Global School Play Day 2019 #GSPD2019 in Room 7!

Global School Play Day 2019, aka #GSPD2019, was scheduled for Wednesday February the 6th... Waitangi Day in New Zealand, a public holiday.... so many classes participating from NZ did the Play Day on Thursday the 7th of February.  And so did Room 7.

I talked with my students several times about this leading up to the day.  We discussed the sorts of things they could bring and I emailed and sent a Seesaw message to the parents about the day too.  During the day I took photos to tweet to the #GSPD2019 hashtag and to Seesaw home to parents.

On the day we had four key words for the day: kindness, sharing, creativity and fun.  The children were also asked to respect the toys, especially the toys they were using that did not belong to them personally.

The only expectation in regards to the toys was not to bring any devices or electronic games.  Students could bring a game that had batteries if it was integral to the game, such as Operation for example.

Thankfully, no one brought any devices.  But one child brought a karaoke microphone.  And I can confirm that it projects sound quite impressively.

Other cool things the students brought with them included:

• blankets/sheets to make forts
• stuffed toys and dolls
• bubbles
• cars
• slime

I also had my classroom toys available, such as the Lego, blocks, garage and cars, trains, wooden magnetic games, water play, maths equipment like dominoes, kitchen play, shop play.... so much for the students to do.

    

Above and to the right you can see the students getting creative with Lego.  The Lego is very popular in Room 7, especially during wet playtimes.

Last year I was experimenting with Lego challenges for Literacy and Creativity.  I intend to use Lego this year for students to demonstrate their thinking in mathematics as well.

Some of my Lego is actual Lego, but I am eternally grateful to have supplemented some of it with the 'Play' brand from the Warehouse.  It just makes it that much more plentiful for the children to play with.  I was also able to source a Lego table via Facebook Marketplace last year which the children really like to use.

I always put the Lego books in with the Lego to give them ideas, but they are getting a bit munted.  So I may need to start putting them into a clearfile so they have more longevity.

Below the children are playing with their stuffed toys and my shop and kitchen toys.

One of the girls brought bubbles with her.  She and two other girls had a lot of fun playing outside our class in the area our caretaker fenced off with rope and fencing standards for our outdoor play area.

These children below were having a lot of fun with their stuffed toys and the shop and kitchen toys.

 It was very interesting for me to watch the children.  Things I took note of were:

• who different people played with
• what toys they gravitated to
• where in the class they played
• their co-operation skills
• their creativity
• their ability to problem solve.

One example of problem solving was building a blanket fort.  They worked together to make a big fort and figured out how to use the furniture to secure their blankets to make it stay in place.

      

And as you can see above, there was some major engineering and building works happening within the blanket fort too.

But not everyone used their blankets to make a covered fort.  Others used their blankets to mark their play territory within the classroom.

Some of the children enjoyed using the construction set with the screws and nuts to get creative....

I guess it doesn't take a genius to figure out slime would make an appearance at the Play Day...

It was nice to see our outside play area used for some good old fashioned handstands.

And a bit of Nerf gun warfare too.

The maths equipment was also popular.  The students in my class like to make domino trails to set off.

The cars and the garage were also a popular item and it's great to see the girls playing cars too.  Although at one stage they had the garage lined with stuffed toys and I was too slow to get a photo!

My magnetic toys got a good work out on the day too.  And the children creatively used their own toys in with the Lego to create what they wanted.

   

Over all I found the Global School Play Day to be a success.  We played from 9:30 through until 12:30 and the children worked well together.  Disagreements were few and I only had to remind people three times to share.  No one was bored and they were creative in their play.  I personally found the day quite relaxing, and I put it down to the fact that Room 7 is now a Year 3/4 class.

Most children brought toys with them from home, but some forgot.  But that was ok because sharing was one of our key words for the day and there was also plenty of classroom toys to play with.

Because it was in Week 2 of our school year, it was a great way for the students to build relationships, as I kept some children from last year, but the balance came from two other classrooms, one was completely new to the school and one was returning to the school after a year away.

Before the end of the day, I asked the students to give me some feedback about the day.  The overwhelming feed back was it was fun, that they got to play with other people and toys, making things was fun, being creative was fun and they made new friends.

I am now looking forward to #GSPD2020!

Survived Term One - Reflection on teaching Year Two/Three Combo for the first time.

Eleven weeks.  That's a long term.  And I was doing well until Thursday of Week 11 when I got to school and realised I had made a big mistake going to school because I was actually sick.  So I didn't make my goal of a 100% attendance at school for Term One because the last day of term I was at home feeling yuck!!

But it does give one the opportunity to reflect on the term.  It was big and full of firsts and differences for me, and while I feel success in some areas, I feel there are a whole pile of "can do betters" in other areas.  I really sound like any teacher when I say that.

So here are my reflections....

Setting up the classroom

This was mammoth.  I compare what the class looked like at the beginning to now and I can physically see a huge difference.

Early January 

Before Auckland Anniversary Weekend

The day before school after my colleagues removed stuff from the room I didn't need and my brother had solved a few things.

Waitangi Day, Week 2 of Term One, it was starting to look like a classroom.

You can see I had my work cut out for me.  My class was in no fit state to start school on day one.  But now it looks great.  Not as great as it can, but I am making progress.

Classroom routines and relationships

Classroom routines and relationships really go hand in hand.  You can not establish routines without building a relationship with the learners, and you can not build that relationship without the boundaries of routines.

The students in my class are a lovely bunch of students.  They (usually) have manners and love to learn, but I've found it a challenge because they are not good listeners, I keep forgetting some of them are still five years old, I'm not used to teaching this level full time every day, my expectations were so high.  Note that a lot of my challenges are down to me - my expectations, my experiences, which became my greatest barriers this term.

I do not have everything in place at the end of the term within my programme I expected to have.  My reading and maths programmes are not consistent yet or where I want them to be.  Our newsboard, oral language, poetry, buddy reading and homework programmes are running well.  Our inquiry learning is interesting.  Our art is pretty darn good.  And writing is coming along well.

What we do have are expectations about how we will look after our class and each other.  We have a class that celebrates kindness.  We have a class who knows that I expect high standards and will not accept a half-pie job.  We have a class who can expect to be hugged when they achieve what I want them to.  We have a class who is taking note of what is happening n the world around them and starting to state their opinions with their own reasoning.

Classroom environment

At the beginning of the year, I had no tables or chairs for my students.  I did have a teaching table, a couple of shelves and drawers, a class library shelf and two teacher stations, a tote tray trolley, but not tables and chair for students.  I had no maths equipment either.

We ended up having to borrow tables and chairs from another school until things started to arrive later in February.

Our new tables, shelf and tote tray units have changed our class.  It's also changed how I have the student's books and personal belongings kept.  Thanks to the recommendations of colleagues on the NZ Teachers Facebook page I purchased those buckets for $2.78 from Mitre 10 Mega to house our different books and those sturdy bins for the pencil cases.  The bright tables changed the look of the room too.  I'm still waiting on the principal to decide on the chairs, because most of these are borrowed, so I do have a mix-match of chairs currently.

But the big change is in the art and work displayed around the room.  I truly believe that a classroom should reflect the learning that has been going on within it.

This was using a writing template from Twinkl. 

Writing and drawing about our best friends.

After our caretaker had put up the wires.

Added some writing and pictures in response to a poem about a pet banana.

Our holiday stories and art finally on display.

Pictures and writing in response to Gavin Bishop's books for NZ Readaloud.

More holiday stories and art.

More responses to Gavin Bishop books.

Balloons made in response to the Balloons over Waikato festival.
We had a few balloons floating over the school and the village that week.

On the coat hangers are the children's workings about the attributes of 2-D shapes.

It feels great to look at all the work completed and know we have achieved all that in eleven weeks and they did their very best and worked to my high standards.  We also have a backlog of a few things to achieve yet.