I wrote this blogpost last year after my first week with 3rd class.

I survived – woohoo! Week 1 complete – oh my goodness I’m exhausted! So what did we do/learn this week? I spent the week getting to know the children – we spent a lot of time learning classroom procedures, laying out our work perfectly and playing games and working together as a team.

Respect

I made it clear to the children that our classroom is always respectful – respect for yourself (always try your best), respect for others (be kind, friendly, helpful, listen) and respect for property (put your rubbish in the bin, look after the school books, library, furniture etc.)

Toilet

We are lucky to have a girls and boys toilet in the classroom. Its amazing the knock on effect that happens when 1 child asks to go to the toilet. So instead, if the children need to use the toilet they make a T sign with their fingers or with their arms – teacher nods if they can go. (If we are in the middle of an introduction to a lesson – 1 put up 1 or 2 fingers to show them to wait for a second).

toilet

THE PERFECT PAGE

We spent 2 hours learning how to make the perfect page. (Yes, I know – how did it take that long?(I definitely hadn’t planned for it – but thankfully we will NEVER have to do it again).

Read more here.

Lining Up

We line up in 2’s. I either called children to line up by name, surname, number, group, row, boy girl, boy, girl or month of birthday. Another idea I have used with a younger class is Follow Me –

  • Teacher picks the first child who picks the next child who picks the next child and so on. (______ follow me…)

Assessment

We planned and wrote a recount on our favourite day of the summer holidays. This piece of writing will be used as a base (first assessment writing piece).

I really got to know the children this week – we played some games, I spent a lot of time just observing them and seeing how they work best. I think its very important to do this at least once or twice a week – just give them a task and let them at it (while observing). I’m enjoying the weekend now and looking forward to getting back on Monday!

assessment