Welcome to Room 205!

Welcome to Room 205! 

Where our future is so bright we have to wear our shades!

This semester our class is working on a new unit called 'Are we there yet?'- A journey around Australia. The COGs unit is based from the book Are we there yet written by Alison Lester. This post will be a tour around Room 205, with a link to some of the create resources that I had created especially for this unit.

This first picture is capturing the entrance to the classroom. On the left side on the floor is an ABC foam mat, two little green camp chairs, an owl backpack and an entry point to the camping tent, with some wall art and lights. 

This next picture is capturing the infamous Reading Wall- or classroom library! This is the place to go to find a really good book.

This is the cosy reading cave, inside the tent I have just put lots of bright coloured cushions and bean bags to snuggle up in when reading a good book.

This picture captures the other side of the tent, it also shows Mr Magical Snake, the hand-made campfire, picnic setting, bug catchers with bugs, literacy and numeracy fishing game and a fishing tackle box to keep all of the game supplies in. 

Would you like this Print out? I can make it available in my shop :)
This sign sits on the window - Watch out for the bears!! :)

This is the entrance to the classroom, it has a welcome sign, our bear tags with student names, and our classroom beliefs. 

 This picture captures what we love in room 205!

Here are just some more pictures of Room 205! Enjoy :)

 I hope you enjoyed the tour of Room 205! :) Kylie!

Fun & Successful Spelling!

First post for the new year!! I'm back with some fun and successful spelling games that cater to the three learning styles of our students: Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic. When re-vamping my spelling program for the year I knew I had to come up with some fantastic new ways to make spelling fun and successful at the same time. These ideas are easy to make and very inexpensive for our classrooms! GET EXCITED.. Here we go...

1. Clever Clothespins- This activity is almost endless, you can have students matching letters, words, word families etc, using this very cheap resource in your classroom.

2. Sticker Sight words- This activity is so fun, who doesn't love stickers?? This activity gives students an idea of the shape of letters and of words (depending on the differentiation with students). This activity can be lots of fun for both kinaesthetic and visual learners, When they are finished they read the word to a friend, covering the auditory learners too!

3. Play Dough Alphabet Cutters- Everyone loves play dough! Even the big kiddies ;) This activity can be used to build spelling words, sight words, and different word families. So much fun!

4. Magical Magnets- Using a magnetic board, or smaller cookie sheets (depending on your purpose) students will have hours of fun manipulating the magnetic letters around to make their spelling words, sight words, word families etc. Make sure they are lovely bright colours for your visual learners too!

5. Coloured Popsicle Sticks!! - I LOVE LOVE LOVE these!! There are SO many things that they can be used for. My favourite is writing sight words on one end and numbers 1-6 on the other end. Students roll the dice, pick out the corresponding number popsicle stick, if they read it correctly, they keep the sticks! YAY! So fun!! You can extend this from alphabet letters to sight words to sentences as their reading develops.

 






6. Play dough Stations- Play dough can be used for word work activities and letter formations. You can ask your students to use play dough alphabet cutters to work on words, but you can also make up letter/word sheets and have them laminated to reuse over and over. Students practice making the shapes of letters by manipulating the play dough.

 















7. Dice Words- Using these cute circle stickers your word work opportunities are endless!! You can create word families, particularly great for younger spellers. Students roll the dice and make the word, sound it out etc, record the word and tally their success !!

8. Ink Stamp Stations- This is my new pride and joy, and not too expensive either!! These alphabet stamp sets are great for students to stamp out their spelling words, sight words and word families! To make it fun students are given a strip of blank paper and make a sight word bracelet stamping their sight word or spelling word onto the piece of paper. Best part is for the whole day that the bracelet is worn, the student will reinforce the word. So much fun!!

9. Shaving Cream- Using a SEALABLE bag, put shaving cream inside the bag then students can practice their spelling words, sight words, word families, and letters.

10. Glue- Using sight word stencils students use glitter glue to make the letter shapes. You can also do word families, sentences and letters depending on the capabilities of your students. How fun!

11. These acrylic frames are perfect for using as dry erase boards. Because the frame is clear, you can insert any printable to work on, such as handwriting, sentence writing, word families and spelling. The opportunities are endless... best part.. it WIPES CLEAN!

12. Magic White Crayon- Students secretly write their spelling list, sight words, etc onto white paper with a white crayon. Students then paint over the white paper with watercolour paint. So fun and secretive ;)

I hope this list of fun and successful activities will get you started for some hands on learning and to support the three different learning styles within your classroom! Feel free to ask questions, and comment with your favourite, fun, successful activity to engage students in being successful in spelling!!!

Happy Teaching!!

Kylie :)

My New Adventure!!

Take the tour!

Well I have officially had my own classroom now for... drum roll please.. 14 weeks!! This is why I have been super busy and you haven't heard from me. So to make it up to you all, I thought a classroom tour would be wonderful. If you want to link up with me to show off your classroom (remembering I have only been a 'real' teacher for 14 weeks) please link up with me for this classroom show off party!! :)

First of all, if you have any tips for me as a beginning teacher, I would love to hear from you. My tip to any other new teachers out there, is to always remain true to yourself. If you can do that, then you will be amazing!! :)

In this first picture you can see my brand new library, and bean bags for reading time. The students helped with painting and sticking up the letters. They are very impressed with themselves. 

In this next picture is my most favourite wall, it is my very brightly coloured buckets, with all of the essentials in them, such as pencils, pens, scissors, coloured pencils, textas etc. 

This wall has my birthday presents with my students birthdays on them, and some numeracy and literacy reference charts. 

I love my reading wall .. :)

This term we are learning about information reports, here is the beginning bulletin board with my students very hard work displayed. 

Numeracy Charts & Displays..

Full vision of the wall, This is their computer work stations, where they complete most of their given work. 

Literacy and numeracy Tubs with games and practice skill cards for early finishes.. 

 My new CAFE display (Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency & Expanding vocabulary) Yet to begin this, I am very excited to introduce these concepts on Monday!

 Other side view of classroom, this includes our floor space, IWB, teachers desk and my coloured buckets, which we use for drum beat most mornings. 

Overall I think i have brightened my classroom up a bit ;) let me know what you think, and link up with me if you want to show off your classroom too!!

Happy Learning Kylie :)