6:20am: CD alarm goes off. Snow Patrol gentle wake me up. So gentle that I start to drift back to slee….
6:25am: Mobile Phone alarm goes off. Blur – Song2. Try to sleep through that!
6:30am: Struggle out of bed and start the day.
6:55am: Ready for school. Time to sit down and check my email.
7:10am: Late leaving the flat.
7:25am: Arrive at school. Talk to Miss Claudia about Valerio.
7:30am: Bell rings. Kids start to come in. Valerio is amongst them. Obviously decided against the 5 weeks off school option. Have to tell off the 2nd grade for going in and out of their classroom. First time this week I don’t have to remind the boys to speak English. Listen to Larizza practise her presentation for computer class.
7:50am: Line up. Erika is absent. Everyone silent when the second bell rings. Success! When it comes to marching, Valerio is a bit worried that he can’t “check his distance” because his right arm is in a sling. I point out that he never “checks his distance” anyway! The marching, from the boys, is poor. But I’ve got a long day ahead of me and I don’t want to start off the day being grumpy. I ignore it. We move from the playground to line up for computing class.
8:00am: Everyone has their flash drives. Everyone has their presentation. We wait for the school to finish emptying off the playground and set off for the computer lab. I leave the students in the capable hands of Professor Mauricio, and head back to my classroom. Check all the homework diaries – all of them signed! Double success! Mark books. Make a note to check how some students did in their maths homework – need to check understanding after having marked their books.
9:00am: Go pick up students from computer room. Monica, Paulina R., and Ana Elena are complaining because there was no internet. This meant that the computers were “useless”. I enquired if they did their presentations. All agreed that they hadn’t except for Shai. Shai had done his. There then followed one of those daft back-and-forth conversations between Shai and the rest of the class. It appeared that Shai had done his presentation, just not presented it. Which is what he meant. Left the students in the classroom to do Spanish, and went to the staff room to use the internet to prepare for this afternoon’s science lesson. Except there was no internet! Started work on lesson planner for May.
10:00am: Started lesson off by talking through last night’s activity on the blogs. Need to make sure that posts actually contain writing. Emphasised the fact that posts need to have more than just links to music. There must be a reason why I should go listen to this song – what does it mean to you! Checked the homework. Two students had done homework…but the wrong homework. Everyone seems to have the hang of Translation, time to move on to Reflection and Lines of Symmetry. Hope everyone went home tonight and checked their nostrils! After explaining what a line of symmetry was we then drew the letters of the alphabet in our maths notebooks, and then added in lines of symmetry. Long conversation about how many letters in the alphabet. This is sixth grade and yet they still had an argument over whether there was 25/26/27 letters in alphabet. Gotta lurve teaching! Went through the rules for tomorrow’s Spelling Bee with Andrea. There are moments she seems supremely cool and I am convinced that she will be totally unstoppable, winning the whole competition outright. Then there are those odd moments when she suddenly goes “wobbly”. Either way, she has worked incredibly hard on her spellings, and whatever the outcome, she is to be applauded for the work she has put in, and the seriousness that she has shown in rising to this challenge.
11:30am: Recess. I actually threw an American football today – badly. It has been ages since I threw an American football and I was totally off in my judgement! Not cool. Andrea spent recess being quizzed by friends on her spellings. The sixth grade boys played touch American football against the fifth grade. This was a nice moment. It is good to see them opening out and being more accepting. As the year has progressed it has been nice to watch the sixth grade come together more as a group. The divide between the boys and girls isn’t so big, and now sixth grade boys playing this fifth graders (and a couple of fourth graders), who’d have thought it!
12:00pm: Science lesson. Discussed solar eclipses and lunar eclipses. There was a five minute window when the internet was back on and I found this site. The next solar eclipse that will be visible in Mexico is on 8th April, 2024. This site has a brilliant video on it that shows the trajectory of the eclipse as it crosses Mexico (click here to view). Some how, we ended up in a discussion about 2012. FACT: the world is NOT going to end in 2012. This is a myth, based on a calendar, of a group of people who had a totally random counting system, and who’s world ended already! I am a mathematician. I am a scientist. And, I am a realist. The world will not end in 2012! [If it does you have my permission to find me and sing the song. You know the song? “I’m right, you’re wrong! That is why I sing this song!“]
1:05pm: Geography lesson. Facts about Egypt. Also had to clarify a whole “do elephants have knees” question. Except I couldn’t. Elephants don’t have knees, they have elbows??? Decided to take the best option available to a teacher: I dunno, find out for yourself! Ended up explaining the best way to oppress a citizenship: keep them working; keep them uneducated; introduce a religion. Worry that I might be creating a group of potential dictators or rebels.
1:50pm: End of days. Some of the boys leave for a football match. Eventually all the students are picked up. I get to go sign my timesheet – which means I get paid!!!
2;30pm: Leave school and am picked up by maria. We go to Soriana to spend my money. We get home. I check my email. Start organising what I am going to cook tonight for our meal.Will probably do: ground beef, onions, peas, all in a special gravy that is based on red wine/garlic/Marmite. Spend some time just chillin’ out.
4:30pm: Start checking the students’ blogs. Start writing my blog. Realise that I haven’t got a picture to put on my blog. Wanted to take a picture of Valerio and Camila but, as the day got busier and busier, didn’t get round to taking it. Oops.
Something New: Camila – One. Valerio – Two. If bad things come in threes…who is next?
Favourite Moment Of The Day (FMOTD): What? We won’t have a blog?
The question got asked: Will I still be writing a blog next (academic) year? I answered in the affirmative. However, I pointed out, I wouldn’t be running KidBlog for the present sixth grade anymore. People seemed upset about this…..
Attendance: One absent
Signed Homework Notebooks: 21 out of 21.
Homework:
- Maths: Reteaching 10-7 Nos: 1-3 Practice 10-7 Nos: 7-10
- Story: Two blog entries (minimum) this week
- Reading Log: Needs to be in tomorrow so we can count the numbers.
- Reading: This is not an option. You should be reading 20 minutes every night.
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