Friday Fun - 28/11/08

I've been reading blogging tips from Successful Teaching, that originally came from someone else. One of the things covered this week was the idea of having a blogging schedule with regular items. I see this on a lot of other people's blogs - things like Wordless Wednesday, Carnival of Education etc. So, I'm going to try out 'Friday Fun' where I do a quick recap of the fun activities of the week. I'll also try 'Tuesday Tips' where I'll give tips for teachers and parents for things we're covering in class. And on the weekends, I think I'll do a philosophising post - one where I ponder and discuss issues around teaching. On other days I may or may not do posts relating to what's going on in the classroom. I'll have to see how it goes.

Fun this week:
First 'Classroom Chat' - On Monday, after school, I interviewed my two team teachers about their experiences as beginning teachers. We discussed the challenges and support they experienced and celebrated their successes. We also reflected on our hopes for next year. We are in the process of editing and hope to have it up sometime next week.

Making Geckos - We looked at geckos on Flickr and painted our own cardboard geckos. (This tied in with 'Are We There Yet?')

Constable Kenny - A local police officer brought 'Constable Kenny' to our school to talk to the K-2 classes about traffic safety.

Cooking 'Uluru Buns' - My class reached the next star on the goal chart and was awarded an Aussie cooking session using recipes from an old Kraft Cheese recipe book. I showed them the choices and they voted for their preference (I graphed the results as we went along). The cooking session went well and the buns were delicious.

Real travel journal - Prue from 'My Life as the Good Twin' sent us some scanned images and text from the travel journal she had as a child when she travelled around Australia. It was a lot of fun to read about her story of Kakadu and Uluru. The kids were fascinated.

Market Day - The Year 6 students organised a whole bunch of stores for the rest of the school to buy from. There was a really great variety of things including a petting zoo, obstacle course, guessing competitions, skill testers, and PLENTY of junk food. The kids in my class were very sugared up by the end of the day.