First day back.....

11.30pm, time for bed, 12pm, should really get to sleep, 1am need to get up for work soon, 2am better just read a book for a while, 3am AAARRRGGGHHH! So tired now! First day back though was ok. Half of the class were tired as well so we dragged ourselves through the day together. Used our online planning tool for the first time with the class and it wasn't entirely successful. I used the predetermined learning intentions instead of writing my own which was a mistake. I should definitely have made it more child friendly before I put it up on the screen. There were a few confused looks when we looked at them so it's back to the drawing board. I had also differentiated poems for Burns day for the class to learn and recite. However, what I hadn't banked on was a group not enjoying the poem I had chosen for them and deciding that they wanted to learn the one that was given to another group. I allowed them to do that but I heard another teacher saying to someone that she was going to let her class trade up poems but not trade down. It was one of those, "why didn't I think of that?!" moments. Oh well, you live and you learn. I am looking forward to teaching poetry though. Will be fun to think of descriptive scots words!

kx

Sunday night blues...

First Sunday night after a lovely Christmas holiday and the blues are kicking in. I've done some planning and was feeling quite organised but now that it is looming I suddenly feel like I should be running around like a headless chicken shouting at my husband to laminate faster and printing a forest's worth of worksheets. You know that feeling when you leave the house in a hurry and think you've forgotten something...it's like that. This term, I think the focus definitely has to be on me doing less work and the pupils doing more.....as bad as that sounds. More active learning has to be the way to go. Getting up early in the morning though may be a problem so this will just be the quickest entry ever. Hope you all have a good first day back out there in teacherland!

Kx

Planning, Planning, Planning...

So, it's now the 2nd of January and planning is taking over my head. I feel that I need to up my game next term but not entirely sure where to start as there are a lot of things that I feel I can do better but can't do them all at once! So far, I've typed up my expectation sheets for putting on tables so that the kids know what I expect from them every time. That means that I don't have to include things like spelling etc in the success criteria as they will become more of an expectation. I also need to try and make things as streamlined as possible for myself so that I spend less time on marking and more time on planning quality lessons. I intend to start by asking for homework to be handed in on a Thursday instead of a Friday. That way I can spend some of my time out on a Thursday morning marking homework and a Thursday night, freeing up more of my weekend. I've also tried to plan out a whole term's worth of work for maths this term. The last 2 terms I felt that I would teach one bit of a concept and then not really know where to take the rest of it. I decided this time that I would plan out the direction of the lessons so that when we reached a point where I felt that we had an understanding of the basic concepts, I would know exactly where I wanted to take the rest. It also means that I have all of the success criteria and learning intentions planned out so that I don't have to do this every week, I can just pick up the flipcharts on the whiteboard.
I hope that things like this are going to mean less stress throughout the term and more focussing on what is important, i.e. the learning that is going on in the class. There are loads of other things I would love to try like a flipped classroom etc but baby steps are definately the way to go......
If you have any ideas that would help me to spend my time in a more focussed way, please feel free to leave comments below. Much appreciated! And if you're looking for some, you should check out the book in this link. 100 things awesome teachers do

Thanks for reading
Kx