Some of our senior classes are beginning work on a World Cup project. Here are some Twinkl* links with handy World Cup Themed resources. I will upload photographs of how we are progressing in class over the next few days. There are plenty of other WorldCup resources available online. It is a great topic for this time of year as we can often find it difficult to keep the children on task when there are so many activities taking place.
I also know that from Thursday onwards the school will be buzzing with chat about the World Cup. (From students and teachers!) Also I just realised that I could have done a top ten resources but I decided to go crazy and stick with nine. :) * As most of you know I have paid for my own Twinkl subscription for the past number of years. However I am now a Twinkl Blogger and Twinkl have given me a free subscription for my reviews. All of my reviews are my own honest opinion.
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Is it just me or does June seem to just go by in a flash? Between sports days, active weeks, school tours, graduations and end of year parties there is just so much to do in the last few weeks of the school year. It is also the time when teachers all over the country are booking their summer courses. I have compiled a list of summer courses below, I am not affiliated with any of them, they are just ones that caught my attention. Drumcondra Eduaction Summer Course- the one that has really caught my attention is Teacher/Artist Partnership as a CPD Model to support and enhance Arts Education. A fellow teacher took part in this free course last year and highly reccomended it. BurrenBeo Trust - I was asked to share this course on the page recently. It really does look like it could be very interesting and costs €95. Anokha Learning - I signed up for two of these summer courses a few weeks ago when they had an online offer. I thought that they had a good range of courses and chose 'Food for Thought' and 'Mental Health Fitness'. "THAT WOULD BE AN ECUMENICAL MATTER TED ":THE AWKWARD QUESTIONS CHILDREN ASK - This title really caught my attention and takes place in Marino Institute of Education
The above overview is a PDF detailing the courses available in Marino Institute of Education.
Fluirse- I have not completed a course with Fluirse before but their courses seem to be very good value. They cost €69 each, two courses will cost €89 and three courses will cost €99. Green Schools Teacher CPD Course - The course is €50 and covers each of the six Green-Schools themes. If you have any other recommendations fee free to share! I'm not sure why but this week I just feel like my to do list is never ending. Any time I mark something off it two or three things get added on. I think that you just have to go with it and try not let yourself get overwhelmed. So instead of stressing about how much I have to do I thought I would take a look at a few things that worked well this week. Division This week I introduced the topic of division to my fourth class maths group. They have worked very hard on multiplication over the past few months and they know their times tables. I decided that our focus would be on fun activities using counters, cubes, pencils etc. I also printed and laminated the following resources. Fairy Garden We also spent some time out in the garden setting up our Fairy Garden. The boys were so excited to do this and I let them choose where we put the fairy doors etc. We are very lucky to have a great group of parents and grandparents that made all of the lovely pieces for us. I really enjoy getting outdoors and think that it can really benefit children. I'm planning on writing a post soon giving ideas for what to do when you bring your class out to the school garden/grounds.
I was looking through Twitter over the past few days and saw lots of schools taking part in Active Schools Week. This week doesn't suit our school so we are planning our active week in June. It made me start thinking about what we could do for our week and how best to approach it.
Here are some resources that I found online and thought they might be useful: Twinkl Resources:
Active School Website:
Go Noodle- I LOVE this website. There are a huge selection of activity breaks to suit all classes. The boys in my school loved the dance activities! Activity breaks- a selection of classroom activities. These would be especially useful if the Irish weather meant you couldn't get outdoors as much as you had planned. ParkRun- There are plenty of opportunities for both adults and children to get involved in ParkRun. It is great to see so many schools encouraging their students and teachers to take part. As I have said before the key to organising events like this is to work as a team. It can seem quite daunting if you are trying to do everything yourself. Keep it simple and look online at what works for other schools The Active Flag Twitter page shares lots of ideas from schools all over the country. Bets of Luck! I think a lot of us weren't prepared for just how much snow was to fall over the past few days.As with many teachers in Dublin I left school on Tuesday thinking I would be in on Wednesday. When this didn't happen I got in some supplies and expected to get word that schools would re-open on Friday. So here I am on Friday evening not nowing what day or time it is! :)
Today we ventured out for a walk along the strand, while it was lovely I was very happy to get home and put the fire on. With the Red Weather Warning still in place until tomorrow I started thinking about what I have spent my time doing these past few days.
I think once you accept that you can't get out and about as usual you can allow yourself to relax and recharge. Lets hope this snow thaws and we can get back to normal on Monday! I think I have done everything that I can, anymore time stuck indoors and I might go crazy. :) This week is Twinkl Green Week and I will share some of the resources that I have used. Twinkl not only have a selection of resources available for Green Week but they also have many initiatives to help you save ink, money and the environment. Green Week would be a great starting point for those schools taking part in a Green Flag. I know when we were trying to organise our own Green week it took a lot of planning. Check out Twinkl and you will find a large selection of resources based on looking after our environment.Remember when doing anything like this don't try to do it all yourself, get a team together! Some ideas for Green Week are:
I will review a few resources that I have used but you can find even more resources here. Resources: Plastics and their impact on our environemnt have been a hot topic over the past few months. A big reason for this is David Attenborough's Blue Planet 2. This would be a great place to start and catch the children's attention, as most of them will either have seen the programme or have heard all about the impact of plastics on our environment. This powerpoint enocurages talk and disucssion around plastics and their use. There is also a differentiated activity sheet that links in nicely with the powerpoint. It would then be a nice idea to create a display to inform the rest of the school community about plastics and their dangers to the environment. There are lots of resources based around the theme of the Messy Magpie , including an e-book(another way to save on paper). There are lots of eBooks available here. Ink Saving: There are also options to download your resources using ink saving alternatives. These work not only for colour printing but also for black and white. The quality difference is minimal and can be compared in the photographs above. According to their website "a school printing 100 resources a day on a popular laser printer will save over £4,800 per year" using Twinkl Eco Alt. You can also download the Twinkl Green User Guide for more tips on how to help save the environment and save money too.
I know I love to bring my students out to observe the nature all around us. This week I am hoping to bring them on a plant hunt while at the same time tidying up any litter that we come across. Hopefully the snow will clear by the end of the week so it wil be easier to enjoy the outdoors. I had a lovely break over Christmas and am now feeling back on track with my planning etc. As most of you know I am a mentor in my school and have been for some years now. I often find when NQT's start they have so many questions about what its actually like to teach! Basic things that you may have forgotten since college or maybe they weren't even covered. I have been looking through the Twinkl section for ROI NQT's over the past few weeks and have found plenty of useful items. Some will be especially useful to those starting out with a new class. They would also be useful for mentor's to use when they have their initial meeting with an NQT. The following are a list of items that I think are well worth downloading. I would recommend to print the assessment poster and put it in the front of your assessment folder. It is a good clear guide of what you might start your folder with.
There are also many other useful resources for NQT's that are not in this section. If is worth sitting down for an hour and just looking through the site.The Teacher Organisation Section is definitely worth a look! I often find things that make my life a bit easier and I didn't even know it existed on the site! One of those things was homework passes, which I often end up searching online to find. There is a free ROI taster resource pack available to download here. I know reflective practice is the buzz word at the minute but i do like to take time out at the end of term to reflect on what worked well and what didn't work so well . I will start with the positives:
The things I will work on in 2018:
Happy Christmas everyone!! Enjoy the break!
As most of you will know I use Twinkl a lot and often share my reviews and resources on my blog. I was contacted by Twinkl recently and asked to partner up with them, as part of this I receive a free subscription for a few months.I will also have the chance to run competitions where followers could win their own Twinkl memberships! I have paid for a premium membership for the past number of years and have found it extremely beneficial. It is my go to site when it comes to resources , especially those last minute ones! So for the next few months I will be reviewing different resources available on Twinkl, as always I will be honest with my reviews. My first post is about Twinkl Handwriting, you can click the link below to download a taster pack. this includes:
https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/t-t-2548982-free-ks2-twinkl-handwriting-taster-resource-pack We have handwriting books for the younger classes in school but none for the older classes. I sometimes find it difficult to teach handwriting in a more fun way in resource. I do a lot of work on Fine Motor skills in my class but sometimes the children need to learn to focus and complete a handwriting activity. In the resource setting the children often have more of a chance for quite time and to develop their focus. A lot of the children I take struggle with their handwriting which is why I was excited to try out this handwriting programme. The thing I like most about the Twinkl Handwriting is how teacher friendly it is. It has a User Guide which is well worth checking out first. The letters are then grouped into different families and allow you to choose specific letters to focus on. Each letter family comes with a huge amount of resources so that you can pick and choose what suits your class. The activities are ready to download so it saves me so much time. I am no longer trying to write words for the children to copy in their handwriting copies. Instead I can print the activities from Twinkl and if they still need extra practice they write the words into their copies themselves. There are useful posters to remind the children of the correct seating position and pencil grip. The pencil grip is actually new to me but the children love it. I have it on a laminated card displayed beside our pencil tub as a constant reminder. Nip, Flip & Grip! They also have a lined booklet which is very handy, especially when you want to allow children some extra practice.
Each letter comes with a presentation which includes a Gross motor and Fine motor activity. This is definitely something that is lacking in most handwriting books. It also allows the children to have their movement break before sitting down to do their handwriting. The programme has a huge amount of useful resources and is well worth checking out! I was asked by Prim -Ed to review their new Problem Solving cards. I was very eager to try them out and hoped they would give me a bit more structure and focus regarding problem solving. It is an area of the Maths curriculum that I find needs more attention than I have previously given it. This year I decided to dedicate one day per week to Problem solving. This means that I can link it in to all other topic areas I am focusing on, hopefully this will help the boys increase in confidence when it comes to problem solving. There are three boxes for each class level, 1st to 6th Class,comprising:
The front of each card has a word problem and the reverse of each card has an extension activity. This makes it a perfect activity for those higher achievers and early finishers. I have tried out several different levels and am very impressed. The cards are colourful and fun, this is very different to how the problem solving questions in a lot of textbooks are presented. I find that in our school text books there is one full page of questions at the end of a topic that the children always complain about having to do. The level of vocabulary is quite high and I found that I started using the level below with my students, e.g. the third class students use Box2. This is to help them become more familiar with the vocabulary, also to develop confidence and a sense of achieving. The challenge of the cards themselves is enough at the minute. I hope to move them on to Box 3 after Christmas when they are more confident in their ability. The cards are a great resource for group work and I am hoping to use them in Maths hour. The boys are actually excited to use the cards, they look forward to the challenge every Thursday. We mix up working as a group, in pairs and individually. It is great to see how the cards encourage them to work together and they bring out their competitive streak. When we finish a card we put it in the pile that is wrapped in an elastic band. This means we can keep track of what we have done and it is easy to see what we have left to do. Having used these Problem Solving cards for the past month I would definitely recommend them, They cost just €19.95 for three boxes for one class level. Personally I think this is very good value. Although the cards would be suited to both classroom or a SEN setting I like having them in SEN. Sometimes it is hard to find resources like this that are specific to when a child comes for learning support. They often see it as a fun activity and a change from their regular textbook.
As i have said before I love my the Prim-Ed Maths Boxes and I feel that these Problem solving cards will be a great addition to my class. I would say that it is worth really thinking about what level would suit your class, if they really struggle with problem solving or reading then it might be worth going for an easier level. Find them here @ www.prim_ed.com |
AuthorI have been teaching for several years and hope to share some of my ideas and experiences with you. Archives
March 2020
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