“MINI MINDFULNESS MOMENTS” Handy brain breaks for lesson transitions. • Keeping the children’s mental wellbeing positive in school is a main priority for me, little tasks like these throughout the day should help them clear their heads before the next lesson! • Loads of love & don’t forget to take your own little mindfulness moment today and every day • I have to give credit to my lectures, fellow PGCE students and Twinkl for some of the ideas but the majority of these amazing ideas I got from the Tes account @yesmissdaniel such a beautiful FREE resource available on her Tes shop if you would rather a different design definitely check her out

VISUAL TIMETABLE

During my first term of teacher training, I struggled with the concept of the importance of a lesson plenary. With research, I discovered that a good plenary has the ability to highlight not only the good parts of my lessons but the common misconceptions within the class surrounding the topic. In short, I found it is the student’s way of assessing my teaching informally! • I made these clipboard plenary’s with placement Nóra in mind, if I had these during my teacher training it would have been very easy for me to quickly grab one and ask the children contribute. • Credit to my lecture for the majority of these ideas! I just took ideas I had been shown or heard classmates talk about and designed them on mini clipboards and added clipart so they could be accessible to the children too. • This pack comes with 23 cards in PDF format! •

“Nevertheless We Persisted”- This is my take on a “Wow work wall” I love this saying and can’t wait to teach persistence to my class! My idea is that under this heading I will display a range of the children’s work of utter effort & determination not just work that is commonly seen as “the best”. Each child has their own definition of “the best” that they can produce and I can’t wait to honour all of those abilities groupings.

Imagination Blooms Here Lettering

Weather chart!!!Day, date, month, year, season & weather all IN ONE !!!

The ”what will I do now teacher?” extension pack! This resource is one I made with a range of learners in mind! • This pack includes seven task areas which children can work on after the main lesson task work has been complete and they wait for the other students to finish up! Total of 28 task cards. • During my placement, I found that children liked a more creative extension challenge rather than a worksheet! (I bought a pack of 300 envelopes in euro giant on placement and honestly, they absolutely loved the idea of sending letters to their friends in the class as extensions, very cheap and easy!) So these cards are to combat that worksheet kind of boredom I found! • I focused on; writing, reading, number, wellbeing, drawing, designing and list-making tasks!

This pack contains “21 diversity discussion prompts”. These are how I plan to introduce areas of race, ethnicity and equality into my classroom. • From reading up on the BLM campaign I have learnt that schooling has the privilege to educate, cause compassion and strengthen support towards the black community. • For classes in PDMU on placement, I found circle time styled lessons where always the most enjoyable for the children. For little bodies, they have big opinions and love to share so I thought this would be the most fitting away to open conversations about oppression in the black community. I got this idea from the brilliant @theyoungeducator • Race and equality must be a conversation we present and cover in great detail in our schools, children should be exposed to a range of resources which include discussions of ethnic inequalities. • Children come from a range of backgrounds and families but we must present them with these important conversations in order to unite and support every single human being on the planet.

I have been thinking the past few days of strategies which I could put into place during my NQT year to ensure I do not get overwhelmed with the constant ‘Miss how do you spell?” questions. Although I have never let my dyslexia hold me back I handle it in the classroom by purposely thinking ahead and planning greatly in advance. I can execute a lesson to the standard which children deserve when I do this, however, the older I went in my school placement year groups the more I was faced with moments of panic wondering if I am spelling words correctly for the children which they have required for a piece of writing work. (These words you can not truly plan for as every child brings a unique version of the work to the classroom and for that requires a different set of tools and in this case spellings. To combat these moments I had of panic during my teacher training, for my NQT year I have designed these handy “Speedy Spelling Tickets”. My plan for these is to have a bunch cut-out, in my desk ready to give out to a child if I do not have the time to check the spelling myself (if I am working with a target focus group). These tickets promote child lead learning as they first have to sound the word out, they must write what they hear. They then use peer scaffolding to aid the spelling (ask a student at their table how they think the word might be spelt). They can then research the work using a classroom iPad, computer or dictionary and write the correct spelling down. They will then confirm what source they used to find the spelling. I would hope by children carrying out this short task it will not only widen their own spelling bank and vocabulary but will further take pressures of spelling off me. I will then, of course, take the ticket and check it for the child, I was thinking of putting the tickets into a scrapbook for the children to go to if they need to be reminded for the spellings. Voila! creating a classroom spelling manual!

Explore the Stone Age with this unit of work and lesson plans. Plans made when I was doing my PGCE in Primary Education.

CIRCLE TIME STARTER QUESTIONS!!! • During my placements, I found myself absolutely obsessed with having lessons on the carpet area. I found the engagement was much higher and it was less formal for the kids. • From that I also LOVED a bit of circle time as daily check-ins with the kids, I made these handy circle time starter questions which allow the children to make decisions and give the reasoning for their answers. These questions (although some are a bit crazy) I found the children really began to develop their talking skills when asked to give reasoning of their choices. These cards also will really let me get to know my class and will be a handy day fillers too! • I got the idea from my Key Stage 1 placement teacher and a document she had printed from Twinkl!!

“Coronavirus” is a book for children about Covid-19. For me, it is important that all children have an understanding of the pandemic they are living through. To combat worries and stress I have begun to do some planning on explanations of “Coronavirus” to my class. I bought the brilliant book “Coronavirus” by the consultant: Graham Medley in Easons (bookmark) for only €2.99 and I have begun to base all my information and work around this book. It is brilliant because although it is very detailed it is very easy to read and to be honest I learnt a lot from reading it! Here’s a wee work task I put together to lead the children’s learning on the content I will be presenting to them on the virus! with illustrations by Axel Scheffler and a £1 donation of the book going towards charity you can’t go wrong if you need something easy and cheap to educate yourself and your little class!

15 Days of Christmas Kindness

I need to take 5, my head needs a break, when I come back inside, I am sure I’ll feel great!

KS1 & KS2 classroom job list

Christmas Fun!

Marking Grids for Kids

Word & number of the day

Desk Aid- KS1