Seeds

I made these books with a class of ESL learners as part of a unit on seeds, when at the last minute I was asked to be in the class for an hour. We discussed what I expected of them first and I showed them what I would like them to write on each page (one page was enough to then display on the board). For those learners who needed more support, I made myself available on the carpet and they came and went, when they felt they needed that help. I had the example sentence written on the board. For some this was easy to refer to, but for others, they needed scribing. If you had the majority of learners who needed high levels of support, you could perhaps provide a template for the book. All up, this lesson was really successful and these particular students love making books. 

A finished page. Students taped a seed to the paper.

Seeds were placed on paper on the carpet and the packet was taped to the paper.

Each student was given this page (A3 sized) with the seed packets photocopied to cut and glue to the matching seed. 

An Interesting Word Wall

I absolutely loved this word wall created by a teacher friend of mine. It is beautiful and definitely engaging. It is framed and has a place on a stand, which implies an importance to student learning about the specific topic. It just works. As well as all that, it is a space saver. 

Spelling City

There's a website that students can use to practice their spelling words called Spelling City. Students can type in their spelling words into the list, hear them, hear a sentence with the word and then practice them by playing a number of free games, such as Word Search, Missing Letters and Hangmouse. It is also a great website for those students whose parents have requested extra homework and for students for who 'traditional' methods of learning to spell is more difficult. 

Great Big Bullfrog

I learned this song in my first Kindergarten practicum back in 2002 and have been using it ever since with Junior Primary students. The words are

Great big bullfrog,
laying on the ground.
Watching 5 mosquitoes,
buzzing round and round. 
With a jump, and a hop, 
and a great big leap...
Gobbled a mosquito,
and then went to sleep. 

Watching 4 mosquitoes...
Watching 3 mosquitoes...etc

We often have 6 students out the front, one being the bullfrog and 5 being the mosquitoes.

You will have to excuse the tired look on my face. It has been a long day! I am sure you all know what that is like =)

To go along with the song, I had the students make these cute paper scenes. As the bullfrog eats one mosquito, you fold it back behind the paper. If you had more time, you could improve them by laminating them or putting a hole punch into each mosquito and then tying them to string. This way they would be able to 'buzz' when you give the page a bit of a jiggle.

Things I loved...

The school I am currently working at, encourages teachers to embrace the Reggio Emilia approach to learning spaces. I was in an Intensive English Language Centre classroom today and saw some things I absolutely loved. 

Teachers are encouraged to use lots of natural and neutral coloured items in their room. This particular room had a lot of baskets. I particularly loved the giant cane basket used to store student's reading folders.

I loved this storage idea. They are very cheap and look great stacked up together. 

Inside the layers were textas, crayons and coloured pencils.

I saw this idea actually being used but was not fast enough with the camera. These are empty walnut shells and in the container are seeds. They used them to put inside the walnut shells and count 'groups of' seeds. 

This was hung from the ceiling, in a 'reading corner' with a couch and some cushions. It was just a really nice place to sit and relax.

I miss having my own classroom, however these ideas will be stored until I am able to use them. I hope they may have inspired you too.

Reading With the Family

A very good friend of mine Adele Walsh is the Program Coordinator at the Centre for Youth Literature as part of the State Library of Victoria. She has a particular passion for Youth Literature (YA) and she has written a piece about encouraging reading in older children, when they have moved beyond younger picture books. It is a quick read and I think it's actually a very useful article if you are finding it difficult to engage children in reading. 

You can find the article here.

You can also read more from Adele in her Read Alert blog.

Autumn Leaf Window Display

Looking for a way to dress up your classroom? A colleague went outside with her students and collected autumn leaves. They then placed them on contact and covered the other side with another piece of contact. Looks gorgeous against a window.

Birds Making Nests

At my current school, there are always iPads and Macs available for students to use. During my small group spelling session, one of our words was 'bird'. The students wrote the sentence, 'A bird made a nest'. They were then very interested to learn how birds make nests. After we had written our words in sentences, we used laptops to search youtube to find videos of birds making nests. The oral language was amazing and they were so interested in seeing how birds use their beaks and the environment around them to construct their nests. I thought I would share some of the videos they found. 

Airport Webcams

Once again I have been searching for webcams from around the world and I came across a few airport cams. I found this interesting because I actually love airports, but it also would be useful if you were learning about transport. Click to visit the cams below.

Adelaide Airport
Stuttgart Airport - Germany. There are 5 different webcams available.
Shoreham (Brighton City) Airport
Sarnen Airport - Switzerland (Variety of different cams and photos)

LANTERNFISH

I came across this website from a simple google search when looking for alphabet bingo. The wonderful thing about this website is that you can select what kind of bingo you want and it opens to a bingo board it has generated. Hit refresh and you will get another bingo board. It makes this task very easy and saves a lot of time. I have made lower case and capital letter bingo but there are many themes available. 

I keep them in a folder in plastic sleeves and put a little bit of sticky tape up top so they don't slide about. I am tired of laminating and this makes storage very easy on a shelf somewhere. I made sure I had 2 copies and numbered them so that if one goes missing, I do not have to sort through the originals trying to find which one I need to photocopy again. It has been a fantastic way for my ESL students to practice their letter names. For more experienced learners, you may ask them to think of a word that begins with or contains or ends in, that letter. 

Click here to see the full list of bingo boards available.