What Grinds My Gears... Common Errors Display

Over the past five years, I've found that children have made many similar errors within their writing - the same sort of errors I see even adults making. After constantly repeating myself on some of these common errors, I decided to make a display to refer to when I do it!

I've gone for a 'gears' theme as I like the idea of these little errors being the ones that get on people's nerves - so they really grind your gears (I've considered sound effects for when they happen!). The gears each have the common errors on them and I'll refer to the display during lessons, particularly writing lessons.

For now, I've only put up eight gears but I have a whole load more ready and waiting to join the display and I have an editable file on my computer should anything else crop up. The ones I've chosen to put up so far are the ones that I've found to be the most frequent mistakes over the last five years.

If you'd like this display, visit my TES page to download the file. I've included a PowerPoint and a PDF version. The PowerPoint allows you to edit the gears but some of the formatting may be off with the text if you do not have the same font installed on your computer.

Signing off!

The Yorkshire Teacher

Classroom Rewards

I've always found rewarding pupils to be a positive approach to dealing with behaviour and a great way to encourage pupils to do the right thing. In this post, I'll outline my approach to rewards.

I have an area of my classroom, including a display board, dedicated to rewards and sanctions. On my display board I have a 'Bonus Point Chart' which shows how many bonus points the children have earned. I'll get onto how children earn the bonus points in a moment, but first I'll explain how the system works.

Once a child has 10 bonus points, they earn a 'small dibble'. A small dibble usually consists of a small sweet treat (I tend to buy bags of lollies) or a small toy, such as a bouncy ball or parachute man. Following 10 bonus points, children work towards 20. At 20 they receive a 'big dibble'. I tend to spend about £1 on the big dibbles and so they are quite good prizes. These include things like colouring in books, stationery and age appropriate toys. I buy these from shops such as The Range, B&M, Homebargains and anywhere that has a good deal going! Children enjoy earning the dibbles and often check the bonus point chart to see how far away they are. Once children have reached twenty, my TA covers their spots with a new track and they begin again. What I like about this is that no one ever knows who has the most spots and so it doesn't appear that anyone has a smaller amount to others.

Bonus points are represented by spots. We have five different colours that represent different reasons for spots. The most commonly used is the blue spot (good example or good work) as these can be earned at any time, even multiple times a day. The reason we have colours is so that we can determine what children are doing well with and how they could earn more bonus points. For instance, I have had children complain that they don't get many bonus points but when you look at the chart, it's clear that they don't bring homework back or never bring PE kit. It's a good way of the children identifying rather than the adults constantly nagging.

The 'Dapper Drawer Award' was an idea I had a few years ago. And it has worked really well with every class I've had. Each child has their own tray in which they keep stationery, hymn books, achievement files and other things. Children also tended to store things that they've brought in also and as their drawers are under their work desk, they'd sharpen and leave rubbish in them. I was fed up of spending lots of time getting children to tidy their trays out and so I introduced this award. I never tell the children when the award is coming, but once every so often I have a quick look around the class and then put the token in one of the tidiest drawers. When children next come in and realise the award is missing from the display, they get quite excited and are keen to check to see if they've won.

Not all children keep their trays tidy as a result of this, but a large majority of the class do and it makes life much easier when trays aren't overspilling with paper and rubbish.

We have more rewards as a school, but these are the things I do within my class.

Signing off!

The Yorkshire Teacher

Science Display: We're Evolving

Our first topic in Science this year will be called 'We're Evolving' where we will look at evolution, inheritance and adaptation.

At the start of a science topic, I like to put up some interesting facts for the children to read. In this case, there were lots of facts to choose from. I've selected information about animals which I think are interesting and hopefully the children will too.

I've also printed  large pictures of the animals that the facts relate to just to make the display a bit more child friendly and inviting. I will be setting some research homework where the children will use the internet/books to find out an interesting facts about how an animal has adapted to its environment.

I've included some non-fiction books with the display that are about animal adaptation. We will use these books during a lesson to do some research.

Mr and Mrs Potato Head are also on the display. One of the first lessons on the topic will be about inheritance and we will do a task where the children put together different combinations of potential offspring based on the potato heads. This will be a very basic introduction to inheritance but will hopefully develop the children's understanding of how genes are passed on.

There is a lot of free room left on the display, this will be filled throughout the half term as the topic is underway.

Signing off!

The Yorkshire Teacher

Reading Corner

Reading is an area for development within the school and so we are all expected to have an inviting and engaging reading area within the classroom. Children will use the reading area during free choice reading sessions. I wanted a reading area that was simple, but promoted reading for enjoyment.

I wanted a 'window' in my reading area that will have an image that changes termly based on the topic, with the idea that reading is a way of seeing the world. Our first topic is the USA and so my HLTA painted a New York skyline for the window. She made the window for me using polystyrene, toothpicks, copydex and velcro to attach it to the wall. It has fallen off a couple of times but it has been readjusted and now is firmly on the wall - I just dread changing it next term!

The image was painted using poster paints on a large piece of cardboard. The image is very effective and really makes the area.

I needed some sort of title for the display, so it doesn't just look like a random window. Due to space, I had to use the wall underneath. I printed, trimmed and laminated large letters to spell out 'Reading...' and then printed a plane and made a banner which states "Your window to the world.".

I have a large range of age appropriate, quite modern books on my bookcase. I also have another bookcase in another place in the classroom. That bookcase has a range of non-fiction titles as well as some more fiction.

I have quite a few beanbags and cushions in the area for the children to use. I picked them up from Dunelm for quite a reasonable price.

So that's my reading area. I just need to decide what is going on my large reading display now.

Signing off!

The Yorkshire Teacher

Spanish Display Completed!

I've already blogged about my Spanish display but it is now complete so I thought I'd share again and go through my intentions for the year with the display.

As you can tell, the main colours are those of the Spanish flag. It makes the display stand out. The title for our first unit is 'Greetings and Goodbyes'. I've already premade all of the display materials for the year so I have my other titles and such ready to go.

I've got the flags of eight Spanish speaking countries on display. This is to give the children some context in terms of where Spanish is spoken. We will discuss countries as the year progresses and will also look at some differences between Spanish in different countries and compare this to the use of English in different countries also. The flags will stay on the display all year.

The two children are going to be used to show dialogue throughout the year to promote conversation in Spanish. This will start quite basically and then evolve throughout the year to include more ambitious vocabulary and sentence structures. The speech bubbles are blu-tacked on the display and will be moved around a lot so it doesn't just remain a stationary display.

I've really been looking forward to teaching Spanish as opposed to French. I always struggled with French at school but studied Spanish for one year and picked up quite a lot, especially in comparison with the tiny amount of French I picked up in 5 years!

Signing off!

The Yorkshire Teacher

Some Old Work (14 - 15)

This is my final post with prior work and it is some the last academic year where I taught Year 6.

1. Transition Day

Something I do on transition day is looking at what makes an outstanding pupil and what makes an outstanding teacher. The pupil one we do as a whole class and it really puts down the expectations early, and it all comes from the children so they show a good understanding of what they need to do to be the best that they can be. For the outstanding teacher, the children break into groups and come up with their own ideas and then they present this to the class. This gives me a chance to look at how pupils work together in groups and also lets me know what the children expect of me.

Also on transition day, I like the children to take part in a project that will all come together to make some sort of big piece of art. In previous years we've made truncated tetrahedrons that have combined to make large icosahedrons and we've designed bunting. I like to put whatever we've done in display when the children come back. Last year I saw these on Pinterest and decided to do handprints, combining them and displaying them outside my classroom. I've done this again for this year.

2. Classroom Setup

Just a few pictures showing the displays I started with this year. I had my reading corner again, but it became a bit smaller (which I've rectified this year). I had science displayed over two boards with a workstation area. The workstation had a mini experiment for children to do (in this case testing which materials conducted electricity).

3. Loop the Loop Topic Launch

I designed my classroom door as a theme park entrance. I used large pieces of card to do this and the idea was taken from the Disney Village in Paris.

I wanted my topic display to look like a riverr apids ride. The topic was called Loop the Loop and it looked at theme parks and rides. The children really enjoyed the topic and we got some great writing out of them.

My HLTA created a window silhouette of a theme park. This looked great from both the outside and the inside.

4. Rollercoaster Design

I've mentioned previously 'launching' topics. We try to choose topics that will interest and enthuse the children and we use the first day of each term to launch our topics. We do this with an activity that excites the children for the topic. For Loop the Loop, the children made their own paper rollercoasters. I found templates online, photocopied lots of different parts and then children worked in groups to build these rollercoasters that took a marble from the top to the bottom. The children measured, folded, scored, cut and really got creative. Each group even managed to get a loop the loop to work. There was a lot of testing and readjusting but every single one worked in the end.

5. Working in the Dark Vocabulary Building

My first English lesson of the year was for a unit where children would write a story based in an abandoned theme park. To build vocabulary, I completely darkened my classroom (black sugar paper on every window) and I had printed some poster sized images of theme parks that had been left to overgrow and were no longer in use. Children used torches to move around the room to look at the images and they used thesauruses to find higher level vocabulary for the feelings and observations that they'd made. These filtered well into the work that the children produced at the end of the unit. At the end of the year, the children told me that this had been their favourite lesson - I'm going to try to not start on such a high this year!

6. Rollercoaster Guides

Another piece of writing we did was an information guide about a rollercoaster. Children had to research their own rollercoaster (they could choose any in the world) and then they had to set it out for a children's book on rollercoasters. They didn't write a massive amount (they were restricted to one A3 page) but the writing they produced was accurate and used good vocabulary and a range of punctuation.

7. Volcano Vocab Gameshow

One of the areas that the children were struggling with was understanding higher level vocabulary. We put together a gameshow type lesson where children were in teams and had to make their way up the volcano. I had a set of question cards and there were a few different elements to the game. We had a coloured die to determine the type of question, a numbered die to determine spaces to move and had coloured spaces with rules. The children loved the gameshow element and the new words we encountered were used in later lessons, initially as reminders by me but then in children's work.

8. Building Bridges

Following the Key Stage 2 Assessments, I set the class a task of building a bridge that met a design specification. It had to span a certain width, a car had to be able to get across without falling off and it had to hold a certain weight. We tested each bridge, recording the results.

So that's my selection of work from the last five years. I'll now move onto this year with shorter but regular posts.

Signing off!

The Yorkshire Teacher

Some Old Work (13 - 14)

These pictures are from the year 2013 - 2014. I taught Year 6 during this school year.

1. Rewards

The reward system in my class is 'spots'. Children can earn spots for a variety of reasons and these are recorded on the rocket chart in the picture. Once children have ten spots, they earn a small sweet prize. At twenty spots, they earn a 'dibble' which can be anything from stationery to toys. I tend to spend about £1 on each prize and pick them up from places like The Range or B&M.

2. English and Maths Working Walls

I set up my English working wall that year so that it could be quickly changed. I also had another English display with some key things on for the year. The dustbin was for overly used words, alternatives went on the silver stars after children had suggested them. The 'Mark It!' folder had pieces of work in with errors for children to fix.

Again, for maths I wanted a wall that was quick to change. The WAGOLL and Key Words were laminated and so written on with whiteboard pens. Puzzle Corner had three levels of challenge for the area currently being studied. Children would put answers to puzzles on post its and every so often we drew a winner who received a reward.

3. Vocabulary Door

This door has remained largely unchanged in my classroom for a few years. It just has some 'better' words for common words used in writing. Children are free to get up and look at this door during lessons to improve their work. Some words tend to stick for the whole class and suddenly everyone starts to use that one word.

4. Britain's Got Talent Launch

This was actually the final year I did Britain's Got Talent as a topic. This is the audition room.

5. Crime and Punishment Launch

Very similar to the previous year. There's an example of how the children get dressed to investigate the crime scene. The suits were kindly donated to us by Arco.

6. Reading Corner

Reading was a major focus for the whole school during that year. I decided to develop an inviting reading corner to encourage children to read during 'free choice reading' sessions. I give every guided reading group one free choice reading session per week where they can select a book from the bookcase or read their library book.

I bought the beanbags and pillows from Dunelm for quite a small price.

The books displayed here relate to the 'Author Spotlight'.

Each half term I choose an author to spotlight. I put up a bio and display a selection of their books.

A child wrote to David Walliams a few years ago and he sent him a handwritten message and a signed postcard.

The area really worked and children could be seen every day actively reading a book of their choosing in the area. I'm planning to relaunch my reading area this year, buying some new materials and giving it a bit of an update.

7. Graffiti Artwork

I mentioned this in my previous post but had taken pictures this year of the children's work. These are a few examples of what children created.

I only have one more post to upload of the work from previous years before I move onto what I'm currently doing.

Signing off!

The Yorkshire Teacher