Week 5 Term 3 2014

Another great week in Room 6, however it is hard to believe how fast our term is going!

On Tuesday I had a New Entrant have his first visit and it is amazing the different stages that students start school at - with some not being ready, some needing a few weeks to get use to routines and school life and some who are ready to go. I feel that it would be beneficial to New Entrant teachers if there was a preschool programme in place to help the transition to school not only easier on students but the teacher and their parents/caregivers.

On Wednesday I was out of the class for a maths course and my students went to cross country - my class did well with everyone having a go. We even got some places!!

For maths I have been doing addition/subtraction and my students are progressing well. My maths calendar is helping students to learn their numbers up to 100 and then they are using this in their group work. I attended a maths course on fractions and other strands so I look forward to trialing some of the ideas I got.

In writing I am continuing to work with mixed ability needs based groups. This is working really well and students are moving through each part quickly. I have been using free choice seating and this is putting the ownership over on to my students to make good choices. Their writing is still maintaining a high standard so I am pleased about that. We had Lisa in from Te Toi Tupu maths on Thursday afternoon and she went over a great wee activity to boost students oral language and help with sentence structure. I will let you know more once I have had a go with my class.

Reading is continuing well. I have a huge focus on high frequency words at the moment and will be testing some students at the end of week 7 to see if it has made a difference. Students have been using their poetry books to help increase their fluency. I just have to make sure that I throughly teach each nursery rhyme so they are confident by the time it comes to doing it by themselves. During the week my class was also approved a Reading Eggs subscription through until the end of the year which I am really pleased about because they love it and it is helping build on phonics concepts.

Inquiry has been focused on the planets and you can view the learning activities on my latest post. Next week we are looking at different forms of transport.