Last week was the first week that I was able to meet my new target of spending two days a week in the classrooms. I spent all day on Tuesday and Friday in the Junior team, working alongside the teachers and children, talking about their work and sharing in their successes. It was certainly an interesting week, which included meeting a couple of new born lambs with room 4, witnessing the creation of an enchanted forest in room 3 and learning all about the Olympic mascots in room 5.
The variety of learning experiences that our youngest children are being exposed to is truly remarkable. Our children were able to show me how they use laptops in class, how phonics work for them and they even explained what a unicorn's horn is for (apparently it is a bit like a steering wheel). Rooms 1 and 2 showed me how their topic based approach to literacy was making a difference to them and room 21 shared their impressive letter recognition and reading progress.
It was great to see how quickly our youngest children have adopted the Key Competencies as their own. I witnessed children being great team players as they shared the excitement of two lambs being fed; communicators as they taught each other how to use sign language in room 13; great thinkers in room 12 shared their peer assessments of each other's work; dream makers in room 6 told about their ideas for improving the junior play areas.
There was sparkle everywhere!
It's on to the middle team next for me and I can't wait to find out what they will teach me!
