Leaving Notes For Class Teacher

When I had my own class, I wanted to hear about everything that went on in my absence. While I wasn't  looking to read a novel upon my return, a paragraph or so letting me know what happened was nice. I want to know if my kids did a good job because it makes me feel really proud of them and I can lavish them with praise upon my return. I also want to know which students were challenging for the relieving  because I may need to sort that out.

Its also imperative to be careful with attendance records, i.e. letting teachers know who was late or absent. Schools legally need to maintain accurate records, so not making note of these sorts of things is really bad.

Above everything, teachers want to leave their class to a relief teacher who cares about their students and their classroom. I always loved hearing my students tell me that the relief teacher chatted with them, got to know them, and asked how I usually handled certain things if they weren't sure about the procedure.

Now as a casual I leave a little note in this format I whiz up in word- it's really easy and looks lovely all printed.

Sight words

I've been lucky enough to be working with a group of lovely Year 3/4 kids to help them with spelling for the next few weeks. They are mainly working on Dolch Sight words. I wanted to do something a bit more enjoyable than Look, cover, write, check and also bring in as many multi-sensory experiences as possible too. 

Some of the ideas I came up with were:

Word erase: write a list of words on the board, have three ways of spelling each words, two wrong and the correct way for each word. Children erase the incorrectly spelt words and are left with their correctly spelt words to do the next activities with. 

Using the fridge magnets interactive media in Smart notebook (this is a smart board school but all the interactive whiteboards have a similar programme)

Memory games, where children turn over cards and match them or they can play snap. 

Word bingo

Cut and paste sight word sentences 

Finger spell with sign language 

Scavenger hunt: we use photocopied pages from readers to highlight out spelling words when we find them

Buddy highlighting: a buddy 1 reads the word, buddy 2 spells or writes it. If it's correct, buddy 1 highlights it on the sheet to mark it off. 

Magic words: Kids write the word in white crayon, and then colour over it with marker to make it appear.

Puzzle maker: there are loads of make your own word search sights. Children can type in their own words, make their puzzle and find them in their word search.

Skipping: we did this years ago at one of my schools in the outback. Children jumped rope and spelt out their spelling words at the same time. So good when kids have been sitting at a desk far too long! 

Dominoes: it takes a little while to prepare, but why can't the kids help make it? It would give them so much ownership over the game. Just have some oblong cardboard strips, draw a line half way and write a sight word each side of the line.

Figure Me Out

I recently stumbled across a nice idea for maths. Kids base a heap of problems on questions pertaining to things about themselves and then have their partner solve the problems and vice versa. They might also like it if the teacher does one too. 

Shadow puppets

A nice way to tie in visual art, drama, story telling and story writing is to get the children to work in groups to make a story then make some puppets on black card and make shadow puppets on the light from the white board projector. 

A simple activity the children get so much from.

The Bean Game

Simple and fun game I've used with kids from Reception/Kinder/Prep through to Year 2. They love it.

It's a warm up game for PE and a lot more fun than running a lap around the oval.

All you need to do is call out the name of a type of beans and the children do the corresponding actions.

Jelly beans: wobble all over like jelly

Runner beans: running on the spot or to a certain place

Chilli beans: Shake as though they are cold making the shivering noise

String beans: stretch up tall like a piece of string

Broad beans: make yourself as wide as possible

Frozen beans: stand perfectly still

Beans on toast: lie on the floor

French beans: say "ooh la la" 

Mr Bean (my favourite): in a Mr Bean voice say "Aw Teddy" whilst pretending to hug a teddy

Jumping beans: children jump on the spot

Canned beans: children make a can all squashed together (sensibly)

You can also make combinations of those bean types eg jumping mr beans! 

Numbers and symbols groups

An effective yet simple activity to get children moving in their maths starter is to hand out numbers and symbols that make equations. 

Give them a timer (5mins) and don't let them look at each other until the timer stops. 

Feedback

It's awesome when teachers you're relieving let you know you're doing well, it also gives you a good idea of what you know to keep doing to be a good casual.

One of the teachers I relieve for sent me a beautiful email to tell me I was doing well and to assure me of more work coming my way. 

The key things she mentioned were:

1. Marking all set work. This is something I learnt to do back in my London supply days  and the advice I was given was to use half of lunch for marking (if you don't have a duty). It also helps you get home earlier.

2. Work ethic: do the job you're paid to do. Don't take short cuts and treat the day like you're being observed.. Because in one way or another you will be! 

3. Classroom management: use sanctions, set your expectations, reward/praise positive behaviour immediately and encourage more and more of it.

4. Leaving notes for the teacher: this is another habit I got into in London. It also helps the teachers remember who you are when they want you back! 

It's good to have a little reflection on the successes and challenges of your day and think about how you might do things better in future. A journal was one of the best graduation presents I got upon leaving uni :) 

The price is right

One if the easiest maths warm up games ever is to use the hundreds chart and have children guess a secret number. They can even use mini whiteboards if you have them to help them with their working out. 

Where's the teacher?

When teachers call in sick they often don't have time to leave work or tell the class they won't be in.

When 30 little people ask "Where's Miss so and so." You can make it a bit more interesting by giving the children a creative writing task about where their teacher might be. 

You can also make missing posters and do some description text type work. 

Story Bags

I've decided to include a story bag into my bag of tricks. It's an activity suitable for all age groups and ticks talking and listening outcomes boxes as well as drama. 

The best part is it takes little preparation and is very child directed. All you need is a bag, pillow slip, box or sack and put a few odds and ends inside- plastic animals, maps, happy meal toys, keys absolutely anything. 

Ask the children to take a piece out at a time and tell a story. Older kids might even be able to continue on one story and build on the last child's tale. 

Classical music

They say music soothes even the savage beast.. Kindergarten and Year 1 can sometime be a bit of a savage handful! It's wonderful to see their enthusiasm but sometimes it's not channelled into something and it just becomes chaos... Lots of teachers have started using classical music in the class to set the scene and enhance leaning activities.

Music can put out positive learning vibes, calm children, build anticipation, put energy into activities, stimulate thinking, encourage concentration, aid memory, allow for multi sensory learning, release stress and facilitate imagination.

You can either sit the children down for a few minutes to listen or play the music throughout the day as they work. At the end of the day or after they've listened to the music ask the children to write a little piece about what they listened to and how it made them feel or what it reminds them of.

Compass painting

It's awesome when you can integrate different subjects together: maths is one of those subjects that can cross every single key learning area. 

I mixed geometry and art by having the children use their compasses with paint brushes. Easy and really effective. From this you can go into lessons about circumference, diameter and radius. 

You can also use other art materials like pastels and crayons in your compass and come up with some interesting designs. Perhaps look at famous artists like Damien Hurst and Wassily Kandinsky's circles in art for inspiration.

Hi-lighted names

Children LOVE hi lighters. Writing their names, not so much. 

It can be really frustrating when they hand in work without a name so I put out hi-lighters for them to hi-light their names on the loose sheets they hand on. Works a treat! 

Paint chip stories

If you've ever noticed the way paint companies name their colours, you'll see they really are using some quality adjectives.

These are great writing prompts for creative writing. I've put a few in my bag for times kids need inspiration for story writing, song writing, poetry, description or adjective work. 

The best part is they're free- important when you're living day to day with casual work. 

Pictographs

One of the easiest maths lessons for kindy/reception/prep when work has not been left is a pictograph.

Start by reading a story using just the pictures in a picture book then explain you can use pictures to represent numbers. A pictograph is a way of showing how much of something we have using pictures.

Have a made up pictograph ready to show the children like this:

Then look at the features: title, numbers and labels.

Ask the children what they'd like to make a pictograph of out of a few choices: favourite pet, way of coming to school or favourite lunchtime games. List the categories on a piece of flip chat paper or butchers papers and give children a card to draw their picture on. They then place them into the appropriate category and the class analyse the data together. 

Lucky dip jar

A simple goal setting activity and behaviour reward for kids is a lucky dip. Get them to write down a game or activity of their choice that lasts ten minutes and write it down. Place the folded note into a jar, box, bag, hat or bucket (the lucky dip) and if they've ten minutes free time at the end of the day, one of the children pick a game from the lucky dip. 

It might be nice to play the game in conjunction with the jelly bean jar activity. 

Student feedback

It's nice to find out from the students how much they got from your teaching in the day.

Instead of playing heads down thumbs up at the end of the day, get them to write down some they remembered from the day and stick to some card. It's nice feedback for their teacher too.

Talking ball

Sometimes I sound like a cracked record, constantly asking for hands up.. It's so archaic and outdated, I'm sure my great great grandfather used to ask hands up in his era as a teacher in the 1890s. It's also fairly ineffective because kids still call out. 

 I now use a soft foam ball to toss to kids who I choose to answer a question after getting the idea from the Canadian Aboriginal custom of using a talking stick. No stick: no talking. It's nice to throw that multicultural fact in when introducing the talking ball too.

Stress balls

So often I'm left work that involves kids to watch a movie or news clip which is lovely.. But some minds wander, carpet threads get pulled, hair gets played with, friends get pinched etc etc.

One of my own teachers from school had such a good idea that really worked and I'm going to do this tomorrow: she made some stress balls with dry rice poured into a balloon and an extra balloon over the top. It should look something like a hacky sack when complete and fit into the palm of your hand. 

If you've got a class over a few days and little or no work left, get the kids to make them! Just check for allergies first: latex and rice. If so, marbles, fine gravel, dried beans and old but clean socks are alternatives. Gee, what a nice idea for writing a proceedure!