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!

Tales after two weeks of being an NE teacher

I am now two weeks into being a New Entrant teacher and what have I learned?

I am bone tired shattered at the end of each day!!  Guaranteed I will have a kip in the chair in front of the telly each night and that I will come home full on Zombie-like due to the need to be hyper-aware all day.  My old principal Bob used to say, if you are not dead on your feet on a Friday night as a teacher, then you are not doing it properly.  But I am also going to say that after seven terms as a relief teacher, I'm not match fit for full time teaching yet; I need to rebuild my stamina.

As I stated in my blog two weeks ago, It's Term Four and I'm freaking out!!!, I am going with a play based philosophy in this class due to a number of children with low oral language and the need to build relationships.  There have been times when I have felt a bit redundant or fraudulent, and consequently I've had to push myself to make interactions with the children by engaging in play myself.  This is something I will need to make myself do more: get lost in the play.

I have found that this is also useful for when I have needed to do things one-on-one with students.  They are playing and I can call up the one I need and know that (theoretically) all the others are engaged meaningfully. 

After having the equipment for two weeks, I'm finding some students are getting 'bored' and so I have held back a couple of things and I will endeavour to introduced them over the next couple of weeks to re-inject the interest in play that is waning.

But I also think I need to introduce more structured play and some literacy and numeracy activities because I'm thinking some children may be needing more of this.  How I do this is my next big challenge.

Sometimes, at certain times, I feel like the Count.  And then other times I have them in the palm of my hand.  That's teaching!!

I also have a couple of lads who are challenging me with their behaviour.  One thing I did not miss as a reliever was the feeling of constantly repeating myself to the same students day after day for pretty much the same behaviour.  I am now working with the families to be able to report back about how this behaviour is being managed and how we will change it.  That's a work in progress that could be reported on in a future blog.

We have been successful with a few key things:

• we are really good at packing up our toys and activities.
• we are getting better at asking to go out to the toilet and to put things in our bags or to get a drink.
• we are learning to read the shared big books together and do alphabet and sight words.
• we are improving with learning the days of the week.
• we all know that each hand has five fingers and thumbs and the Slavic abacus has five of one colour and five of another colour on each row and we are great at counting to 20 on the abacus.
• we are making some awesome art

We made these awesome bears below because we were focusing on the letter B.  We also went out to blow bubbles for the letter B and wrote some stories to go with the photos.

We also made bees for the letter B.  First I cut out a bee shape from yellow card.  I cut up some back strips of paper and demonstrated gluing them on.  We used PVA and we put the glue on with our fingers because I want them to learn that paint brushes and PVA do not go together.  Then I hung them up to dry over night on the netting curtains.

The next day, after I trimmed the excess stripes and caught up an absent student, we tried to PVA glue on the pipe cleaners for the legs, antennae and proboscis.  Only one child was successful at getting them all to stick.  Not even I was successful.  So the next day I worked one child at a time to hot glue the legs, antennae and proboscis on.  This was more successful.

We have since glued on wings made of gold cellophane with the hot glue gun.  I've also made a big flower on some cupboard doors and the children have made painted hand prints to make the flower a bit more 3-D and frilly.  Eventually the bees will be buzzing around the flower.  There are photos to come.

Below are the letters we have focused on so far.  I get the children to brainstorm the words with me on the board and then I do them up for our big book to practise.  This sits along side our poem for the word.

A wonderful junior room teacher I used to work with, Ruth Foulkes, always taught even the smallest students big words.  So I am not shying away from big words.  As part of the letter A this week we have watched YouTube videos of acrobats and astronauts and anteaters (did you know anteaters can climb trees?  Neither did I until this week!).

For the letter A we had a big focus on "A for Apple".  I went to New World and purchased five different varieties of apples (which all cost differing amounts) and we spent some time looking at the apples and talking about what they looked like.

Then we sketched the apple with our pencils.  We talked about what colour crayons we would need and we coloured our apples in.

Full disclosure:  this was my picture.

I'm fairly pleased with our first go at observational drawing.

Before Morning Tea we sat down and ate the apples.  I cut them up so that we could all try each variety and see if there were differences and similarities.  We did discover some were more sour or tart than others.

After Morning Tea we made apples out of the lower case 'a'.  I got this idea off Pinterest from a Letter of the Week blog.

This one is mine.  I will do all the activities.  I always have.

This activity got them to focus on listening to and following instructions, looking at models, and the fine motor skills of putting on glue and gluing things down.  Learning how to put glue around the outside and then a cross across the middle is still a work in progress, but we are making progress.  Somethings these small skills are actually the biggest gifts we give our littlest learners - and that does not come through on a National Standard.

I'm going to love these going up on our wall.  Watch out in the next couple of weeks for a blog about our classroom environment.

It's Term Four and I'm freaking out!!!

Tomorrow I am doing something I have never ever done before and I am freaking out!!!

I am opening a New Entrant class tomorrow.

I've never ever taught a New Entrant class before (except as a reliever) let alone started one!  So I am on a big as learning curve - and hence I am freaking out.

I am doing this because I needed to get outside my comfort zone and try something else and grow as a teacher.  I've taught mostly Year 3-8 students because they fitted my personal philosophy of being able to tie their own shoe laces and pack their own school bags.  So teaching five year olds, brand new ones, will be a challenge.  The first big challenge is giving them enough time to tidy up, pack their bags and get their shoes on at the end of the day to get on the bus and cover their mouth when they cough and sneeze; something I need a "must improve" on.

Term Four is also ideal because many schools find that they need to open a new room and so it seemed like the right thing to do.  The school I am going to knows me as a reliever and I really like the students and staff at the school, so I was very comfortable in applying because I knew the atmosphere I would be in for this very busy term.  I'm also in the class right next to the other NE class with a very experienced teacher.

I know some of the students already which I will be teaching, having relieved in the existing class for a few days recently.  But at least half the class are new enrollments early in Term Four, including a very special needs child - another challenge for me and the support staff.

Looking at the children I will be receiving from the existing class and the data already assessed, oral language is a challenge for them.  So apart from building relationships, growing their oral language will be my focus before reading and writing will be.  To grow their oral language and develop the relationships, I am running the class with a play-based philosophy.

I wrote this in the blog post ULearn16: Breakout Three - Research and Inquiry Symposium: Play and Creativity last year:

Play-based learning is defined by Wikipedia as:

Learning through play is a term used in education and psychology to describe how a child can learn to make sense of the world around them. Through play children can develop social and cognitive skills, mature emotionally, and gain the self-confidence required to engage in new experiences and environments.

I strongly believe in the benefits of play-based learning in the early years of school, especially for oral language and the soft skills of problem solving, working with others, creativity and so on.  My thoughts have their roots in how I learnt as a child, starting school in late 1978, with the influences of Beeby, Tovey and Richardson still ringing in the ears of my teachers in my primary school years.

Lucky for me, the principal and deputy principal who interviewed me for the the position were happy for me to run a play-based philosophy and want me to treat this class like it is the first day of the year to develop the relationships.  I'm really grateful for that, because you can not start learning programmes and expect them to run effectively if you do not have the relationships established.  And part of that is routine as well.

So the exciting thing about starting a new class is setting it up.  And I have been able to go and buy some resources to do this play-based learning thing.  So I did a reccy around K-Mart, took photos of everything I thought might be appropriate, went back and listed it all out with prices to check I was within budget and then took one of my best mates shopping.  She just happens to be an amazing New Entrant teacher with the most amazing play-based classroom set up you have ever seen.  Now mine will be no where near the standard Louise has set for a play-based class, but her insights into the mind and behaviour of a five year old were invaluable.  She even took me to her favourite $2 shop which does "teacher hours" (it's open until 6:00pm each day) which was packed to the gunnels with stuff.  Below is what I bought:

I had to stack it all up on the freezer so I could go over to my lock up, go through my resources for what could be used in a New Entrant class, and pile it all into the car. 

Most of the things I brought are wooden.  I choose wooden toys for several reasons.  Firstly, durability.  Students have a tendency of breaking things.  I'm hoping wooden toys will withstand the use better - and Louise assures me they will.  Secondly, we just have too much plastic in our lives, and I was introduced, by Louise, to the concept of Reggio Emilia which emphasises are more natural approach.  This is the definition found on Wikipedia:

The Reggio Emilia approach is an educational philosophy focused on preschool and primary education. It is a pedagogy described as student-centered and constructivist that utilizes self-directed, experiential learning in relationship-driven environments. The program is based on the principles of respect, responsibility, and community through exploration and discovery through a self-guided curriculum. At its core is an assumption that children form their own personality during early years of development and are endowed with "a hundred languages", through which they can express their ideas. The aim of the Reggio approach is to teach how to use these symbolic languages (e.g., painting, sculpting, drama) in everyday life. It was developed after World War II by psychologist Loris Malaguzzi and parents in the villages around Reggio Emilia, Italy, and derives its name from the city.

As you can see, Reggio Emilia fits in well with the concept of play-based learning.  And so I will be exploring both of these teaching/learning styles over the coming term and learning about how this impacts on my practice as well as the development of relationships between myself and the students and between the students, and how the relationships improve oral language and subsequent learning.  So lots of learning all round for me and the children!!

This is the classroom before I started setting everything up:

Yep, it's one of those panoramic 360o photos where I pivot around to give you the full effect.

My set up was all about finding homes for my things and putting some bits and pieces up on the walls and sorting out the things I splurged on at K-Mart.  I then rearranged some furniture.

The top shelf shows a few of the things I purchased that were not wood.  The cooking set on the left is made of tin.  The cash register is plastic and so is the fruit and veg in the container on the right.

The bottom shelf has several different toys: a floor puzzle with the alphabet; a magnetic fishing game for motor skill development; a magnetic dress-up doll; and magnetic shapes that build things.

I love the car transporter!  I'm also fairly in love with the fire truck, tractor, truck, castle set up and the farm set!

I am really excited about the train set in this container.  I purchased the city version, but I am tempted to go buy the farm version too.  Maybe after a pay day.

I've always wanted a marble run set.  So this is the other bit of plastic I splurged on. 

The containers in the above picture were all purchased at The Warehouse over the last ten years and I have found them to be really good for various activities and storage requirements.

But I do not think this room is truly set up yet.  I need the children in it to try it out for size and it will be rearranged again to suit them and I and the learning we will do.  Also, a significant portion of the class has been set aside for the special needs student.  His needs are very much different from the average five year old.

I'll be reaching out to my PLN (personal learning network) over the next few weeks to check in and ask questions and I will be blogging about the challenges and the learning and successes I may be experiencing.  It's kind of like being a beginning teacher all over again.

Anyhow, it's getting very late and I want to be up super early to get there and start the day tomorrow!!  I'm freaking out and no one ever sleeps well the night before the start of term, especially when it is a new class!!