Hi everyone
I always find Mondays the hardest day, how about you? It’s a reminder that we are still Distance Learning and I am finding it tough to balance my time on a Monday, it eases throughout the week so I’m beginning to think it’s my own mindset too. Today I had a good response from children online and sending work through so that does help too.
This week is Science Week for our family challenges, I shared a Padlet with lots of different activities from Science Foundation Ireland, STEM Educational and lots of other sites online. We encourage family challenges to get siblings working together. I am also using Book Creator to create a class book of experiments over the course of the week. They can access my Book Creator account and create their own book and then I will put them all together in our own compilation to share with the wider school community. I have used Book Creator but not at this scale so I hope it goes well. I will keep you posted.
As I have senior classes I am conscious of the time I usually spend chatting through different strategies for Secondary School. Having looked at the different resources and books online I have created my own presentation relevant to the children in my own class. I hope to focus on Emotions this week and how we can deal with worry.
Taking inspiration from Anokha Learning Calm Bootcamp and Scared Kids course I am going to remind the class about the Little Brain and the Big Brain and about flipping the lid. The Little Brain controls emotions and Big Brain controls reactions and thinking. When you flip the lid they cannot communicate and cannot see solutions to the issues or worries. I have used this in class earlier in the year so I am hoping they remember this.
There is a nice book called Belonging Plus from Gorey Community School which is a transition booklet and I hope to use this as inspiration for my own themed approach to secondary school. I hope to do a Team call with my class group to discuss the theme at the end of each week, I am also sharing the presentation with parents to encourage lots of discussion at home. I will keep you posted on this too
If you have any questions about this post please send me a DM
Stay Safe Everyone
Aistear Muinteoir
Aistear Múinteoir 