Reflection

I went on a course yesterday and it offered a lovely chance to share ideas and successes and to reflect on my practise.

I had a really positive morning and went back to school with some actions in mind... I will get around to them honest!

I shared how well my Creative area has been going since we rearranged the classroom (to make a reading area). One of the side effects of the move was changing the storage around. The children can now access more materials independently and most of them are making good choices about what they need to use.

My actions to work on are as follows:

·Look at the observation sheet for recording formal observations and see how it can be adapted to include the new EYFS goals and Characteristics. (Tick - first draft done!)

·Make some labels for the creative area to help children to keep it tidy (this is quite urgent!!)

·Research and experiment with developing my writing area. How can I make it accessible to more children? How can I make them want to go there? (I hope to be able to write more about how this goes when I get around to it)

I've set just three achievable targets to begin with and may get brave and add to it later.

Slushy snow!

Well being adventurous and going to learn in the snow fell on its arse today (thankfully no one actually did fall over to my knowledge). By the time it snowed enough it was dinner time so all those with boots went out and trampled the snow that was there. When we went out in the afternoon it was slushy and not so much fun :( never mind. A small victory was our focus group for motor skills got out with paint brushes to do swirls and the letter a! That was fun! Here's hoping its not too icy tomorrow so that we can get out and do some races to learn about ordinal numbers.

My TA is amazing

I want to brag about my fabulous new reading area! My super TA made a reading hut for the kids to read in! Amazing! The lady is so talented!

We had fun today measuring giants footprints outside with our own feet! Many of the kids came to check there wasn't really a giant which was very cute considering the footprints were drawn in chalk!! It was really nice to ditch the smart board and think about how we could use the skills we were learning outside. I need to do more of this!

Acting like a 5 year-old

I decided today whilst in the bath reading an article in Teach Primary that I should start a blog. Well it was two articles really. One by Ian Gilbert that likened sitting back, just reading all the great information from twitter and blogs whilst not writing any of your own to "taking a bottle of Blue Nun to a party and then spending the evening drinking other people's half decent Shiraz."  The following article by Jonathan Lear advised me to 'Act like a 5 year-old' and be brave and so this is me being brave and putting myself out there. Although I freely admit that I will no doubt publish this to the masses a fair while after I've written it - but it's the first step!