Calendar Art Reflection

Swimming Reflection

What a blast Room 3 had at swimming over the last two weeks! After having attended the professional development meeting based around pb4l and writing a pb4l lesson plan for swimming  with Jan (Room 2 teacher), Room 3 worked together to come up with ideas on how we should act getting to and from the pool, when getting dressed in the changing rooms and in the pool.  We brainstormed ideas and role played certain aspects to enable children to understand what the expectation was in each of the three areas (getting to and from the pool, getting changed in the changing rooms and in the pool). Our role plays included making a bus inside the classroom with chairs. We practiced lining up and then entering the bus and filling the bus from the back first. We talked about not worrying about who we were sitting next to and how we act when we are seated on the bus. When role playing getting dressed, we role played taking our shoes off and putting our socks in our shoes. We also pretened to take of certain layers at a time and place them in their swimming bags. Overall swimming went really smoothly. Most of the time, Room 3 were very well behaved. I defiantly believe having taught two lessons around swimming in the classroom before swimming week helped and set the children up for success. Before swimming week I was really nervous about this experience but after these two weeks, I can now say it was a great opportunity and I loved seeing the development and progress of many of the children. It was great to see the children being risk takers and stepping out of their comfort zones. 

Quiet Critters

Recently I have introduced a jar of quiet critters to the class. These are pom poms that have feet attached made from felt and eyes which are glued on. Quiet critters have proven to work really well in Room 3. Due to the class often being loud when working at their desks, quiet critters allow for the environment to be quiet. The children know that the critters only come out when the room is quiet as it will hurt the critters ears and scare them, resulting in them having to be put away. This management strategy allows children to be really engaged and focused on their learning without any distraction from others. Each time we use the critters, the learning is to a high quality and all of the children have finished the activity in the time frame. I do find the critters work best when the task is an independent activity.  The children respond really well to this management strategy and are often very sad when the quiet critters have to go back into the jar. I have also thought these would work well when testing.