Hi everyone,
Another week of Distance Learning complete and it still feels so strange. I can’t believe it has been 6 weeks since schools shut. In some ways it doesn’t feel that long and in other ways it feels like forever since we were in school.
I have been trying to plan ahead this week and to try be a little more organised for next week. I looked at my own class timetable and realised that it’s harder to incorporate some subjects into Distance Learning such as SPHE so I wanted to plan more effectively for SPHE for next week.
I had been using Character Education Kit from The Teacher Next Door on Teachers Pay Teachers. My class have really enjoyed this, responding to different character traits and looking for those character traits in characters in picture books. Next week I am going to try incorporate this into my daily activities if I can. So I have chosen the character trait Fairness. I will add a post on Teams so children can respond with their own definition of Fairness initially. Within the pack there are a variety of stories suggested such as Mr Peabody’s Apples so I will share a link to a video of the story and ask the children to reflect on the story, was it fair or unfair and respond on Teams. Teams is fantastic to facilitate class discussion as they can like or respond to comments from their peers. I think my class enjoy communicating with their peers in some way.
The Character Education Kit is designed for in class discussion so it will be hard to incorporate it into Distance Learning but I hope to give it a try. I find that the class respond really well to these activities online and it can be hard to fine ones that are suitable.
Another resource that I bought earlier in the year was the When My Mind is Full ebook from Good Morning Ms Foster. My class loved it as it illustrated how they felt when they became anxious, they could relate to it easily. I also purchased the mindfulness workbook from Good Morning Ms Foster and hope to suggest some activities from the book for my class.
If you are a parent check out the Big Life Journal as they have lots of lovely printables to use with your child at home for goal setting, gratitude and dealing with worries. I have bought some of the kits to use with my class, but they would work really well at home also.
Alternatively if you are using Seesaw there are lots of activities within the community library on Growth Mindset, gratitude etc that you can assign to your class. They can include a link to a video and then a template to respond to.
If you have any questions on these resources please send me a DM
Aistear Muinteoir
Aistear Múinteoir 