Tag: engage
Classroom Spaces
If you had come into my year 5 classroom last term, for the most part you would have seen clusters of desks usually arranged in groups of four or six. So for my class of 26 that meant six different desk clusters, a couple at the front, a couple near the middle and two at […]
Creating quality content
I have been thinking recently how to ensure that the school based project tasks my students hand in, are the best they can be. In particular I am trying to work out how to increase the quality of the content, my students are presenting using web tools. This year I have noticed, that using technology […]
My classroom menagerie
I have been thinking about the different learning styles that I have viewed over the years as a primary teacher. Just for fun I decided to give them animal names. Can you spot yourself or one of your pupils in this list? The ‘Cheetah This student completes all class work at speed, everything is done, […]
Making memories
Picture this. It’s home time, I have a slight headache and I definitely need a large cup of tea. It’s been a long and tiring day. I leave my classroom to empty a rubbish bin and I am met by a stream of excited Year 3 students who had earlier been invited to join in […]
Testing in the Primary classroom – NAPLAN
It’s National Assesment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) week here in Australia. For those of you overseas what this has meant for my class is the following: On Tuesday they had a 40 minute language test of grammar and spelling, followed by a 50 minute narrative writing test. On Wednesday they took a 50 minute reading comprehension test. And today, […]
Musings on the teaching of spelling
I was really interested to read a blog post by The Principal last week where among other things he questioned whether spelling should be taught anymore. If you have yet to read this I suggest you do so, as it raises many interesting points. While I believe that his aim was to encourage discourse on […]
Making Memories again.
What do you remember about your primary school days? We asked this question of our parents this week using our class blog and the answers were not surprising, not many of them remember tests or exams in their primary days. Yet for Australian students these days this week has been NAPLAN week. All Australian teachers […]