to follow!

They are nothing new but they may just remind you to take that time for yourself!!

      At least once a week do something you love!

Read a book, go to the movies, swim at the beach, create something or even blog!! 

As long as YOU love it that is all that counts. Try to make sure there is NO school work involved!

If you are watching TV put that laptop away!

Personally I love to take a bath but that is more a monthly thing! ;)

Drink Water

Seems basic but the truth is we are on the go so often throughout the day we rarely stop to eat let alone drink! Keeping up your fluids keeps up your energy levels so make sure you are drinking water each day!

Strap a bottle to classroom keys or apron! Assign designated drinking breaks with the students and role model by drinking your own water!!

Exercise

In many ways this can be the hardest. School can be is exhausting! We love it but it sure does wipe the energy!! You have to have your mind on 100 000 000 things ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

So it’s not a surprise when we get home we just want to slump on top of our beds and not move!

Even if you are not into going to the gym just try and take a 30min walk. It just clears your head and helps you think straight. 

You will actually be MORE proactive after than if you just went straight home.

Sleep

When I first started teaching it was all I did. I stayed up late, got up early, went to work and repeated this routine again. I also would go into school on the weekends (both days) and work there all day!

I was literally burning the candle at both ends!

 A good sleep is so important – it can set up the mood for the next day. IF you are tired your students will sense it. You will be on edge and less patient and they will mimic this mood.

Set that alarm for bed time not just waking up and stick to it!

Remind yourself that you are doing the best you can!

You are one person. You have one brain, two eyes and two arms.

You cannot do EVERYTHING!

And you know what!? Teaching is the type of job where you will NEVER be content. There is always something you could be doing. The trick is reminding yourself to prioritise.

Our job is hard enough without having you put unrealistic and harsh expectations on yourself.

You are doing the best job that you can. Just take it one thing at a time.

Do the few things you do well rather than doing lots of things.

Teaching is one of the BEST jobs in the world (THE BEST in my humble opinion) so take care of yourself because it would be a shame to lose a great teacher like you to our noble profession. 

Word Wall: Feelings

Howdy! :)

Just quickly stopping by today :)

I have spent the afternoon putting together an IKEA coffee table! I am Queen of the flat packs in my house! I have also been organising everything for our Mothers Day afternoon tomorrow!!! I am so nervous BUT excited!! 

Word walls have always been a goal of mine but I have always found I never had the time to create them and the generic ones were not quite taking my fancy! 

Last term my class focused on recounts. A personal comment is one of the structural elements of a recount where students summarise how they felt about the event. 

I found my students were stuck on words like happy/sad/bored or I had fun - to the extent these words were BANNED during writing time!!

To remedy this I created my feelings word wall to encourage my students to choose different words to describe their feelings and in turn EXPAND THEIR VOCABULARY!!! 

You can grab this product for $1 from my TPT store by clicking HERE

I am working on an adjective word wall at the moment as well!  If you have any particular words throw them my way! :)

Have a great week!

Sentence Correction

So I woke up this morning to the coldest morning I have had in Bridgetown yet!

I felt like I should be dressed like this....

 Sad thing is that it isn't even winter yet and this is NOT as cold as it gets!

Now that I am home I am on the couch resembling something very close to this . . . 

Literally it is a major decision to get up to get food right now with the warmth winning the battle for the time being! 

I thought I might share with you today a little bit of what I do in my literacy block - more to the point my sentence correction.

Sentence correction as the name implies is about correcting sentences.

Personally I focus on capital letters, end marks and spelling choices of particular sounds/rules we have learnt. It is a great revision activity and I believe helps shows that link between spelling a word and transferring it into writing. 

I have been slowly warming my current class to how sentence correction works as we will be doing this daily soon (well that is the plan anyway!) 

At the beginning of each week/lesson we revise over the sounds we are looking at for the week as shown below:

Then I display two sentences a day on the board. 

 Students copy down my sentences EXACTLY as I have written them in lead pencil. Then using a red pencil they correct the spelling mistakes, add capitals and end marks. 

At the bottom of the sentences is the rule we are working on to remind students on what to do and provide that extra support. 
                                      

You can easily support students further by printing the sentences out so people only need to edit rather than write the whole sentence or extend by asking students to find a synonym for a word or adding extra detail to the sentences via adjectives, adverbs or general information!

Well my finger tips are starting to freeze outside of the blanket!

I will love and leave you before I loose them!!!

One thing I know for sure - Winter is coming ;)

Mother's Day Prep!

Whooooo for blogging Wednesday!!!

Thanks for stopping by! J

I am not afraid to say that I am not the most organised person in the world.

Organised chaos is more the word that springs to mind.

BUT I have been working really hard on that area and surprisingly to my pleasure this year I have made a vast improvement!!! *YAY ME!!*

We all have our things to work on.

After all no one or thing is perfect – except for tiramisu that is perfection! ;)

Whether you are an organised Polly, a lost minute Suzy or somewhere in between there are always those times and events that sneak up on us!

For me personally Mother’s day is ALWAYS one of those times! (To be fair May has a lot going on for me – it’s my Mums birthday, mother’s day and my parents wedding anniversary.)

But like I said this year I AM ON IT!!!!

I am so on it that I can finally run an event I have ALWAYS wanted to but never been able to due to the endless list of time, resources, other teachers, dates etc.

This mother’s day I will be holding a Mummy Spa night in my classroom!!

I originally came across the idea last year while reading Little Kinder Warriors blog and then I also found out my fellow teacher friend was doing one with her pre-primary class. My excitement levels were very high!!!

Even though both my friends class and Katie’s class were Kindy and PP I still think doing it in Yr 1 or 2 is great (especially if your Kindy or PP classes don’t do one!!!) because they can do some of the stations a lot better than a PP (or so I hope! Haha) so it is not just cute, it’s also fun and meaningful!

So I have done a little more researching on ideas and these are the stations I will be having!

·         Massages

·         Hair Styling

·         Make Over

·         Facials

·         Manicures

·         Photo booth

·         Chit Chat

Massages

I found back scratches at Big W (and some I already have at home) but you could also find them at $2 stores etc. I just got a few more for some variety J

While the mums are being pampered by their mini masseuse they are going to wear these face masks I picked up from the $2 store.

Hair Styling

The $2 store loved me as I also grabbed a whole bunch of these funky clips for the kids to style their mums hair with.

 I grabbed these funky mirrors from Big W.

Make Over

I found some cute eye shadows, blushes and lipsticks for $2 so bought a selection. I will be using some of those cute mirrors at this station!

Facials

I am going to ATTEMPT to make some homemade facials that I have found via the lovely internet and good old Pinterest however I am NOT beyond running to good old Kmart or big W to just buy the packet stuff if it doesn’t work out! ;)

and of course we will have some cut cucumber for their mums eyes! J

Manicures

Students will paint their mums nails at this station and give them a little hand massage with some hand cream!

Photo Booth

I found some cute photo booth signs at you guessed it the $2 dollar store that will be perfect to go on this area and I am going to chuck in some dress ups for fun!

Chit Chat

When people sit down there will be some prompt cards for the kiddos to ask/tell their mum with prompts like:

·         -What is your favourite colour?

·         -My favourite thing about you is...

·        - I like the way you...

·        - My favourite memory with you is

·        - What is your favourite pizza topping? (the essential questions of course! ;) hee hee)

What are you doing in class for Mother’s day?

Emotion Pop Stick Puppets

Health - it is probably my most favourite subject to teach because I value it tremendously.

In my opinion if a child is not mentally happy not matter how good my academic lesson is – it’s not going in!

I usually teach about bullying in the last term (only as there is so much to cover!!!) but this year I had a go at doing it first term to see the difference.

It has definitely helped doing out on the playground doing it in the first term however the class isn’t as emotionally mature as they are at the end so some concepts went over their head or were not taken as seriously. 

I think next year we will learn a little about what bullying is in term one but leave the whole unit for term 4.

Best of both worlds! ;)

One of my favourite lessons was when we talked about how to respond to social situations using the prompts: think, feel, talk and choose.

- Think about what is going on

_ See how you feel

- Talk about what you want

 -  Choose what to do

After discussing each of these points in details we participated in an activity where they had to decide how they felt.

I gave each student 6 blank circles and faces and asked them to draw the following emotions:

·         Happy

·         Angry

·         Scared

·         Relaxed

·         Worried

·         Sad

The children were encouraged to represent and colour that emotion according to how they perceived it. For some people blue is a happy colour, others it is a sad colour.

Once they finished decorating the faces we got to work one cutting and attaching pop sticks to create emotion puppets!

Finally I read out some scenarios to the class and they had to think about the situation and decide how they would feel if they were in that situation.

It was a great exercise because some scenarios didn’t make some students had mixed reactions. Not all students would feel angry or scared or happy if they were in that situation.

It sparked GREAT conversation and was one of those MAGIC moments!

I love my job.

I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.

Although you know a million dollars on the side would be nice!! ;)

Have a wonderful week!

Speak Soon!

Revised 2D and 3D Unit

Term One is done and dusted!!! 

If I am being honest I can't believe it but I am a little glad!

Term One is NOT my favourite term . . . not in the slightest. 

It is very exciting meeting your new class but between testing, establishing routines, getting to know everyone and trying to teach properly it all becomes a bit of a nightmare! Or that could just be me! ;) 

I also seem to forget EVERY year how little the year two's are when they first start and I always go into a panic!!!

So now that Term one is finished I am a happy camper!

Our routines are in place, testing is over and I feel like as a class we know the rules and boundaries and each other very well!

More importantly MY ROUTINE is in place and I feel like I have more time to do things like create TPT resources and of course BLOG!!!! 

Wednesday is blog night! so tune in Wednesdays or really Thursday by the time it is all up to keep reading about my chaotic but amazing teaching experiences with my class!  


Side note.....

Do you ever have those moments where you look back over something you created or a lesson plan and thought to yourself how was this ever good!!! I have been having many of those WHAT WAS I DOING MOMENTS!?!?!?! this past week - not that the resources were bad just not the way I do things now. 

As this is a new year I have been working hard to revise over some of my old products on TPT before finalising my new ones. 

I just finished and revised over my 2D and 3D shape unit - I am much happier with it now! :)

Here is a sneak peak of what is inside!

If you have already bought it make sure to re-download so you are getting the new improved unit!

If you haven't and are interested head over to my TPT store to see if you like it! :)

Have a great day guys!! :)

RIC Publications: Geography and History Resources

I can’t believe it is already Week 5 of Term One!!

This year is already flying by!!!

As we are well and truly on our way in Term One I thought I would share some helpful materials to help you with your Geography and History units! J

RIC Publications have produced these resources that are linked the Australian Curriculum.

With the switch to the Australian Curriculum it can be hard to find resources for the Geography and History learning areas that connect to the curriculum.

These books are great because they are directly linked to the Australian Curriculum.

At the beginning of the books is a clear breakdown of the curriculum links and an explanation of what each of these curriculum points’ asses.

It also has a pre-made checklist with the assessment criteria! – why reinvent the wheel when it has already been done for you! J

 

 

 

To add to this each activity has an accompanying page of teacher information about the activity.

It has teacher notes, background information, additional activities and even a list of other resources you can use with this activity to enhance your lesson.

 

Although teaching shouldn't be centred around textbooks and worksheets these resources are great to add to your current program or give you a good place to start from if you are completely lost!

 

Speak soon!