No such luck

No rest day for me today... at 6.45am a text came through asking if I could work today... I debated it, and then while I was making my daughter's lunch, found enough for me to have for lunch too, so said OK.

It was back to Nursery - big jump again from Year 6, right back down to the little kids.

Played all morning with letters, threading games and reading stories.  Took them out for a half hour play on the Pirate Ship, and then Mandarin.  More of the same after rest time this afternoon.

Good day in all!!  Please let me have my rest day tomorrow!!

Eleven Days

I have worked 11 out of the last 12 working days!!  Have easily surpassed my one day a week for the term goal!!  And have 2 days lined up for Nursery in December.
Tomorrow I am booked in for a facial and a bit of me time!!

Year 6

And after 6 days in Reception, I jumped up to the Junior School (different campus) all the way to Year 6, where I stepped in for 5 days to cover a new Daddy!!  One week of paternity leave to welcome that new bundle of joy into the world....

What did I do with my Year 6s...

English –

We spent 3 lessons writing a newspaper article on the skipathon which was held on my first day to raise money for the school's sponsored Panda. Although I outlined the structure and the five Ws a number of times, there are still some quite light on in content.  We have not printed these out, and some students probably still need a bit of time to finish this off.  Provided a rubric to measure success of article, but not sure that it was really met. 

Using an article from their text book, the children rewrote it from a different perspective. This was quite a challenge as they needed to determine what was important from the original article, and what might have been speculation.

They also sat their long writing assessment but luckily I was advised not to mark this, and leave it for the usual teacher.

Maths –

Introduced percentages and talked about reducing prices by a discount and working out what an original price was when we knew the discounted price.  This was a bit confusing for the class initially, but they grasped it, and worked it out.  Sales tax was confusing for them, I guess because they are not exposed to a GST or a VAT on a daily basis.  They used Maths +7 text book, and they did some problems in their workbooks.  Marked classwork from yesterday and today.  I had a bit of fun reminding myself how to use the Smartboard software - and created some slides for this.

Last week, we had the computers booked one day, so they wrote their own word problems. 

ICT –

The kids designed posters promoting safety and stranger danger. 

PSHE –

Remembrance Day on Friday – read poem Wearing a Poppy.  Considered what the poppy means to the class, and wrote 1-2 sentences.  Decorated the page in their books.

Topic –

Had the laptops booked, and researched 20^th Century inventions.  Used a prompt sheet to list 3 inventions, and then pick one of those as being most important, and then list 5 reasons why.  

Science –

Finished off cover pages in their workbooks and did KWL and vocab. Discussed circuits. Gave them a glossary sheet (one of mine from last year).  Long discussion about circuits, and switches and lights. 

Worked through the BBC Bitesize website, solved the circuits game with a few attempts, and could explain why, etc.

Great week - enjoyed being back with kids who know how to line up, be quiet, have a sensible conversation, can sit up and can organise themselves for a while!!

Reception

Halloween week, it was back to Barn Owls for me...

We read most of the Winnie the Witch books (fabulously illustrated by Korky Paul) and made spooky craft with a tonne of glitter:

• Spiders with 8 legs (lots of practising counting to 8, counting 2 groups of 4). 
• Witches hats
• Wands
• Pumpkin masks - except that cutting out wasn't one of the kids strengths, so we ended up with a few carrots instead!

We also focussed on the sounds: s m c a t o g p, and played a wonderful game called 'Caterpillar Jump', where the children jump up and down the caterpillar body depending on which sound has been called out.  Fantastic because can be also played where one child calls out the sounds, and another jumps, and also with help from the teacher.

I listened to all the children read, and changed their readers, and introduced the CVC books to them.  This means Consonant Vowel Consonant and is a book with pictures unrelated to the 3 letter words from these sounds. For example map, sat, top.

We did a writing exercise, which for a lot of the children is still just practising mark making, and so includes drawing, and copying words.