Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Fitting everything in...

Here in Australia, we have started implementing the National Curriculum. With it, we have been given units of work, with all our lessons mapped out for English, Math and Science (so far). Is it just me, or is it really hard to fit everything in?! I've been having to condense what is in the lessons (while maintaining the lesson intentions of course!) otherwise I find I go overtime every lesson! 

At my school, we have been given a timetable (just like high school) which we have to stick to. So I might have 1 hour of math timetabled, followed by English, followed by Literacy, followed by Science etc. This is to ensure we are covering the mandated hours for each curriculum area. To ensure I stay on time, I have been using my clock to set the time for any given task. 
 Whenever the kids start an activity (or D5 activities etc), I tell them how long they have. We count the minutes on this clock in 5s. They can then refer to the real clock while we are working to see how close it is to the time they need to be finished by. This has been a necessity because my class this year is so very slow at getting anything done or started quickly! It is also giving us heaps of experience in telling the time!
I also bought this cane rocking chair on the weekend. I've placed it near the door so after lunch we can come in and sit where the breeze will get us while I read! Boy, has it been HOT!