Transport

Our topic for the last 4-5 weeks has been transport. 

My first lesson was discussing what mode of transport go on land, sea or air. We did this together and then the children had to do their own.

Funny story - I drew the mountains green on the board and the kids got very confused as we don't have green mountains in Oman 😊

We have had a big focus on the character Mrs Armitage who has a bike and over time adds crazy things to it. We created our own Mrs Armitage stories where children had to create a story plan of what they would like on their bike and then turn this into their own story.

As a class we made a big brainstorm of all the modes of transport we knew. One of our discussions was to group the types of transport into categories. Children discovered they could in more than one category and there was many ways that transport can be grouped. It also started the discussion of how do we know it is a type of transport.

We have created some super art work this week with the transport theme. We looked at hot air balloons as transport and then we made these - this idea is from another teacher. 

First we painted the back ground and then on another piece of paper we covered it with tissue paper, this was either hot or cold colour or children could mix. We then cut our tissue paper out in the shape of a ballon and glued it in. Below is the final outcome.

We have looked at parts of a car and labeled these.

I have had my observations by my grade co-ordinator and head of primary and both were very good so I am pleased to have done them.

One thing I have been missing is my maths modelling books and my white board teaching table!!!! I have just recently set up a maths learning journal. In this I put my class modelling and it is referred to at the beginning of each lesson and accessible for all the children during the whole maths lesson. 

In maths we have been working on shapes, fractions, doubles and halves. I quite like teaching maths as the children do not differ hugely in ability and it is quite hands on learning.

In literacy I run what I would call reading rotation. I allow 45 minutes per day for this and I aim to read with 2 groups and work with a phonics group while my teaching assistant reads 1:1 with a group and takes a phonics group. The rest of the children are doing completely independent activities and these include:

- bingo

- play dough words

- read to self

- phonics games

- chalk words

- white board words

- library reading