Pinspired Thursday!

Hello!

The weekend has almost arrived and I'm linking up with Just A Primary Girl for a Pinspired Thursday!

I browsed back through some of the things I have pinned and spotted these four little things I have tried in the classroom and thought I would share. I don't have pictures of all the things in my own classroom but promise I did try them!

1. Reading Buddies.

 

I thought this was a great idea when I saw it and when I moved to a younger classroom, I set it up immediately! The reading buddies sign I made fell off long ago but the kids still grab one when they are in the book corner and it's very sweet to see them sitting with their 'buddies' as they read!

2. Pom Pom Pens!

I tried this out last year. I thought it was such a clever idea instead of white board rubbers or tatty cloths (and it is!), however it didn't work that well in my classroom. Only a handful of children managed to hang on to their pom poms for more than a week! Maybe they rubbed out too enthusiastically or maybe I didn't stick them well enough... 

Not a great success for me and back to old bits of cloth to rub out instead!

3. Class clocks

(I can't seem to find a picture of the ones in my classroom at the moment - I will take one first thing and update with it tomorrow!)

This is such a simple and clever idea. My class were constantly asking me when it was play time, when it was lunch, how long till home... Then I remembered I had pinned this!

Now they no longer need to ask me because they can see the clock showing the actual time and the clocks showing those all important times and (try to) work it out for themselves!

 It cut down on so many repetitive questions in my classroom!

4. Non Fiction Text Features

This is a freebie I linked to from pinterest. I used it recently in my classroom and it was exactly what I needed to gather evidence of children recognising features of non fiction texts and being able to locate them in the books they were reading. I wrote a post about it last month which you can read here.

I will definitely be using this again next year - check it out!

That's all for today. Don't forget to link up your Pinspired ideas!

Monday Made It

Hello!

I'm linking up with Fourth Grade Frolics for another Monday Made It!

I finally got around to making the social media icon links that I wanted this weekend. I used the video tutorial made by Carol at Teachers are Terrific! It was really easy to follow and I'm so pleased with how they look!

Feel free to follow me on bloglovin', TpT or Pinterest!

I was hoping to share a crafty item - a cushion in my classroom colours that I was planning on making this weekend but unfortunately time got away from me and it will have to wait for another time.

Instead, I am sharing another classroom display I made a while back. It's one I keep up throughout most of the year and just add to with new adjectives and a few new decorations throughout the year. The kids really use it a lot to make sure they have some 'juicy' adjectives in their writing. A few too many things are 'gleaming' at the moment though so I think that word needs swapping out so a they can build their vocabulary even more! (Sorry - the picture isn't great quality!)

What displays help build vocabulary in your classroom?

I've also updated one of my free products on TpT. I bought some great new puzzle pieces from Graphics from the Pond and used them to add 20 new compound words to my existing compound adjectives packet. You can download it for free here.
 I would love it if you left some feedback if you like it!

Don't forget to link up with Monday Made It!

Five for Friday

Hello Friday!

Another tiring week has passed by but there are still 4 and a half weeks of school left before the summer holidays - how can that be?!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday to share some of the random things I've been doing this week.

Animation Update

 Sorry! I've been out of class for various reasons this week so have not had a chance to make the cut-out animations that were next on my list. As an animation fix, I'll direct you to a Wordless Wednesday post from a couple of weeks ago where I shared an amazing short film in a pop up book style called the Happy Duckling. If you have a few minutes, it's worth a watch!

Phonics Testing

Each year, all 5-6 year olds have to do a phonics screening check test. It is widely hated and thought pointless but we still have to do it! Last year some children did not do so well for a mixture of reasons so they had to retake this year. It's a mixture of nonsense and real words. Here are some of the words they had to read:

Bulm

Thrand

Scroy

Cloisk

Foid

Strad

They could not get their tongues around bulm at all (and I can't really blame them although they struggled with pumpkin too!). It's a silly test but I was still pleased with how well they all did!

Work we are proud of

 On Monday Made It I shared this display we have in the corridor. 

We had some inspectors in this week (we had a ridiculous number in actually) and they were big fans of it. The kids love having their own space to display work and I've caught a few of them talking as they work about whether they'll put that piece up on display and why they think it's a good piece of learning etc. Exactly what I wanted!

Author Visit

We have an Josh Lacey coming in on Tuesday to do writing workshops with years 2-5. I've brought some of his books home to read this weekend. We're all very excited about meeting him!

Organisation

Even though there's still weeks if school left, I can't help but think of the new school year. I'm determined to be super organised next year. This was by far the biggest help in my quest for organisation this year. 

I saw the idea on Pinterest here and replicated in my own cupboard. I know there must be loads of great posts about classroom organisation just waiting to be read by me over the holidays. 

In the meantime, what was your  biggest life/time saver this year?

Have a great weekend whatever you're doing!

Monday Made It

Hello!

Today I am linking up with Tara at Fourth Grade Frolics for Monday Made It!

I made it to my one month blogiversary!

I can honestly say that I have throughly enjoyed my adventure into the blogging world so far and have learned so much from reading so many other amazing blogs! 

If you have read some of my other posts over this last month and would like to follow me on bloglovin', please feel free!

I also took a picture of this display outside my classroom today. There are spaces for each child and they have the freedom to change the work whenever they want to or feel they have done a new piece of work they are really proud of. It's a great, easy way of keeping a display board up to date because the children do most of the work! 

They are also allowed to bring their parents in to show them their work on display whenever they change what they have up there. It's a good way of getting the parents in and sharing the good work their children do with them.

My class name is Otters and I was delighted to find these cute otters on TpT by Collective Creation. They will be featuring more heavily in my classroom next year!

Don't forget to head over to Fourth Grade Frolics to check out other Monday Made Its!

Font-astic Favourites

Hello!

I was over at Teachers are Terrific! and saw a linky hosted by The Polished Teacher which looked intriguing! I tend to use the same fonts for most things and definitely did NOT have font fever! However, after looking at some of the other posts by people who linked up and then searching on Pinterest, I can't believe what I have been missing out on!

Here are some of my new favourites:

Don't forget to always check the TOU before using any fonts you download.

Link up with The Polished Teacher. I can't wait to see some of your favourite fonts!

Five for Friday

Hello Friday - so glad to see you again!

This has been a tiring week. There is just so much to do and I'm so far behind I'm not sure I'll ever catch up!

 Animation Update

We made flick books this week. I found these great templates from exploringnature.org. They were great to revise the work we had done on life cycles earlier in the year. First  they had to work out the sequence and number the pictures. They did so well! 

Next, they coloured then cut and stuck them to small rectangles of paper. I think this actually made the books flick much better than drawing them straight on. The kids talked about how it was similar to and different from the thaumatropes we made last week. They made some of their own the next day with the cover teacher with varying success!

(Sorry - I don't have any pictures of those)

  Nationality Day

To tie in with the start of the world cup we had a day to celebrate the different nations the children in our school are from. They could wear the traditional dress or colours of their country and some of them looked so amazing. I think it did a lot of them so much good to receive all those compliments for how great they looked in their traditional dress! I was out moderating writing all day which was no fun whatsoever, but the kids enjoyed all the activities I planned for them to do with the cover teacher. As I was out of class, I didn't get pictures! However, my next 3 for Friday are some of the things they did:

Flag Hats

I saw this on Pinterest from Keeping Up with the Kindergartners. I thought these flags looked really effective and that the activity would be great to strengthen little hands and improve fine motor skills. They made flag head bands using this method which they loved and they looked so good wearing them when they were collected by their parents at the end of the day.

Flag Maths

We got some data handling in with some flag maths. There are loads of ideas out there for this but we kept it simple. They looked at the flags of the 32 countries participating in the World Cup and created tally charts to show the different colours represented. They could the either choose to write a series of questions for others to answer about the chart or create a different type of graph to show the results. This will make a great display!

Paper Quilts

I used the idea from DLTK and split the class into 3 groups of 9. In their groups they chose a country and researched some facts about it. They then used these to each make a square showing something different about that country. When they shared these at the end, it was amazing how much they had learned!

Apologies again for the lack of pictures of my actual class and the great things they made. I will post pictures of the paper quilts and world cup maths display when I get them up next week!

Thanks for stopping by! I would love it if you would consider following me on Bloglovin'.

Don't forget to link up with your Five for Friday!

Have a great weekend.