Sick Days

Just recently I logged into my pay and leave information to check the balances. I was astonished to discover I have 26 week’s sick leave available! 26!!!! It got me to thinking about how teachers take sick leave and how tricky it can be for planning and follow up afterwards. We can’t just resume where [...] Continue reading

Advice for New Teachers

I am now heading in to my second year as a ‘real’ teacher. I say ‘real’ because, like many of you, I’ve spent the last four years referring to myself as “a teacher.. well, a student-teacher at the moment”, during many an interrogation by well-meaning relatives and friends into the purpose of my time at [...] Continue reading

Social Media

Happy New Year everyone! This is an excellent time to reflect on our own personal use of social media, possibly after we’ve given our accounts a work out over the Christmas/New Year period. It’s really, really easy to overshare or to upload things we may regret later. Perhaps this doesn’t matter if we aren’t teachers, [...] Continue reading

Reflecting on the Year

Today marks the final day of the school year for many Australian government schools. Did you drag yourself to the finishing line or did you skip energetically? However you got there, it’s an excellent opportunity to reflect on the year that was. No matter what circumstance you found yourself in throughout 2015, employment wise, there [...] Continue reading

Working Quietly

It’s very easy for the noise level in classrooms to escalate quickly. It’s also true that some classes are just chattier than others and therefore it’s harder to manage the noise level. Personally, I’m a little more permissive with noise levels than other teachers I know, however it’s still important for me to have access [...] Continue reading

Attachment Theory

This popped up on my Facebook news feed a few weeks ago and I thought it so simply summed up the impact a child’s home life can have on their education. Attachment theory explores the link between the mother (or primary care giver) and the child. It originated with the work of Bowlby and Ainsworth [...] Continue reading

Gaining Attention

Many times throughout the school day we need to gain the attention of our class. There are hundreds of ways to do this, it’s just a matter of choosing one that you enjoy and find effective. Some are more suited to junior classes and some to senior levels. Classroom teachers There are two main methods [...] Continue reading

Transitioning

The curriculum is crowded and it is probably impossible to cover everything required each year. Instead, we often have to choose the sections we feel are most essential to be covered, especially those that are sequentially based. Children are actively engaged in structured learning of some sort for approximately five hours per day. How much [...] Continue reading

Dressing up days

Schools seem to have regular dress up days. I have a love hate response to these. Mostly children love them, parents not so much. I try to never hold one for my class, just the ones the whole school are participating in. Here are some very old and grainy photos of me on primary school [...] Continue reading

NAPLAN Data

A previous article covered the lead up and what to do on the day to improve the performance of your students. Today I will help you discover how to make the most of the NAPLAN data from the day after the test, not September when results come out. (Seriously, if the government really wanted us [...] Continue reading

School Camp

It’s school camp time! I love camp and have even been known to volunteer to go on a few unpaid. Not everyone feels like that though, so I thought some ideas to make the camping experience more enjoyable or endurable might help. Preparation Camp can be a difficult experience if you are not prepared adequately. [...] Continue reading

Planning

How are you managing your daily and weekly planning? Need to finetune the process a little more? I have gathered together some key points that will help you improve your technique and help you focus on the content, rather than stressing about the process. Sourcing an appropriate planning template should be your first step. The [...] Continue reading

Reflecting on Lessons

No matter how many years you have been teaching, it is still essential to reflect on your lesson content and presentation. Sometimes it’s pretty obvious it is not working whilst you are teaching, we might feel we are stuck in a rut with content or activity choice, or we think our students are not progressing [...] Continue reading

NAPLAN

I’m not sure I’ve met any teacher who thinks NAPLAN is a fantastic assessment tool. It has its place, but I believe the government (and sometimes principals) put far too much emphasis on its importance and accuracy. This has led to cheating and bending of the rules, in fear of the consequences of poorly performing [...] Continue reading