How I’m Structuring The Next Few Weeks For Myself and My Senior Infants

So our Easter holidays are nearly over and it feels weird that work is resuming next week, but not the way we know it. It’s looking likely that this may continue until the end of the school term and as us teachers love routine, I find having a routine from Monday-Friday helps me be more stay on task and be more productive. Through this blog post I will mainly discuss how I’m planning to teach next week but I will also delve into my personal life and how I’m staying focussed and staying productive.

1) Routine: I’ve taught infants for a few years now and before that I had first class for a number of years. One thing I can safely say is the younger age groups love routine! Before I realised the importance of a visual timetable (for my sanity as well as for the children) I was bombarded with “When is it lunch?”, “Is this the last piece of work before lunch”, “what are we doing next, and then what are we doing”!! The visual timetable was a lifesaver, they could check every morning what was the schedule for the day and what to expect. I realised that now more than ever, a timetable would be important for the kids. With that in mind I created a simple timetable from 9am – 1pm each day. The timetable follows the same structure each day and anyone wanting a copy you can enter your name and email address into the box on the right side bar of this website or below this blog post if you are on your phone I’ll email it to you. Each day contains Maths, English and Irish and a rotation of SESE and Music/ Art. Of course, not all parents will be able to follow this or will want to follow it but the option is there and it will also help me in my planning.

2) New content: Our school has decided that we would begin to cover new content from now on, whereas before this the children were receiving revision work. Given that it’s an infant class, and the prospect of doing a Zoom call with 28 six year olds made me want to run for the hills, my principal understood that the best way for new content to be taught would be through video presentations or voice recordings on Powerpoints. I commend any teachers who are teaching infants in a virtual class setting and would love to hear how you are finding it. When I was creating my daily plans, I knew I would have to explain to parents how to teach these new concepts without trying to over complicate it or add too many bells and whistles. I also created Powerpoints on most subjects so I could talk over them and aid parents in their teaching. We can’t guarantee that this work will be done or covered but we can try and make it as easy as we can for parents.

3) Daily structure: I usually wake up around 8am each morning, I do some yoga or exercise (although to be honest I’ve barely done a tap of exercise in a fortnight) and I usually sit down with my laptop around half 9 each morning and stay on until half 2 just like a normal school day. During this time, I am available for parents or students who contact me work on content for Primary Teaching Ideas or plan a small bit of my school work for the following week. I find this structure which resembles my normal working day helps. There is so much talk about using this time to be ‘productive’ and to be honest I think the whole concept is puting pressure on people. Before the pandemic began my social media feed was usually bursting with everyone ‘living their best lives’, on holidays, nights out etc, this is being replaced with the competition of how productive we can be during this time. Of course it is nice to have a bit of extra time to work on things you always wanted to do and I know of people who’ve started the couch to 5k app, who’ve begun learning the guitar or piano through apps and I have taken on a challenge to perform the splits in 30 days (I’m on day 9 and the likelihood of this happening is slim to none) and for anyone who has started something new, great, but it isn’t necessary and just because there is a hype about it please don’t feel pressurised to do it.

Please let me know if you have any other questions regarding the direction I am hoping to take my teaching in over the next month or (probably) two. The learning pack is available to purchase here and it includes the weekly timetable, daily plans, Powerpoints and worksheets to the resource section for €3.99 for anyone interested and I would really appreciate any feedback from anyone who has already purchased it.

Take care,

Sarah