I am still going backwards

Posted on by britz1988

The Very Hungry Caterpillar, if a fantastic resource to use with children in the early childhood years as it has some many topics to look at, The transformation of a caterpillar, healthy eating, counting, days of the week, Night and Day, Trees & Nature. The list is almost endless. I teach in early childhood and this was the first book we read this year to get the children’s imaginations flowing and get some good topics started through the children’s learning while reading the book.

iambaz47 (aka Simon)

Meet week 12 (last week) in a 100 words (or thereabouts) summary.

  • 20 preps. Some are (almost) still little bubbas.
  • Awesome mentor – ex high school teacher of 14 years.
  • It’s nothing like teaching a grade 3,4 or 6 class as I have previously
  • The kids are awesome.
  • The orientation of the printed bell curve in relation to ability and behaviour is in landscape
  • I could work here full time
  • Perhaps I will
  • I am teaching full time and my mentor loves it. She gets sleep at night.
  • I have never before immersed myself so intensely as I have in The Very Hungry Caterpillar, for which there ia a basquiliion (not a real word btw) resources online
  • Here’s the Eric Carle go-to site before you start looking – it’s awesome.
  • Week 12 down.

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Final Week! Final Assignment for this semester!

Posted on by britz1988

Hi All,

So I get a little side track when thinking about completing assignments, but then I think what is it going to be like when I have no commitment for a while to university only going to work.. Wow it will be amazing, the lovely weather I’m missing today is a small price to pay for it.

Then I look ahead in the week and it all seems like it was meant to be the week I finish my assignment with Brisbane in for some rain next weekend, right before our final assignment is due and even better thing its not raining, we made it through the prac weeks without too much rough wet weather.

The week ahead looks like this.

https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=brisbane%20weather

Have a great week! I wish you all well for assignment 3!

TAX TIME! HECS/HELP REPAYMENT

Posted on by britz1988

Hi All,

This is either a time of year that we hate of love, the anticipation of will I or won’t I get a tax return. Unfortunately last year I didn’t research this prior to going to the accountant to which I found out that my taxable income was above the level of which HECS/HELP debt needs to be repaid.. I got a total of $1.57 return. 😦

I found a helpful way to check on your HECS/HELP debt where you can also make repayments if you wish at anytime of the year is the MYGOV website, you link it all up with your government accounts, child support, medicare, centrelink, ATO… etc and you can check it anytime.. so Handy.. https://my.gov.au/LoginServices/main/login?execution=e2s1

I have also got a bit of useful information for you all in regards to how much you can earn before you have to pay it back, you can also apply for financial hardship if need be

2014/2015 = $ 53,345
2015/2016 = $ 54,126

I hope this has been a helpful blog for some of you!

Physical Activity

Posted on by britz1988

Hi All,

I have decided that I will incorporate my other unit at university into my blogs this week, I’m looking at physical activity and healthy eating in my health and well being unit.

How many of us go for that quick snack during assignment writing or study time? I know I’m guilty of this.
Do you look at what it is you are eating? Is it healthy? Are we going to use all the energy in that snack while studying?

The answer is probably not and to make it worse we tend to get stuck into writing what we are doing and forget to take regular breaks and exercise to keep our bodies and our brains active.

The following article tells us a few pointers on why it is important to ensure we are physically active.

http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/physical_activity.html

Interactive Whiteboards

Posted on by britz1988

EDC3100.

I have an interactive whiteboard in my classroom at the kindergarten, so I am lucky enough to have one prior to going to prac that I can use and play around with the features on, this was mentioned in weekly learning tasks that no many if anyone would be able to do this.

One of the unfortunate things about our interactive whiteboard is it is hooked up to the computer in our room but it doesn’t have all the software on if which enables us to be able to use the interactive pens and draw on it using our fingers, this is a management problem as it keeps getting brushed under the covers.

The following webpage is all about the “Benefits of using an IWB within the classroom”

Click to access int_whiteboard_research_whitepaper_update.pdf

It shares the advantages of using the software in terms of development with the children and is well worth looking at while you are using them on Prac or in the service you work in.

Being Practical.

Posted on by britz1988

Being a Kindergarten teacher in my daily job I understand the importance of dressing appropriately for the job because one small activity can cause alot of mess on your clothing, but I can see the dilemma you face Lucas, with needing to dress appropriately for the prac/class but also looking neat and professional at the same time.

Definitely also understand the lesson plans while its great that we have to fully write out lesson plans for prac to get the understanding it is not what occurs in the real teaching world any more, it is all done in shorter form and digitally to make planning more effective and efficient.

lucasnaughton

So today I did an art lesson in my dress pants/business shirt. Afterwards my mentor suggested perhaps I start dressing for the grade 2 special school environment. Tomorrow will be dress shorts, polo shirt and runners.

I gave my mentor the 4 page lesson plan to read, she said that it might be awesome for my assignment but for her to fit in every other detail in her day a “cheat sheet” of 1 page would suffice for feedback on each lesson. Currently I’ve completed 1 and have another 3 planned.. English/Maths and the introduction lessons for each morning which I can reuse (Intro video + Puzzles/worksheet book of days of the week/name/1-10 ect..)

I guess to conclude teachers must meet the needs of the students, dress codes must adapt and we must maximize learning time rather then focus on the paperwork.

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Behaviour Managment

Posted on by britz1988

Hi,
The importance of getting to know every child and their behaviours would have to be one of the most challenging things we have to do at the beginning of each year, as the children are very aware that we don’t know them all and as soon as they are able to see a little bit of an opening they run with it and this can be some very challenging behaviours that need to be changed. I wish you all well in this area as I completely understand the job at hand and with so many different names in today’s society it can definitely be challenging.

gemmawatson95

The year one class that I am in has 25 students. Out of these 25 students their are 19 boys and 6 girls. This definitely changes the ways of teaching and the ways of disciplining students. Some of the students are rather challenging which is definitely hard but I am happy having a challenge. I have found that one of the best way in the first couple days to get students on your side is to remember all of their names… This has been a challenge this time for me also because I have two sets of boys with the same names and three of the 6 girls have names starting with the letter A. But I believe it is important to get to know your students, their names, their learning styles, their skills, their gifts, their interests.

Happy Blogging

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Digital Citizenship & Digital Footprint

Posted on by britz1988

Hello Fellow EDC3100,

Its amazing what we already know about ICT and its capabilities but we forget about as they are not things we do all the time.

I knew that you could google a person’s name and it would bring up different information such as facebook, media releases photo etc, but I had forgotten about this until reading over the weekly learning path.

One feature I love about my photos on my phone is how it makes a map of the locations of the photos that you take on it, this is great for when you revisit photo’s after you have been on a holiday or even just after not looking at them for a while you can see where you were when you took the photo, which may help you promote the place to others if it was nice with an accurate address.

Welcome to 1J Miss Thomas….

Posted on by britz1988

It is great to see that you had such a great 1st day on prac, yes the curriculum and learning styles have certainly changed, I remember being in grade 2 (Year level I have been with for prac), but it is very different to when I was there as a student. Wishing you all the best for the rest of your prac.

anitathomas90

Hi Bloggers,

So today was the first day of prac and I had a thousand thoughts and feelings going through my mind and body all weekend, but of course after your first day you wonder what all the worry was for. Of course the first day is so overwhelming that you not sure exactly how your first day actually went or whether you’re in over your head with the prac requirements. But my mentor teacher is lovely and really understanding, and the poor thing was having one of those days where nothing was going to plan.

My school is Sandy Straits State School and I’m in Year 1. Feels like ages ago since i was in Year 1 myself, and the curriculum has changed so much that I really learnt a lot today 🙂

Anyway bloggers, I’m off to bed, to get some sleep and get ready to have another full…

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No IWB No computers and 2 Ipads… No worries

Posted on by britz1988

IWB’s are great but I have also come to see that they are not always the best and Ipads are a great way to work in smaller groups which are more effective. IWB’s are great when they work you can involve all the children in your class, compared with an ipad which is better suited to a small group, but when we have an IWB we can not see how much all the children and taking in and understanding, where as working in a small group with ipad’s allows us to ask more individual questions and children the opportunity to speak up more, I have seen this from my own personal experiences where I have and IWB and Samsung Tablet in our kindergarten room, and we use both on a daily basis as we have a large group of 36 children per day it is not possible to use the tablet in small groups for all children everyday.

lucasnaughton

So currently I’m developing lesson plans using the ICTs available to me… No IWB, 2 Ipads used mostly for communication (that the students use in a game way not a learning tool) a TV which loads USBS and… that’s it.

I asked my student friend Michelle Casey some ideas for teaching a grade 2 class (as this is my first time in a younger grade setting)

I followed Liv1609 to read up on balance and see I don’t need to be superman just really really organized.

Steve had already put his week 11 theory table up so I made sure to blog mine (had only posted it on forums)

After getting my weekly reword back it seems I’ve hit my word quota, my resources linked quota but I’m falling behind in blog posts and linking students.

So in week 15 and during prac I need to link to more students…

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