so far so good...
Survived week 2 here in Cold Ash. It's a lot of work teaching at an "intensive but fun" summer school - I seem to work about 15 hours a day, about 7 of which are in the classroom. Weekends are good though. No classes, nothing much happening, maybe an expedition to a shop or the pub... and catching up on lots of sleep. And blog writing.
The students' blog is going well - I've just worked out that comment moderation was on, which I hadn't noticed, and that is why only my comments have been appearing on the blog - everyone else's were waiting for my approval. So that's done now, and I've turned moderation off. I should make sure I can delete unwanted comments though. I also want to getthe students doing more of the writing and posts in their free time, rather than just in our class time, as there is only one computer room here for 40 classes, so time there is precious. It's funny - last year the booking sheet for the computer room seemed to be mostly empty, but this year it fills up very quickly each week. I've reserved a regular monday morning spot, so that new members of the class (which changes slightly every week) can be introduced to the blog and how to use it. It also gives the kids a chance to write about their action-packed weekend!
Had a few very successful lessons this week - did the australian stories lesson, which mostly went ok, although will go better the second time around. I needed more time in the computer room, as we only got through about half of it, but the crossword worked well, and they seemed to like the stories, despite Yeliz's blog post about it. She never seemed to be particularly impressed with anything anyway!
Also got about 3 hours work out of the poem The Gruffalo, which was lovely. It fitted well with the animal theme for the week (to tie in with the zoo trip) and taught them a lot of animal body parts - good for a high pre-int class that already knew most animal names. We did running dictation, a wordsearch, gap fill, the Gruffalo song, and dictogloss poetry over three different days, until we were all Gruffaloed out. It was so incredibly hot this week, that on the first gruffalo day, after the running dictation, we all went out and sat under a tree and I read them the poem from the beautiful picture book one of the other teachers had brought here. I had a whole class of 10-13 year olds listening to me read them a story like a preschool class, hanging on each word. It was lovely.
And even better - this week I'm swapping classes with Lesley (who did the cert tesol with me 4 years ago, and decided to join me here this year) and that means a whole fresh batch of students, and even though they are one level lower (sort of low pre-int or elementary) I'm sure I can reuse a lot of the stuff I've done with my class these last two weeks. I love recycling!
Here's a photo of this week's project. We didn't win this week - couldn't win two weeks in a row! But, after a hot, tired week when afternoon classes (project time is the hour and a half after the lunch break) were a dead loss, they all pulled together on the friday to produce a lovely zoo map/model. It's on 4 desks in my class, and now I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with it. I just can't destroy it!
Doubt I'll have time for more posts til next weekend, but the students' blog will be going ahead with a whole new bunch of kids. I hope the old ones keep writing occasionally too!
The students' blog is going well - I've just worked out that comment moderation was on, which I hadn't noticed, and that is why only my comments have been appearing on the blog - everyone else's were waiting for my approval. So that's done now, and I've turned moderation off. I should make sure I can delete unwanted comments though. I also want to getthe students doing more of the writing and posts in their free time, rather than just in our class time, as there is only one computer room here for 40 classes, so time there is precious. It's funny - last year the booking sheet for the computer room seemed to be mostly empty, but this year it fills up very quickly each week. I've reserved a regular monday morning spot, so that new members of the class (which changes slightly every week) can be introduced to the blog and how to use it. It also gives the kids a chance to write about their action-packed weekend!
Had a few very successful lessons this week - did the australian stories lesson, which mostly went ok, although will go better the second time around. I needed more time in the computer room, as we only got through about half of it, but the crossword worked well, and they seemed to like the stories, despite Yeliz's blog post about it. She never seemed to be particularly impressed with anything anyway!
Also got about 3 hours work out of the poem The Gruffalo, which was lovely. It fitted well with the animal theme for the week (to tie in with the zoo trip) and taught them a lot of animal body parts - good for a high pre-int class that already knew most animal names. We did running dictation, a wordsearch, gap fill, the Gruffalo song, and dictogloss poetry over three different days, until we were all Gruffaloed out. It was so incredibly hot this week, that on the first gruffalo day, after the running dictation, we all went out and sat under a tree and I read them the poem from the beautiful picture book one of the other teachers had brought here. I had a whole class of 10-13 year olds listening to me read them a story like a preschool class, hanging on each word. It was lovely.
And even better - this week I'm swapping classes with Lesley (who did the cert tesol with me 4 years ago, and decided to join me here this year) and that means a whole fresh batch of students, and even though they are one level lower (sort of low pre-int or elementary) I'm sure I can reuse a lot of the stuff I've done with my class these last two weeks. I love recycling!
Here's a photo of this week's project. We didn't win this week - couldn't win two weeks in a row! But, after a hot, tired week when afternoon classes (project time is the hour and a half after the lunch break) were a dead loss, they all pulled together on the friday to produce a lovely zoo map/model. It's on 4 desks in my class, and now I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with it. I just can't destroy it!
Doubt I'll have time for more posts til next weekend, but the students' blog will be going ahead with a whole new bunch of kids. I hope the old ones keep writing occasionally too!
posted by Kat at 4:43 am
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