Friday 23.07.2010

Got so very little seep last night I spent all hours of the night cutting out little domino cards for the kids 'feely dominoes' touch activity for our senses unit. Just a side note as to why today was such a huge day.

Athletics carnival Friday..

Ive always been on the student end of an athletics carnival, I now have a new found appreciation for all the organising and logistics that goes on behind the scenes and on the day from all the helpers and teachers etc..

As a kid we either have a love-love or a hate-hate relationship with the athletics carnival. There are no in betweens only one extreme OR the other. I saw it in the kids today, you ca always pick it up straight away. Often its things we see in them that we recognise in ourselves.. The forgetting my sports uniform trick, or I have a tummy ache, my mum made a note ( clearly kids handwriting) saying I can sit out.. as if mums now hold all the power.

Then the other extreme, the parents coaching/ lecturing/ peer pressuring their kids to do their best.. I learnt quickly how to be assertive with parents who are very controlling and invasive about the results of the day, getting re throws, re jumps, re measures.. All for primary school athletics I was stunned.

I was with year 2-6 in the morning block, I had the lucky job of handing out the ribbons, with that all too familiar feeling of a deep sense of pride over a plastic blue bit of material.
I rushed over to my gorgeous kindergartens ( who were so cross with me that I wasent in class with them this morning) and year 1s for the middle block. I was helping on the egg and spoon races which was such a delight but as each group came around you saw how quickly with each progression the students became more weary.. In that moment I saw firsthand the big difference in energy between my kindies and the older kids.

Describe:

By the afternoon session sleepy heads were wandering into the classroom. So I decided to settle them down with a Skwirk video clip about the senses, which worked a treat and then we set about making our own feely dominoes which worked a treat. The kids loved it, they described how the texture felt and then matched each texture up with a pair. We spent the afternoon playing small games of dominoes and big games. The boys event built a castle out of dominoes which I said was fine as long as the textures touching each other matched. It was a great way to consolidate learning about touch and fun way to engage them.

Analyse:

I could have incorperated my other activities into the lesson as I felt there was a great deal of time spare just for the kids to play with their dominoes but I felt that if I tried to intorduce any new information it would have been beyond them considering their day and how exhausted their little bodies were.

Plan:

One of the big things I need to work on is time management.. and filling in time when there is time to spare. I'm going to spend the weekend looking up games to play and little attention seeker ideas to refocus students when off task.