This year, we are combining Mother's Day with 3D Shapes in Maths to create a memorable gift!
Using a net of a cube, draw, decorate & colour your cube.
Afterwards, cut it out, gluing the sides together.
Add cute notes inside telling your mum/gran what you love about them.
To download the free template, click on the image below.
Don't forget to leave a review or tag @msfordesclassroom if you share it on social media.
Here are some of my new (and old) Christmas resources, most of which are free!
Click on each image to download the resource.
Here are a few Art ideas that I have used with my class over the past few years.
They were great fun to make and the children loved decorating them. Read the step by step instructions here.
This is a great project for the week leading up to the Christmas holidays. Each student brought in a shoebox and we used templates from Monster Chest's TPT Store. You can paint the background or use coloured paper/tissue paper.
This is a drawing and painting lesson with some construction of baubles too!
Firstly, we drew an outline of Rudolph from a template I drew on the board. Then we painted them, mixing different shades of brown. While they dried, we cut out 4 circles from different coloured paper. We folded each circle in half and glued one half of a circle to another, continuing until you had used 4 circles. This creates one bauble so repeat until you have 3 or 4 to hang from the antlers. You can also add a little glitter to Rudolph's nose. To finish, we backed them on red paper.
Cookie cutters are really useful for this Art activity. Each student chose a shape they would like to make. They rolled out their clay and used the cookie cutters to create the shape. Some made little decorations for their Christmas Tree to give it more of a 3D effect. Using a straw, we put a hole in each decoration, so we could add a ribbon to hang it from the tree. Finally, we painted them!
This is a lovely colourful art lesson. We drew lines lightly to outline the ground. We painted the sky and added some snowflakes. While it dried, we used tissue paper to design our trees. We cut them out in triangular shapes and stuck them down.
Hopefully you might find an idea or two for this year. Feel free to add in your own favourites in the comments.
Daily movement breaks became embedded in our class schedule last year. Each day at 10 o'clock we went out for a quick movement break. We had a simple routine each day and also added in a few playground games. As the weeks went by, it was clear that it benefited all the students and helped them to focus when we returned to the classroom.
Usually, I do Gaeilge straight after the movement break. So we started to incorporate some of our Gaeilge lesson into the movement break. The students loved it as it was more time outside in the fresh air and they didn't even realise the amount of learning taking place!
Here are a few ideas of games and activities you could use during movement breaks.
The Irish equivalent of What time is it Mr Wolf? This became a daily one as the students really liked it and they could certainly count to 12 by the end of the year!
A great one to teach time in a fun practical way.
I didn't have a name for this one. All students line up in centre of pitch. I called out a question linked to the vocabulary and phrases we were learning for the week. For example 'An maith leat a bheith ag.....'
Children then run to one side of pitch if they like it and to the other side if they don't. To get back to the centre of the pitch for the next question, they have to answer the question correctly; 'Is maith liom a bheith ag..../ní maith liom a bheith ag...' It offers an opportunity to repeat phrases a lot and also hear their peers forming the sentence.
If the vocabulary was new, I would bring out the flashcards as a visual prompt to those who needed it.
Again this can be adapted to most topics you are teaching in Irish. You can also use call and response to get the children using the language. 'Bígí ag rith.....Tá mé ag rith'.
I am going to continue incorporating Gaeilge outdoors this year as it led to lots of Gaeilge neamhfhoirmiúil in a fun context. If you have any other ideas for using Irish in movement breaks, leave a comment below!
Tomorrow is World Bee Day but this art lesson could be nice to do anytime during the summer term. Here is a step by step of how to do it, which you can use with your class. You could also add flowers to make it even more colourful!
Add eyes, wings etc.
If you want to make it moveable, then add a lollipop stick
to the bee.
When the background has dried, cut a wiggly line to make a pathway for the bee.
Slide the bee into the cut line.
Back the background onto a coloured page and you have some
buzzy art!
Tag @msfordesclassroom on social media if you give it a go!
Ciara McGuane is the Summer Course Director
for Rahoo.ie.
Her career highlights include being filmed by
BBC London teaching in the classroom and guest-lecturing at the Institute of
Education in London. She has worked as a teacher, school leader, teacher
trainer and initial teacher training tutor prior to setting up Rahoo.
One of her favourite memories of teaching is
when her class (with the help of kind colleagues!) organised a surprise
engagement party for her and sung Bruno Mars “Just the Ways You Are” to her!
One of her most embarrassing moments is
getting locked into the school building when working late in her NQT year, set
off the alarm and had to squeeze under the big school gate and two women
passing by had to drag her out! All caught on CCTV!
Ciara is passionate about teacher and
student potential – and believes accessible, informal
and enjoyable CPD is one of the best ways teachers can develop. She currently
works with Rahoo and misses the classroom – she will be back someday soon!
This is the ultimate tip in terms of
stress-free lesson planning and halving your planning time! It creates total
ease and flow for teachers and takes the hassle and the indecisiveness out of
lesson planning and where to put activities.
According to Albert Einstein, “Everything must be
made as simple as possible. But not simpler.” In order to achieve balance in
lesson planning and in lessons themselves, it is best to have a system.
Of course, in teaching it is necessary to be
flexible – as literally anything can happen to thwart your plans! Nevertheless,
a system is solid and will help achieve consistency in the quality of lesson
planning and lessons themselves. It doesn’t mean that all your lessons have to
be the same, but by creating some sort of consistent approach, it will make the
planning process flow easier.
I use the 4-Step Framework called KISS. This simple
lesson planning process is explored in detail in Rahoo’s EPV Summer Course
“Effective Lesson Planning”.
Be careful about who you choose to
spend your time with – be conscious of staffroom politics, complaining and
begrudgery that might negatively affect you in the moment, but also the rest of
your day or week.
It is important to protect your time
and energy. Teaching is a draining job – it saps your energy so make a
conscious effort to gravitate towards people who lift you up.
If you are doing this, you need to reflect and
ask yourself these questions:
What is the purpose of marking?
Who is it for?
The purpose of marking is for students to
learn and improve from constructive feedback. The purpose of marking is also
for the teacher to learn about how individual students are doing and if they need
to tweak their teaching.
Marking is fundamentally for the students and
their progress.
Please don’t fall into the trap of marking for
the parents or principals. Many teacher tick and flick in books so that the
parents or principals can see that they have looked at the page. Ticking and
Flicking is NOT good quality feedback – it is not purposeful and it is a waste
of your time.
It is better to choose a piece of work to mark
– and mark that to a good standard using a feedback framework like two stars
and a wish to provide constructive feedback to students.
There is a whole section on effective marking and feedback in the Work Smarter, Be Happier EPV Summer Course.
I hope you found these 3 time-saving tips useful – they are a snippet of what is shared in our EPV Summer Course “Work Smarter, Be Happier”. Please feel free to check it out HERE.
Thank you to Ms Forde for hosting this guest
blog post!
Rahoo Summer Course Director
