Circletime & Mini beasts

Today was an interesting day.  I decided to start the day with Circletime.  Circletime is a structured sharing time designed to help students feel happy and safe to share their thoughts and feelings about what is going on in their life.  A few students have found the transition to Year 3 or Year 4 difficult with some parents reporting they're upset in the mornings or not sleeping well.  Good learning cannot happen unless children are feeling happy and safe so we talked a lot about change today.

We discussed how good change can be for us and that when we take a step by step approach to our learning then things can be so much easier.  We also talked about how we can help each other and work together to achieve our goals.  I challenged the students with a really fun activity where they make a circle and all face the same way and when I say 'go' they sit on each other's knees.  There was lots of squeals of delight and of course rolling on the floor as they 'fell'.  It was great hearing them laugh so hard with each other.  I videoed the event so I can share it with parents on Meet The Teacher night which is on Wednesday 26th February.

We talked more about our Core Values, read more of Rowan of Rin and did 2 more pages in the handwriting book.  The class went to computers just before lunch and came in for more reading before starting on their mini beast drawings.

Yesterday students explored posters which had a variety of information about 12 different mini beasts.  With a partner they had to read the information, look at the photos and illustrations and then report 3 pieces of information to the class.  Using these posters was a good reminder to me that, although technology is so important in our modern way of teaching and learning, students still appreciate learning from a variety of sources, especially when they are in charge of looking at them and presenting from them.

Today they could choose their favourite and, using the illustrations on the posters, draw their own mini beasts in their book.

Here are some

I love the detail they captured and the perspective.  From this we will look more closely at the different parts of insects as well as life cycles.  I know I am starting early but we will be going on an excursion next term and with NAPLAN just before it, we won't have a lot of time so I wanted to do some work each week.

A happy, smiley day was had by all.