The Destitute Teacher

Although this post is has "St Patricks Day" in the title, the content is totally adaptable to any themed holiday or occasion- as you will soon see! In NZ, Valentines Day occurs fairly quick into the school year. I usually take the opportunity to pop some Valentines themed board games into the Math group boxes for the children to play as part of their rotation tasks. Last year I made up a set of 'tic tac toe' for each group box. The sets had a coloured game board (glued onto card) and 6 felt hearts of one colour, 6 of another colour. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I forgot about the games, and they were in the group boxes for the entire year. However, am excited that every set survived! I credit it to the fact that each heart was a double layer of felt blanket stitched together- very durable. However, this year I was less organised and just cut out single layered felt hearts. My plan is to stitch them together before next Valentines Day. No doubt it w...

My class absolutely LOVES raiding my big pointers. Unfortunately sometimes they can be a little hard on them, especially the more fragile fairy wands etc.  So I have made a bunch of mini pointers for the children to use when reading. They went wild for them! This set is inexpensive, quick to make and an easy craft activity. You could even have your students make their own!  The wands are simply large popsicle sticks with a decoration hot glued to one end. I am hoping that the decoration focusses the eye, helps the children with their tracking and makes their reading just a little bit special and exciting. I used a range of decorations- googly eyes, wooden shapes, felt shapes, sparkly decorations, Christmas decals, foam shapes, pom poms, ribbon flowers, fabric flowers. The craft aisle of the dollar shop or your local emporium should provide plenty materials to work with.  They are stored in a condensed milk tin. I used PVA glue to cover it with yellow paper an...

Shifting classrooms always requires a scramble to inventory current equipment and to replace those old regulars that you use a lot. I know that almost every classroom must need counters at some point in time! Having a range of alternatives can often pique children's interest, but can be a budgetary stretch at the same time. Here are 10 alternatives that I have rustled up with a minimum cost. 1. Smooth stones come ready made and freely available from your local beach or stony river. Small pebbles are perfect as game tokens, or collected for use in Math lessons. They look great with stickers and glitter glued on and are REALLY durable. However, they can be heavy when stored en masse. 2. Wooden shapes are available in packs of 12-20 from your local dollar shop. These are particularly awesome to use for number stories (i.e. 6 bumble bees were sitting on a flower and 3 flew back to the hive, how many were left?). They are more durable than paper cut outs, intriguing and reasonabl...

I find Math to be an absolute headache in terms of resource management. There is never enough resources, occasionally too many, and they are often in bad repair. This is why my next few posts are about Math resources. Enjoy! As I teach in NZ and follow the Numeracy Projects, place value houses are a common material to work with. I printed mine off A4 size from http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/sites/default/files/Numeracy/2007matmas/Bk4/MM%204_11.pdf . Each 'house' was copied onto a different coloured paper, and then cut out and laminated. I didn't cut them out again after laminating, as it made it easier to punch a hole in the corner and thread a ring through (are they 'magazine' rings?).  My awesome set can now hang from the wall if there is space. No more scrunching up in the bottom of a drawer! They are also really quick and easy to unclip and use, then pack up again. I started off using a whiteboard pen to write the digits directly onto the laminated charts...

Yup, i've returned. The goal is a post each week. Let's see how long I last this time! Exciting news- new school, Year 2 class (6-7 year olds), new city. BY THE BEACH. Oh yes.

Trawling through the local dollar shop today resulted in a bargain find... a packet of colorful letters made from thick cardboard. I immediately thought of an alphabet canvas artwork for the classroom, and rushed off to grab a canvas too before coming home to put it together. This is a really simple project. Just paint the canvas whatever background color you would like (here I have just pale blue with a touch of yellow). Once dry, position the alphabet pieces over the surface, then hot-glue into position. I can't wait to hang my super cute alphabet at school tomorrow! Materials Breakdown: 1x packet of alphabet die-cuts: $2.50 from local dollar shop 1x blank canvas $2.50 from The Warehouse Small amount of acrylic paint and paint brush.

This term I have decided to have news groups, rather than whole class news sharing. I find that students standing in front of the class droning on and on can get a little tedious, plus I want some key students to develop new friends in the class. I still want one person from each group to report back to the class, but it might not necessarily be their news they report back on (thereby making it shorter and more concise). News groups it is. Up until now they have been quite free form. We have enough things going on, without locking down our news groups. Now I am getting ready to tidy up the routines and get things really nailed down. The first thing I have done is to decorate a tin can for each group. Getting crafty with the Modge Podge and wrapping paper has resulted in four tin cans (old tinned tomato cans collected by my students) ready to store the group necessities.  Cans look similar to this but without the pens etc.  While they were drying, I created a table to track ...