LIZARD LEARNING

Sorting, classifying and matching are the basic skills required for maths development. These skills are the foundations for kindy and prep curriculum areas with which teachers will access each child to gain their understanding in these foundational mathematical principles.

My daughter started her first year at prep on Monday and with that came so many emotions. These emotions are the same as the first day of the new school year for teachers.

Teaching is all about your presence, and how you can CONNECT with a child. This is one aspect of teaching I love because I see the person I need to be to reach each child in the classroom.

Researching and virtually scanning the classrooms of the globe brings me so much joy, not only because I am offering value to you my audience and followers, but because I love to see the passion teachers bring into their classrooms. Some of these classroom themes are out-of-this-world!!

Symmetry is all around us. It is so common that sometimes we don’t even notice it. But the human brain is a pattern recognising machine. It tries to find patterns in everything. Teaching it how to…

When it comes to teaching units of measurement there are plenty of hands-on opportunities to get students more enthusiastic about maths. It is always easier to teach things with…

Our ‘Fun with Words’ freebie will challenge students and help them learn to think critically and use words complexly. Some of the word puzzles can be a bit tricky, so it could also be a great opportunity for…

Everyone loves rainbows. So what better way to get your kids engaged with learning than to provide an activity that allows them to express their colourful imagination…

Some of us struggle with prepositions even at the best of times, and it gets a thousand times more difficult when you’re first learning what prepositions are. But as with everything…

BLOG   Kicking off stress and the need to be perfect!! You never know where life might take you, but your kids are counting on you and watching what resilience looks like. So the Lizard Learning team and I have put together some tips that might help productively deal...

As we come to the end of Book Week it’s important that we continue to create fun, easy and engaging ways for our kids to read. This is the perfect time to make sure you have strategies in place to make this possible within your classroom. We have put together…

Even with fun pictures, kids can struggle to master the fundamentals of maths. Just when they’ve got a handle on addition, they learn that there’s another type of maths that is similar to addition but also completely different: the dreaded Multiplication. Even as adults we sometimes…

BECAUSE AND SO Compound sentences can be tricky. Even trickier than making sure all parts go together properly, is choosing the correct conjunction to join them. There are so many different types of conjunctions that sometimes it can be hard to decide which one…

Kids can be pretty concrete thinkers so it can be tricky to introduce them to more abstract ideas like the ones that turn up in maths. Activities that incorporate simple visual representations of mathematic concepts are an excellent way to…

What better way is there to increase reading comprehension than to incorporate it into a fun colouring exercise? This fun sheet is filled with simple sentences explaining the colour each animal should be. The colours are…

Fact families are an excellent way to get kids thinking about the way that numbers relate to each other. Addition and subtraction fact families are an extremely important step towards being able to factorise numbers using multiplication and division. Fact families are also a great way to…

These matchstick puzzles are a fun way to reinforce Roman numerals while challenging students’ problem solving skills. To make things easier for more tactile students you can do the exercise with actual matchsticks. This is also an easy way to…

The English language can be so confusing. All of the spelling rules have exceptions. Some old rules, like “i before e except after c” had to be thrown out because there were too many exceptions. Even good rules like…

Learning to add and subtract by tens is an important skill to learn. Not only does it simplify mathematical equations, but our system of measurement (the metric system) is based around tens. Mastering the role of the number ten in maths is an…

The differences between to, two, and too can be difficult to master. Some adults still get them wrong at times. To and too can be especially tricky. It could be a fun class activity to try and come up with easy ways to remember which…

Word Endings! It looks simple right? Let me show you how I make a lower grade activity into one for the 10 and 11 year olds.

We here at Lizard Learning love connecting with teachers on social media. Recently, while exploring the wilderness of Instagram, we discovered this delightful ‘Welcome Back Star Wand’ project. What a stellar way to welcome back students and get them excited about the new term.

It’s a teachers’ nightmare to see all those loose scraps of paper in the tidy box.
I would make my kids glue in every loose sheet in a scrapbook … I would even go and purchase 28 scrapbooks myself so each child would have a ‘finished…

Teachers, especially relief teachers, are looked down on for colouring in with kids. We are seen as lazy and unprepared. We just throw out a colouring in sheet because we couldn’t be bothered to think of something else. Most of us know that this is not the truth, so let’s debunk this annoyingly persistent myth.

My goodness teachers rock out great events. They place SO much work into making sure every detail is perfect. I just need to say my hat goes off to any teacher who is or has prepared for any kind of large scale event such as…

BLOG   Report Card Writing Hey Lizard Learning Tribe! A special note from me to you regarding report card writing. It was never a favourite time of year for me so here are 4 tips to take on board that will see you sailing through this time effortlessly and enjoying...

BLOG   ACTIVITY IDEAS FOR SCHOOL EVENTS Ava is off to big school next year and with this comes invitations to visit the local schools around us. We live on the north side of Brisbane in sunny Queensland where there are so many choices to make, both public and private....

My personal opinion on all this as a teacher, a student who struggled at school, a parent to Ava who is about to embark on the world of homework from ‘the other side of the fence’ and as an author and business owner helping kids across the globe increase their confidence and self-esteem in learning, is this from several perspectives:

BLOG • Uncertainty LOOKING FORWARD AND FACING THE UNKNOWN With another year gone by the wayside, January is the month to look to the year ahead. Resolutions are made and we attempt to plan our path through another twelve months. I say attempt because life isn’t a...

BLOG • 2017 Placemat Resource The story behind this resource started in my second year of teaching when I learned my lesson that I needed an activity for children to do on their first day back at school. I wasn't prepared for this the previous year. My first few hours...

Have you ever sat up all night planning this amazing lesson where you thought the kids are going to love this?!?! Instead you find the lesson, content, or activity you placed your heart, soul and weekend into, was…

It’s so frustrating as teachers to see capable children quit so easily when an activity or task becomes difficult. We all know quitting is never the answer for success in life, yet perseverance is! Ways to help children who…

Whether it’s your first day teaching a new class, or just the start of a new term or week, you can always consciously decide to modify your teaching style to change the behaviour of your students. The one major…

I am ashamed to admit that I was indeed one of “those” teachers, who was definitely aware of kids having food allergies, but I certainly wasn’t too concerned about the topic. I was more bothered by the…