This is it. On Tuesday I entered the last chapter in the first book of my life as a teacher. Term 4 is usually a pretty exciting term in an ordinary year. Term 4 means you’re three quarters of the way through the school year. Term 4 means the summer holidays are fast approaching. Term 4 means you’ve got another whole year of teaching experience under you belt; and Term 4 means fitting a lot of content into not a lot of time, writing report cards, with a side of fun Christmas activities! What’s not to like about the last term of the school year, really?! Also, did I mention it is only a 9 week term, with only 8 weeks in the classroom?! So there is the usual Term 4 excitement, but for me this year there is added excitement with a hint of anxiety and sadness as I complete my last term, after 8 great years at my current school. My current school will always have a special place in my heart, as it was my first job straight after graduating from university.
If you didn’t read my last blog, a super quick update – I landed my dream job teaching at a Catholic Primary School, which starts next year! I am beyond excited about finally fulfilling my childhood dream, of having my own class and being a primary school teacher. But with the excitement, there are some other less favourable emotions as I LOVE my current school and will be sad to leave it. I’ll be sad to leave what I am comfortable with, lovely colleagues and awesome kids! This will be my 64th term at my current school, so of course I have mixed emotions about closing this chapter of my life.
For my last term being a high school teacher, I’m going to do a bit of a diary type blog post, documenting my last term, mostly for me to look back on in the future.
I am so excited about next year’s blog posts in a primary school setting. I envision it will be full of colour, fun, exciting resources, cute classroom displays and adorable student work.
So Week 1 has been and gone. Like I imagined, it just flew by. It’s always great after a holiday to go back refreshed, with a new lease of life, and see the students.
I always try and make Term 4 the most fun/hands-on/interesting term as I find the kids get a bit tired and restless, especially the younger students and it helps keep them keen and engaged.
Here are a few things I did in class this week.
1. Made collaborative classroom displays.
This is super easy to prepare. I use “Word Art” on Microsoft Word, and write the unit title in size about 700 font, so it takes up one A4 page per letter. If there aren’t that many letters in the unit title, I add some other words (eg. 2019, 7MATHS2…etc.) so each student gets one letter each to decorate. After the students have decorated their letters we put this up on the wall and then add WOW work to it as the term progresses. I haven’t done this in Term 1,2 or 3, mostly because my school is doing renovations and we’ve had many different rooms. But the students LOVE seeing their work and their contributions to the classroom display on the wall.
2. Utilised all the equipment in the room to mix things up a bit.
I am lucky to have two of my classes this term in a brand new classroom. Half of the desktops are also whiteboards. We did some fun brainstorming activities where the students were standing up around the whiteboard tables and added their thoughts. It’s amazing what some new equipment and ways to share information increase engagement.
Also, collaborative tasks on smartboards foster engagement. The kids get so excited about writing with their finger on the board, and changing the colours!
Glass pens. Pens that write on glass. Every teacher must buy some of these. The excitement the students get when they are allowed to draw/write on the glass is priceless. I'm not going to lie, I also enjoyed writing on the windows!
3. Getting students out of their seats and walking around the room.
In every class this week I made up a quiz on the topics we were learning. Instead of reading the information as a class, or independently, I did something a little different. I printed out the information on A3 pages and blu-tacked them all around the room. The students walked around in small groups and had to find and then read the relevant information to answer their questions. They all loved it. I think the idea of getting up, working collaboratively and doing an activity we hadn’t done this year yet kept things fresh and the enthusiasm up, with lots of learning still taking place.
4. KAHOOTS
Kahoots never seem to get old. Every lesson at least one student always asks to play Kahoot. I’ve gotten so fast at making my own. I did a famous landmarks Kahoot with my Geography class, one about important members of the Catholic Church with one of my religion classes and Italian numbers and classroom language with Junior Italian.
5. BINGO
Just like Kahoot, BINGO is ALWAYS a hit. I think one of the reasons is that it is a game of luck and you don’t have to be the smartest student in the class to win, so it’s great to get every student involved. I made one personalised BINGO game per class this week, focussing on Term 4 vocabulary. It’s a great activity to do half way through the lesson to break things up a bit. In Maths I put answer to problems on the BINGO cards, and I call out maths problems. In Italian I write the words in English or Italian, and call the words out in the language not on the card. For Geography and Religion I’ve just been putting a variety of words students will be exposed to throughout the term, so they can practice hearing them, recognising them and spelling them. This is the best site: https://myfreebingocards.com/bingo-card-generator You are able to print out 30 small cards, and one teacher calling card.
It’s been a busy and fun week.
Next week I’ll make sure I introduce a few new activities and teaching strategies to keep my lessons interesting and my students engaged at this time of the year where sometimes they get a bit over it.
OTHER NOTEWORTHY MOMENTS THIS WEEK
1. I overheard a student say to another student “It’s actually the nicest mullet I’ve ever seen”. Eeeek. Hopefully they are keen fishermen…..
2. I donated 10 000 plastic bottle lids to the charity Envision Hands #lidsforkids. I think it’s a fabulous charity so I got the school community involved in collecting. In just four weeks we collected over 10 000 lids, which then get melted down and made into prosthetic limbs for kids. How good is that?! Not only are these beautiful kids benefitting, but the environment is benefitting also as most people just throw the lids away and they end up in landfill.
MY DIET THIS WEEK
On Monday night, I ordered a New York size pizza to see in the last night of school holidays.
Then all week I’ve packed my lunch and eaten nice healthy foods…..
Until tonight where I’m celebrating the end of week 1 with a block of chocolate and some ice-cream.
There was still some chocolate in the packet approximately 10 minutes ago when I took the photo.....can't say there is now though! YUM! #welldeserved (I think so anyway!)