#teaching prac

[miraculouslystudious]

Me: Day four of my first teaching placement. The kids absolutely loved my little fox on my cardigan! It’s now day six, and into my second week, and it’s going really well! The kids are lovely, very full of excitement, and a lot to handle but I’m learning so much. I’m currently making some lesson plans for two classes I’m teaching tomorrow: a maths class on time, and a history lesson on spices and great explorers of history! 

[senzasord]

Told my mentor today that I'm excited about public transportation infrastructure (not the vehicles), and she took it in stride very well, but she did give me a Look

[treesareswinging]

I started off searching the web for activities for my reading lesson tomorrow and ended up on YouTube rediscovering this lovely linguistic song.

[treesareswinging]

CELTA: Halfway Point.

Teaching Practice hours completed: 3

Week 2: also done.

So it's the weekend. Two days off is such a short amount of time to recover from a fairly difficult week and prepare for one that is going to be a lot worse. This week included two lessons, and two assignments. I wasn't particularly happy with either of the lessons I taught, mostly because I had no Idea what I was meant to be teaching in the first one, and I had high expectations for my grammar lesson. After the second lesson I was exhausted and disappointed, and I had to walk out for a little while to have a bit of a cry and self medicate with some chocolate. Though that seems to be a common reaction to teaching grammar, so at least I wasn't alone in the water works.

After that I got to go home and de-stress with a nice grammar assignment (I realise that sounds like a bad thing, but I am a language nerd...).

Yesterday wasn't too bad. The morning was slow and I didn't have to teach. It was the last day that one of our tutors was going to teach us, so to say goodbye, and celebrate making it halfway, we went to the pub down the road for a few drinks with some of the teachers from the school. It was good to talk to teachers who'd done the CELTA and come out the end of it alive and gotten jobs from it. In the last two weeks we've heard a lot of "Ah, CELTA students. So, no sleep for 4 weeks, hey?" from the other teachers, which is kind of daunting (though one did come in and say "Looking at all of you working hard makes me miss the course."). It's good to know that it might be worth all the hard work.

Last night I also managed to go out for a drink with one of my work friends, who I haven't seen in about 2 weeks (has it only been 2 weeks?). It was nice to do something non-CELTA related for a couple of hours, but then I came home and couldn't sleep for thinking about what I need to do for next week.

Next week. Week 3. Hell Week. I'll be teaching on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons and an assignment due on Tuesday. The last two weeks I've been teaching the lower level (Pre-Intermediate) class, but next week I start teaching the upper level (Intermediate) class. It's a bit scary, like starting all over again. I've only just started to get comfortable with my class.

So yeah. That's my week. It's good though. All good.

[doing-it-the-funboy-way]

Sorry about the lack of posts guys… busy on my Teaching Practice so… yeah… I'll try later on to be a little bit more thoughtful… ;)

[wayfarerscout]

Visiting a Scout Group

Personal stuff, not really 'Rover stuff'.

One of the kids remembered me from the Jamboree - as I had come to the troop one night for dinner, had some cake, got mugged by another, long story...maybe another time....

Anyway, the Scout who remembered me - we had a good laugh about the Jambo - the good news. The bad news is that she wants to give me a new Scout name, and now so does everyone else. 

It's not my fault that my other names haven't really stuck!

So next week they're either going to call me 'Chalkie' (because of the teacher bit), 'Cheese' (because the cam, as far as I can tell), or 'Whiskers' (again, I don't get it - I haven't any facial hair currently...).

[whatkatiedidntdonext-blog]

Who would have thought this teaching business would get me into organisational mode so quickly! Bed by 11, up around 6:30, lessons organised and unit coming along nicely I hope.