Saturday, 24 August 2013

Little Miss Busy

I don’t think there is actually a word to describe how tired I am right now!! It’s Saturday morning and I'm sat at my desk feeling rather shell-shocked, but with an enormous grin on my face. I feel like I should be viewing this year as a fresh start, but it’s hard not to draw comparisons with last year, when I cried every single day of the month that I spent teaching. Sometimes, more than once a day. I haven’t cried even once this past week. In fact, I've smiled - a LOT! There are no doubt multiple other ways in which this week has been better than last year – and a good week in its own right – but for now, the fact that I haven’t cried at all feels like a massive achievement. I actually LOVE teaching, and I think I’d forgotten that when I was ill. It’s been so lovely to just enjoy being in a classroom again, and see how enthusiastic and excited the children are to learn, and feel their joie de vivre rub off on you. I imagine that once I'm swamped with planning and reports and a research project, the tears will come, but for now I'm basking in the fuzzy glow of my successful first week J

At my school, the first three weeks of the year are ‘off timetable’. This means we can use this time to encourage teamwork within our class, create class rules, and assess the children so that we can hit the ground running in week four, with all of our groups in place and a class who can work well together and know exactly what is expected of them. During these three weeks, my topic is The Mr. Men. Some activities are stand alone lessons, but wherever possible I have linked our learning to the Mr. Men and Little Miss characters and stories. My thinking behind this is that the characteristics embodied by the Mr. Men and Little Miss characters will help the children to understand the way we should work in groups, the way we should behave in the classroom (and the playground), and the fact that each of us is different and unique from our classmates, teachers and friends.

 A Quick Run Down of Week One...


Over the first few days, we read Laura’s Star and The New Teacher as a whole class novel. 


We completed a few activities relating to the book. ‘The Year Ahead’ worksheet gave me useful information on areas which the children need more work in (the majority cited aspects of numeracy and literacy as things they struggle with, so most of their personal targets for term one are already sorted!) and things which they would like to learn about, which means that I have a HUGE list of potential topics for this year. The second worksheet ‘Invent a Pet’ was just a fun game to get them working with a partner.

We then created some class rules. One of my P4s came up with the idea of creating a ‘sort of acrostic poem’ so that our rules are easy to remember, and most of them agreed that the purpose of rules is to keep us safe, so SAFE quite naturally became our acrostic word.

I really like that the rules they came up with are very broad; it means that I can manipulate ‘Be Sensible’ to almost any situation to ensure we are all following the class rules! They then signed a behaviour contract promising to follow the rules for the whole year. 

We also completed a number of writing activities about the Mr. Men. Some children can find it quite tricky to launch straight into a piece of writing, so I created differentiated worksheets for those who needed a little extra help. A few children came back to me and asked to try the independent writing sheet though, which was brilliant to see. I always worry that when you give children a choice and ask them to choose their own level, they will be lazy and choose the easiest option for themselves, but I obviously have a class of little hard workers this year as most of them were keen to have a go at the independent writing!


Somehow we managed to squeeze in a few circle time discussions about the Mr. Men’s different characteristics, and whether we should have these particular characters in our classroom or not; some ICT time searching for different Mr. Men websites and playing some games on them; show and tell about our summer holidays; creating a giant Mr. Men picture; PE and music lessons with our specialists and some reading assessments to see which reading groups we will be in this year!

Because it was such a busy week, I forgot to take photos of most of the activities we did. One thing I did remember to take a quick picture of on Friday was the Mr Cubes we made on Thursday afternoon:

Check out my Welcome bunting!

I downloaded a net template for a cube from SEN teacher. Some of my older ones had made 3D shapes from nets before and we able to work as group leaders helping the little ones to cut out and stick their Mr Men together. I love seeing them peer teach one another J

Finally we used to named pegs I showed off in the last post to display our favourite piece of work from this week.

Phew! I'm exhausted so I can’t imagine how my children are feeling. Overall I’d say that the week has been a success. The children have engaged with the lessons, and I have got some good examples of writing from each of them to go into their learning files. With the focus of these first few weeks being teamwork and bonding as a class, I think that I need to include more group activities next week. Currently I'm a bit too sleepy to do much about it! Lazy Saturday I think, and I’ll spend Sunday planning...

PS – The pencil caddies I made in the last post fell apart on me a bit! Obviously the superglue I used isn't as super as it claims to be. Or else, I have a lot of very strong and secretly destructive seven year olds in my class.

PPS – I will usually try to post a bit more regularly, rather than lumping a whole week together at a time, but I currently don’t have access to the internet all the time, so am having to try and squeeze everything I need to do online into a few hours each weekend!  

Friday, 9 August 2013

Thief!

Apologies for it being so long since I last posted! Summer turned out to be very busy and I've hardly had a moment to think about school. My headteacher let everyone know last week that she was opening the school up for a few days, which thankfully kicked me back into gear soon enough J 

First things first, I made some little desk caddies to keep the children’s pens and pencils tidy: 



Superglue – Can’t remember where I got it from!
Small baskets – £2 for five at The Original Factory Shop
Plastic cups – 89p for twelve at B&M
Clip stands – £3 for four from eBay

Basically I just superglued the cups and clip stands to the bottom of each basket and waited for them to dry...



...then attached the table signs I had printed and laminated in the morning. I used these Polka Dot Classroom Labels from Teachers Pay Teachers to make the table signs, and used various free fonts I downloaded recently to write the table numbers. If you would like to know the name of a particular font, leave me a comment and I can hunt it out. Because the table signs looked really cute, I made a little one for my desk too!


The classroom labels turned out to be useful for lots of different things, meaning that my classroom now has a subtle polka dot theme. From the behaviour chart....

Inspired by this clip chart (amongst others! There are loads of clip charts floating about. I decided it was easier to use my whiteboard and Blu Tack than wooden clips.)
...to the chairs...


...the trays...


...and my pencil baskets.


I really take umbrage to children standing sharpening pencils when they should be working. It seems they’ll happily sharpen for hours if you let them, so I've employed this system in the hope it will cut down on time wasting!

I got the inspiration for my door sign from an amazing blog post about classroom set-up, but obviously didn't favourite the page at the time and now feel bad I can’t give credit where it’s due L Although my school isn't huge, I still like the idea that people will know immediately where to find us if we are needed. The plan is that my line leader will change the sign to the correct place whilst I am getting everyone else lined up and ready to move to a different part of the building.

 
 I honestly can’t remember where I pinched this idea from either, but I like the very visual toileting system, especially for my little Primary Twos:




The idea is that the red sign will be facing the class whilst I am explaining a task, and then I will flip it round to the green side once I'm sure everyone has settled into the task. I really don’t like having to explain myself numerous times because children were busy traipsing to the toilet when they should be listening to instructions. You can download my PDF for the toilet passes and the Wait/Go sign here. I cut out the two signs and laminated them back to back. 

This is (yet another) stolen idea:



I spotted a picture of wooden pegs with drawing pins glued onto them on Pinterest and decided I would try and use the idea in my class. I have a huge notice board at the back of my classroom, so I am going to attach one peg per child, and get them to choose their favourite piece of work over the past week to be displayed for the next week. I got my superglue out again and stuck name labels onto each peg. 

When I was first accepted onto my teaching course, my secondary school English teacher told me that teaching mostly involves stealing other people’s good ideas. It seems I took that piece of advice and ran with it! So none of this is very original I'm afraid, but I'm pleased with how my wee classroom is starting to look and hope some of this post might prove useful for others to steal from in turn!





Wednesday, 26 June 2013

Moving On Up

Today was Move Up Day at school - where the children all move on to their new class and new teacher for a session to get a taster of what is in store for them after the summer holidays. As a little introduction I got each child to tell me their name (all of which I promptly forgot - depression has turned my short term memory to mush, I used to be excellent at picking up names with new classes!) and then roll a dice. Depending on the number the dice landed on, I would ask them a question to get to know a little bit more about them. This saved the blank moments of little children racking their brains for 'something interesting about yourself' and ensured that one person didn't hog lots of time chatting and eat into the activity I had planned. The questions were:

1. How many brothers and sisters do you have?

2. What is your favourite food?

3. Do you have any pets?

4. When is your birthday?

5. What is your favourite toy or book?

6. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Quite a few of the girls threw a number six and answered with a wee smile in my direction "A teacher..." - I'm fairly certain it was more for brownie points than the truth, but it made me smile. I threw a six too and was rather stumped with how to answer!

After the little introduction, I worked on a team building activity because the children in my class are being merged together from three separate classes. I decided that a good way to build a team would be to chat a little bit about my move from England to Scotland and tell the class how much the idea of the different clans, with their clan names and tartans and their fierce loyalty and teamwork, had fascinated me. I split the children into three groups and assigned each a task towards creating our clan. Here are their (adorable!) efforts:




The writing is a little hard to see due to the past-its-best felt tip the wee boys used but our new name is Clan Spotlight Stars and our clan motto is "Never be sad." The picture inside the clan crest shows two pupils working on a project together, and is representing teamwork. The tartan is woven from strips of sugar paper.

I'm so glad I did this activity with them; their responses to the class discussion and the set tasks were lovely and I really like the little motto they came up with. There are a set of twins in the class and one of them explained that to follow our class motto, she would always try to cheer her twin sister up if she ever looked sad!

If anyone would like to copy the activity with a class, this is the Clan version which I used, but I have also created a Coat of Arms version for those who don't have ties to Scotland.

Monday, 17 June 2013

Professional-ity or Personality?

Today was the Probationer Welcome Day, when we were all officially introduced to our mentors for next year, had to fill out the last few pieces of paperwork for our upcoming jobs and visited our schools for the first time. I think it technically counts as our first piece of Continuing Professional Learning and Development (CPD) for the year, and given the looks of the timetable we were handed today, there is a lot more to come!

Having met my mentor and headteacher at the School Fete the other week, I was feeling fairly relaxed about most of the day. The thing stressing me out the most was how to dress... I often wonder whether it is just vanity that makes me fuss about what to wear to school, or whether there really is some psychology behind it. I studied drama in my final year of secondary school, and much the same as putting on your costume for a dress rehearsal makes you feel very in character, I don't really feel like I'm a teacher unless I've got my 'teacher clothes' on.

I'm quite a girly girl, and my personal style is very feminine, but I sometimes struggle to see myself as a teacher (and essentially, an authority figure) when I am dressed in very 'pretty' clothes. The outfit on the left is the one I had planned to wear, but whilst trying it on this morning, I decided it wasn't 'teachery' enough and changed at the last minute to the outfit on the right (a little crumpled in the picture I'm afraid, as it wasn't taken until the end of the afternoon!). Looking back at the photos, I'm not sure if there is really all that much difference in the way I come across... Is it more important to dress for your job, or dress for your personality? Or am I creating a problem where there isn't one?


Thursday, 13 June 2013

Buzzing Bee!

I'm one excited little Bee today! I received a text earlier this morning from my new headteacher confirming that I will be teaching the Primary 2/3/4 composite next year. This means the children in my class will be between the ages of six and eight - just about the age group I like working with J


Hopefully when I attend the Probationer Welcome Day on Monday I will get a little more information from the school about the topics to be covered this year and the abilities of the children, which means I can really get my teeth into some planning!

As promised, I have uploaded the worksheets designed to help me (or other teachers!) on stressful days. This first document, the To Do List, was explained to me by a university professor. I didn't think much of it at the time, but through my counselling sessions, I've come to realise that I have a bad habit of leaving the things I really need to do until last, and spending lots of time on the things I enjoy instead. This meant that the few weeks I did spend teaching last August were quite muddled and I seemed to be constantly chasing my tail! This teaching-specific To Do organiser should help me to work through what I need to do in the most efficient manner. 

Because I have a tendency to let my thoughts run away with themselves, and end up very down-in-the-dumps, I have found it useful to use this Thought Record to bring myself back into a more positive way of thinking. Asking "What's the evidence for this thought...?" is an amazing way of making you realise you are actually blowing things way out of proportion. If the Thought Record is a little confusing, feel free to comment and I'll try to explain it in more detail, or you could give the more simple Action Plan a go. 

My plan at the moment is to print all three of these documents off and keep some photocopies stashed in the back of my planning folder for when they are needed. I'll let you know how they work out!

Wednesday, 12 June 2013

What Teachers Make

After ten long months of counselling, my counsellor bid me farewell today! I am in a much better place than I could have hoped to be at the end of those ten months and literally smiled for the whole session. It was bizarre trying to look back to the early days of being ill and try to work out how far I've managed to come, as the Bee from back then doesn't even vaguely resemble the Bee I am now.

As this was the final session, we worked on creating a 'Relapse Action Plan', so that on bad days or times when I feel like depression could be creeping back, I have things in place to help me bounce back to my usual self. Once I have turned my scribbled notes from the counselling session into coherent sheets to sit in the back of my planning folder, I will upload them for others to use if they want. Teaching is stressful, whether you have depression or not, so I imagine my Action Plan could be of use to any other teachers or students who are feeling the strain. 

Despite having a rather snazzy new Action Plan in place, this video is still my favourite pick-me-up at the end of a stressful day:



I first stumbled across Taylor Mali after a friend pinned this video on Pinterest months back, and have grown to love him. I dare you to watch this video and not feel empowered and worthwhile at the end! 

Wednesday, 5 June 2013

Being Brave

As a child, I suffered from bouts of existential anxiety. Obviously, I didn’t know the name for it until years later, whilst studying a Philosophy module at university, but I used to lie awake for hours on end pondering Big Questions and scaring myself silly worrying about the meaning of life. As a child who often dwelled on these sorts of worries, the scariest villain of my childhood was not Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars or Miss Trunchball from Matilda, but The Nothing from The Neverending Story. Something about the fact that I couldn’t even wrap my head around the idea of ‘nothingness’ taking over Fantasia made it a thousand times scarier than the much more tangible Chokey.

The three weeks of probationary year that I managed last August have become my own personal Nothing, a shady shadowy creature squatting in the corner of my mind. Something that I can’t see clearly, or even quite understand, but that scares me half to death. And the more I try to fathom it, the more confusing and ominous it becomes until I shy away from it again. Now that I am learning to cope with my depression and am thinking more clearly about things, I can rationalise that the three weeks I spent teaching were difficult, and a sad and confusing time for me, but not the horror story it has become in my head. Being the stubborn little thing that I am, (I think it comes from growing up with brothers, this need to prove myself to be tough!) I decided that being able to rationalise it wasn’t enough for me and I would return to the school, just to prove to myself that I could.

Today was the first time I have set foot in the school since I left in September 2012 and it was actually amazing! I’m pretty sure I just grinned all day long J

The building –especially the staff room – was not the enormous terrifying space I had remembered. And although the children there are from an area of social deprivation and have some behavioural issues, they weren’t the monsters with a personal vendetta against me that they had morphed into in my head. In fact, the bad behaviour I saw today wasn’t anything that I haven’t encountered before on university placements and dealt with effectively myself. It was such a confidence boost to realise these things and know for certain that those ‘awful’ three weeks were mostly due to the demons in my own head. Probably the only time in my life when I have been pleased to discover that I was the problem!

I went back to what had been my old class to say hello to my little Primary Twos (now very nearly Primary Threes!) and was met with the announcement from one little darling:

“I didn’t miss you at all. I don’t even remember who you are.”

A year ago, that would have completely and utterly crushed me, but today I laughed aloud, and even repeated the story to much more laughter in the staff room. You need a thick skin to deal with the no-holds-barred honesty of little kids, and it appears that I have finally grown one J