Planning for the Week Ahead

Having watched the All Ireland Final you know it’s back to school time.

This will be the first full week for me and for many of my followers too. While the first few days are great for settling in this week should be about establishing routines with the children.

An important routine for infants is the morning routine, whether you have free play in the morning, fine motor activities or you want to get started straight away, this week is important to establish this routine. I found that by not having free play in the morning children were coming in on time. Often with free play in the morning the children were often slower to arrive. I tried to begin with fine motor activities for Juniors and word games for Seniors so they were engaged in activities from the start of the day.

This is also an ideal week to introduce responsibilities in the class, I had job tags on lanyards for the children to wear. There were different tags for group leaders, teacher’s helper and of course line leader. The children loved the lanyards and felt so important when they got to wear them.

If you have Junior Infants it can be nice to bring them on a tour of the school and arrange for them to meet some of the staff en route. This depends on your school of course. I liked to being my class on walk and then when we returned to class we drew a picture of the different people we met along the way. If you have multiclass infants then the Senior Infants could be the tour guides.

Finally, this is probably a week when you introduce your Aistear topic to Senior Infants, spend some time establishing the play areas with them and how they must stay in the area for the day. If the class are familiar with Aistear they will be anxious to begin it again, but if it is new to you and the class, take this week to establish your routine, the plan, play and review process and the areas. I like to keep my Aistear groups different to their table groups as it allows them to work with more of their peers in different settings.

Best of luck to everyone setting up Aistear this week! I will miss it with my Senior Classes.

If you have any questions feel free to email me or send me a PM.

A.M.

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