Term 3

A classic pic from Book week!! Click to see properly

Hi there,

Term 3
Teaching is amazing.
Have really impressed with the students progress in fractional and proportional thinking this term. Most students have got the gist of using multiplication to help find fractions, so really proud of them.

Speeches.
Speeches... these are really tough to teach because you want to have a personal voice and then you don't want them to be too personal or just facts or just spouting odd about friends or pets!!
Tough to get it right with 24 students. I've got students who have written their speech already, straight onto cue cards and others who have no idea what to talk about.

I'm going to give it another week and a half then hand it over to the parents!!!

Massive thanks to all parents and families for supporting gala, cake stall and of course teacher appreciation day.
"I show my apprreciation by sending my daughter to your class everyday for five hours... "
Loving it.
I've been enjoying teaching your children this year, a great bunch of kids, and if they like me thats good, because it could be much worse, they could hate me.
Bring on the summer because surfing is free and I'm going to snowboard in the northern hemisphere...
Peace in
MJ

End of Term Two

Hi everyone,

Term two is over, I feel for my old teachers having 13 weeks of school in the old days. I feel burned out.

Our class won the Jump Jam challenge yesterday, the students were so happy, it was a great day for the class. We worked really hard on our dance and more importantly the students choose the song, composed the dance moves and put in a 100% on the day. We filmed the whole class doing it this morning, so if you want to see it contact me.

Reports are out. I worked really hard on them. Everyone should be proud of the progress they have made academically this year. Both in reading and maths.

Our class has been doing really well in multiplication.

We have just watched Holes, we did not just watch a video. We worked on visualising pictures the words drew in our mind, we analysed the characters feelings, sights and aspirations, summarised the story or chapters. It was intense, I think the students have had enough of the story now...

We have a new student from Vietnam and it has been heartening to see the students really welcome her appropriately this week, everyone should be proud.

In other news, I have now finished my 2 years as a beginning teacher!! It seemed to pass quickly and slowly depending on what was going on (eg those reports) but I have loved teaching so far, especially this year.

http://www.smartkiddies.com.au/

Check out this website.

Free skill based maths learning at home...

Gotta be good for you.

I am pleased to anounce that many students have made some significant progress so far this year. Very rewarding. Keep up the good work parents!!

Top ideas for development around school.

The long and the short of the ideas for development from the students were:

A sunshade for our eating area.

New changing rooms for the pool (or doing them up)

Better/more goals and posts to for sports

A new drinking fountain

Other ideas included a fridge room, a giant head to play in, swings on the playground, a disco room, a cover over the pool and a spa pool.
So we looked at trying to be more realistic, it was tough.

BACk into it

Wow I made it back into the blog.

I hate having so many passwords, login names. If you say remember me, it comes up with the wrong one... I wrote them all on a piece of paper so I would never forget them ever again.

So if you find that piece of paper let me know. You could take over my online accounts and do something with them that facebook and google aren't already doing with them.

So I said I would put up a list of ideas the student had to improve our area of the school...

Cant do it now because the list is at school. The reason for this was because some were very realistic and others were dreams. So much so that I got the students to put them into these two catergories. So should be up tommorow.

In other news, we changed jobs around the other day. It was very dramatic. So I'm sorry if you child did not get the one they wanted. I think next time I'm going to wise and just pull out jobs out of a hat and someones name. It was blood, sweat and tears for about forty mins.

THanks for the great effort with current events last week.
Cheers Robert

Term 2

We are back to school,
Sure everyone is keen for homework to kick off next week.

We are currently looking at different ideas for a project to make improvements around the school.

I will publish the list once I have it.

Seems I have a few followers, perhaps more out there. Look forward to finding out tomorrow.

What to report, its the end of the term and I'm stoked. Can't wait to get down to the bach and surf hard on my brand new secondhand surfboard I brought the other week. Next term is a long one (11 weeks). Hopefully we can make some solid gains for all students during this time and I can report back to parents some great results.

Thanks to those who helped out at the carnival or just came and spent some money. I don't think it was as fun for the kids as last years but looks like we made money than last year. The PTA do an awesome job whatever way you look at it. They are an inspirational bunch. One group of our class made some money by doing their dance outside the class and we are going to have a 'party' on Thursday before lunch. We will watch a movie and eat rubbish, I mean healthy snacks.

"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."
- Augusten Burroughs

This quote illustrates how I feel at times, if I didn't have the best intentions I wouldn't be teaching you can be assured.

Look forward to meeting parents tommorow.

It has been a good term as far as I am concerned, the class is still noisy but so am I... (both within reason to be sure)

PAT

Pat tests this week!!
We are doing reading and maths PAT tests this week. The results will be reported back to you during parent interviews. These place your child into a stanine, which tells us where they sit compared to national averages.

The swimming pool is out of order due to high bacterial count and will be back in use ASAP, once the tests are back to confirm that it is safe to swim again. It was an interesting conversation trying to explain about bacteria today.

Always on

There is always something going on at school or in the class. This is why I love teaching. Two days down this week and it has been eventful already, both positively and negatively.

Had a parent come in this morning thanking me for everything I have been doing for their child.
Yeehaa makes me feel good. Had a student showing their family the work they have been doing on the wall proudly. Very rewarding.
On Monday we had a unsettled and bad afternoon, which led to more trouble after school. THis left me feeling uspet and thinking all night about what I should've done differently (hindsight is wonderful isnt it, especially when you've got 24 students in your class).
There are many things. We have talked about these in class and I have been implementing some today.

Anyway another busy week... we have finished Progressive Achievement Tests, on Monday we did a Statistic pre-test so I know what the students need to know. One thing all students need to work on is interpreting graphs and data, so expect to be making some comments about what you see in graphs for homework.
Cheers-
Rjames

Week 4

Persistance has its rewards!

Another week is slipping by us.

We are working hard! For example:

We are working well in a our reading groups to complete tasks that relate to our learning needs.

We are swimming lengths of the pool to enable us to practice our breathing.

We are writing an autobiography and most of us are publishing these into books at present.

We have completed another maths knowledge test. We are working in groups to learn about number sequences, place value and basic facts to 100.

We are still working on following instructions without fussing about others.

Thanks to those who came to info evening, hope you got something out of it!

Remember any concerns, I am available.

Cheers R.James

Hot!

We have had such a hot week. I wish we had air conditioners in class. Thinking of starting a campaign up.

We have had a busy week. Started our group reading sessions this week. All student have a book they could take home, but should bring it back the next day.

We have been learning several maths games, as you would have heard or played. This sets up the students for the rest of the year so they can play them independently.

We have had a STAR test this week. This tests literacy including word comprehension, sentence contruction and synonyms. There were some extremely pleasing results.

Other tests taken have been a basic facts maths test (where the homework Q's come from), two spelling tests and individual reading tests.

The class has been learning to move quietly around the class and school. I am pretty pleased with students behaviour. As part of the Cool Schools mediation iniative all students are learning to take responsibility for their behaviour and communicate their feeling better to others.
We are trying to be better listeners and deal with conflicting situations in a problem solving manner.
Has been a challenge but most are getting better, as are all the teachers.

Thanks
R James

Pleasing effort with homework- Mr James

Thank you for a great effort with the first week of homework.

If we start off well we will continue well!

Thanks to parents who have made the effort to sign and return the homework slips.

Today we have finished reading Fantastic Mr Fox, by Roald Dahl.

So you could ask your child some questions about this book. Who? What? Why?

I choose this book because I know the movie is out now, so maybe we could watch it later in the year.

Next whole class book will be another Roald Dahl one.

Cheers, Mr James

Hello Mr James here!

It is the second week and we are all go!

Meet the teachers evening next Thursday 18th of Feb.

See You there...

Welcome to 2010!

The new school year is about to begin :-)