Monday 23.8.2010

This week is crazy busy. Commendation assembly today, parent teacher interviews tonight and tomorrow night, book week, book parade on Wednesday and open morning tomorrow morning. ALL IN A WEEK, ill need help. the 5.30am starts are starting to wreck me.

Yesterday I read the kids a book about a panda bear and all the things he could see..
and one little child who barely says a word in class said " Miss Stevenson, but what do you see.."

So I had a mini daydream, right there in front of 25 kindergarten kids, I just paused. and thought about all the things we see, yet we do not really see. In the book it was plain and simple all the things the panda bear saw, but every time he was missing something, something small, but something right there in front of him, that everyone else could see. How often do we see whats around us, yet miss whats staring us blank in the face. The obvious, the unmissable, and yet we miss it.

Sometimes I think that the more we take for granted our eyes, the less we start to notice. Its like that strange feeling of driving past old places, places very familiar and yet seeing something new for the first time, makes you wonder if its been there all along and never took notice of it.

Sometimes we just need a little adjustment, refocus our eyes on the things that are there, instead of the things we always just see..

So In response " I see 25 beautiful kindergarten children smiling at me, and I see you.."

You see as a teacher you have to get good at seeing the class, but also seeing the individuals who make up that class..

Describe:

Maths, this morning we were looking at our number 25 again, focusing on all the things that make up number 25. I then broke them up into groups who had to complete activities all based around the number 25.

Analyse:

The activities were all based around our book week characters which made the task a little more exciting for the children. They had to work in small group, I had to speak to them a few times for being too noisy. I think this was their first maths lesson in their new groups, so a little adjusting to that was expected. Had only really 25 minutes as we had a special assembly on today.

Plan:

For next time need to think more about the strategic layout of the room, more group tables as some kids found it hard working in the u shape rows for the desk. Make sure everyone has written their name as I got the kids to collect work I noticed so many without names on, more explicit expectations at start of the lesson. When they are doing group work I need to think of some " getting their attention" strategies. It can get loud and I don't want to be hand clapping all the time.