Hi everyone, I hope you are all enjoying the holidays. I really appreciate the time during the Easter holidays as it often is not as busy as Christmas holidays allowing time to catch up with good friends.
I am finding it so hard to believe we are heading into Term 3! The end of the year is drawing ever closer. It can be scary to think that your little Junior Infants have 3 terms done and are looking forward to being Senior Infants. In multi-class I always found that Senior Infants felt their own level of superiority over the Junior Infant which at times could be quite funny. They knew routines and expectations and felt they were more grown up than the Juniors. At this point of the year those Senior Infants are getting ready for the big transition to First Class and you can sometimes see the gap between the infant classes at this point.
Where to begin in Term 3!
Take some time during the first week back to settle into routines and reminders for behaviour. I also like to work on some revision topics for the first few days before beginning a new topic in Maths or English. They should settle back into routines faster after the Easter break. Reminding them that Senior Infants/First Class is just around the corner can also help to settle them back in.
Checking back over assessments at the end of Term 2 can help suggest reading groups or word lists. In Term 3 I would begin introducing Dolch words to Juniors if you haven’t already started with the reading scheme. As in previous posts I like using Word Attack Pack for teaching Dolch words. I always aimed to teach the Pre-Primer Dolch in Junior Infants.
As there is only 1 week of April in this term. I have split the Term into 3 topics. The first two covering 3 weeks and the last one covering 4 weeks as it can be a busy month with tours and sports day. My suggested topic is the Restaurant and I have to say it is one of my favourite topics. The children can gain so much knowledge from this topic and can apply it in many real life situations.
The restaurant topic is one that can be easily resourced. I asked parents to gather a variety of menus to add to our role play area. We had a toy kitchen, a tea set and variety of plastic food already. I bought a tablecloth and napkins from the Euro shop which added to the role-play area too. The restaurant topic also links closely with other subjects which makes it an ideal topic for anyone on Teaching Practice. I have added a thematic plan to my store on Mash.ie which includes ideas for discrete lessons and some links to useful resources.
If you have any questions on this topic please send me a PM.
A.M.
Aistear Múinteoir 