Skip to main content

What a day looks like for us....

I thought I would put together a post that summarises what a day looks like for us now given we have changed and evolved a little.  It is of course pretty fluid, but this would be a pretty typical day for us...not planned, no timetable, just guided by our components of play and our focus for the term.

Our bell goes at 9am.

*Children come in and play for the first 10-20 minutes.  We do the roll based on the photos that they have moved to indicate that they are present.  During this time we will talk to children, check in with those that need a bit of extra 'care' and maybe catch up with a developmental check in if time.

*About 9.20am we will come to the mat and sing our morning songs in Te Reo.  Then we will have our class meeting.  This will revolve around something noticed the day before and will be something recorded in our learning journal.  The discussion will revolve around this.

*About 9.30 children will go back to play.  While they are playing we will rove and we will read individually with some children or conduct developmental check ins.  Attempting as well to capture photos/videos for seesaw and for class reflection.

*About 10.35 we will come together for storytelling (writing)  this looks different each day, but revolves around oral language and conveying a message.

*11am is morning tea - however some will already have eaten as they are allowed to eat when hungry.

*11.20 we come back together for number agency (our maths.) Generally this is about 40 minutes.

*12.15 back to play at the end of agency.  ( another couple of readers or developmental check ins)

*12.30 is lunch playing time for the whole school

*1.15pm is lunch eating time

*1.30pm we will do some basic phonics, playing with sound and listening to words then move off to play.

*2.15pm big book or chapter book sharing and then tidy up.  Reflection on photos taken throughout the day.

*2.40pm interest reading for five minutes (book browsing)

*2.55pm home time































Each day is not the same, but we aim to fit storytelling and phonics in three times a week, on other days that may mean we have longer for play.  Children engage with all activities where they are developmentally at and there is no pressure at all.  Depending on what focus is coming through the play, we may have extra reflections throughout the day.  We read with children twice a week, so are not trying to get through all of our readers every day.

Other days may just be taken over by what we are interested in and even agency will not happen on those days.  What is important to me is that our day is guided by the children as much as possible.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ThinkSRSD - my journey so far with my Year 1 and 2 class

A reflection of my journey   - slideshow shows my progress this term as detailed in this blog post. Introduction to SRSD If you have been following any of my posts, you will know that my journey into evidence-based practice in all areas led me to SRSD (Self-Regulated Strategy Development) last year. I started to explore what I could find online and quickly realised that, even though I was only scratching the surface of what SRSD is, the impacts on my class's writing were obvious. I listened to numerous podcasts and read as much as I could find, discovering that SRSD truly fits the bill for an evidence-based approach to writing. I must preface this by saying that I am not an expert; my qualifications lie in my commitment to using best practices and making this work in a typical New Zealand classroom. Professional Learning Development (PLD) with ThinkSRSD As a staff, we collectively decided to undertake Professional Learning Development (PLD) in ThinkSRSD. Our goal is to develop a sh...

The Importance of Sentence Level Fluency And Comprehension In Literacy

 The Importance of Sentence Level Fluency And Comprehension In Literacy Sentence-level fluency and comprehension are often overlooked components in literacy education. These elements are crucial for helping children not only decode text but also understand and connect with it. In my teaching practice, I have been inspired by the works of Anne Lucas, Tim Rasinski, Hugh Catts, Nell Duke, and Lyn Stone. Their research and insights have significantly influenced how I approach literacy in my classroom. I shared some of these inspirations in a blog post at the beginning of 2023, which can be found here . Developing Class Texts In 2023, I focused on the development of class texts to improve sentence-level fluency and comprehension. This initiative was documented in my post on this blog, "The Unintentional Impact of My Class Decodable Texts." The primary goal of this work was to strengthen the connection between reading and writing. The Role of Ned and Bob Ned and Bob, the original c...

The Power of Simple Organisers: Building Independence in Young Writers, Intentionally Linking Reading and Writing

The Power of Simple Organisers: Building Independence in Young Writers, Intentionally linking Reading and Writing Why a Basic Organiser Struck a Chord Recently, I shared a very basic organiser for reading comprehension on my Facebook page—something I have used frequently in my classroom. I was genuinely surprised by how popular the post became. It’s clear there’s a real hunger among teachers for practical ways to foster writing independence in young learners. With that in mind, I wanted to share the reasoning behind this organiser and how it fits into the wider journey of developing independent writers. Laying the Foundations: Sentence-Level Understanding My class of six- and seven-year-olds are building solid foundations as writers. We’ve invested a lot of time working at the sentence level, using Colourful Semantics to help children understand how sentences are constructed. From there, we began to add greater detail using planners inspired by Colourful Semantics, linking this with th...