Kicks!

Today I introduced two new games to my class. One of them was the following game, called 'Add it', it proved to be a hit, and we played four 3-minute rounds (one minute was far too quick!).

The Play:

1. The teacher announces any number and an addend. For example: 7 and 4.
   
2. The students write and add the two numbers and continue to add the same addend to the new sum until the teacher calls stop at the end of one minute.
   
3. Class stands and a volunteer begins reading problems and answers aloud, slowly.
   
4. As students no longer have the answers, they are seated.
   
5. The student left standing is the winner.
   

I played this game with my class. I got a kick out of winning. Who let me be a teacher?? What kind of teacher loves to beat their kids at games? Probably most teachers, and to be fair to myself, I only made it known to the kids 25% of the time...that makes me a better teacher, right?? :)

One more school day til the holidays. Tomorrow we are having a movie & fun day! This day also includes giving the classroom a really good sort/clean...not that I've told the kids that yet. Lure them in with the promise of movies and fun, and when they arrive, tell them that we're all going to be cleaning the classroom first. Many hands make light work though, so it'll save me having to do it during the holidays. I'll put music on while they clean, it'll be 'fun' cleaning...*cough*...

Anyway, I'm off to the scary showers. If I ever wanted to make a scary movie, I could use the showers for at least one scene. There are only 3 showers in there, but they're in a row, and in a building that noone else is ever in...or so it seems..trust me, they're kinda creepy (I'll have to post a photo sometime). In fact, I could use a lot of my accommodation for scary movie scenes, and don't even get me started on the primary campus where my classroom is! Let's just say I wouldn't want to be there alone at night (I have been, a couple of times, but never for too long).

Have a great last day of the week!

One week in and still alive!

I have officially survived my first week (and a bit) of teaching! WOOHOO!
I love my class, they are beautiful (not that they would appreciate me telling anyone that). I have 18 kids, some are quiet, some are loud, and they are all pretty hilarious :)
The staff at my school are really lovely. They are all really helpful and more than willing to listen to me ask questions about everything from bell times to program writing.
Some highlights of the week:

•  Introducing my class to our class mascot, a very cute stuffed wombat. The kids got to name him, and 'Speedy' is very loved by my kids, despite the initial reaction from a few of the kids about them being 'too old for stuffed toys'. Speedy has won them over with his good looks and charm :)
• Creating 'WomBucks', our own class currency. The kids get WomBucks for good behaviour and can use them to 'buy' things from the prize box. So far, it's working pretty well as a management strategy.
• Witnessing a kids version of 'Days of Our Lives', in my very own classroom! 2 of the girls were fighting over a boy, gold!
• Getting locked out of my accommodation on my first night here and having to sleep in a spare room, and then not being able to have a shower/brush my teeth/etc for work the next day cause all my toiletries were locked in my bedroom!
• Waking up 2 nights in a row to hear a rustling in a shopping back on my shelves. Then, getting home from being away for the weekend to find mouse poo all over my desk, shelves and bed...including my pillow! (that was probably my least favourite highlight).

My accommodation reminds me a lot of a motel, but it does the job. I have my own room, with a built-in wardrobe, a bookcase, a bed and a desk! The way it was described to me, I was expecting something like a prison cell. and I thought it was just going to be a bed in a room, so everything else is a bonus!!
I let the office admin know about the mouse, and she said that they probably wouldn't be able to do anything about it until the holidays. I was fine with that! If they can deal with it, it means I don't have to be the one to set the trap or leave ratsac around...both 'solutions' make me sad, so it's better if I just come back and the mouse has 'gone to live on a farm'.
My kids have chosen the topic of 'mythical creatures' to work on for the rest of the term, so I should go and get some stuff organised for tomorrow. This week is the last week of term, then I have 3 weeks of holidays! Can't wait!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend!

Packing Extravaganza!

The day of departure is upon us! (well, the day before the day of departure, and it's upon me, not so much you guys)...

Tomorrow morning, I shall be rising at 4:00am. Man, just thinking about it makes me tired! I want to be at school by 7:00am, and taking into account that it's a 1.5 hour drive, and that fog likes to hang around the area that I need to drive through, I shall be leaving home around 5:00am, to give myself ample time to get there.
It's lucky that this weekend is a long weekend, and that I've been able to sleep in for 3 days in a row, cause if history is anything to go on, I won't be sleeping much tonight! I have this annoying 'knowing I have to get up early' side effect which makes me so worried about sleeping in, that I wake up numerous times to check the clock. It also takes me ages to get to sleep, I reckon my body is like 'I know you need to get to sleep, but I'm the boss 'round these parts, and I ain't gonna let ya! Take that ya filthy varmint!'. Man, my body can be mean! Anyway, you get my drift.

I have packed up a tonne of stuff, and half of it has been packed into my car. Currently, I have a clothes horse full of washing that I'm trying to get dry, and that's the last of the clothes. I have taken way too many clothes with me, I already know, but I guess not knowing when I'll next be back in Brisbane means that I do need to take enough to cover me for a few weeks (that was an accidental pun, but I'm impressed with it!) :)

Guess what I did yesterday? No guesses? Ok, I'll tell you...I bought an iron! This is my first iron purchase, and I spent a very long time staring at them blankly in BigW, having no idea what a 'good' iron was, and how much 'constant steam' was necessary. I settled for a Philips cause it said something on the box about it being 'the world's most trusted brand' and it's statements like that that make me buy things. I mean, the world trusts it, that's a pretty big group of people. Plus, it was on special, which is another reason behind why I buy things.

This purchase means that I have gone my whole adult life without ironing anything, true story. Actually, not entirely true. I haven't ironed anything since I've been in Brisbane (2 and a bit years so far), but prior to that I just borrowed my house mate's iron, or ironed a tonne of stuff at mum and dad's. I figured though, since I have a proper job now, I should probably care a bit more. I do despise ironing though, so I will continue to avoid it as much as I can...So the saying goes: you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Am I right? I know I'm not the only person out there who rarely irons.

Anyway, I'd better get back to BigW, there's a few things I forgot to get yesterday which I need before tomorrow.

Hope you're all enjoying the Queen's Birthday! I might get Subway for lunch, in her honour...I'm sure she eats a lot of Subway...

Pre-Job Day!

This morning, I arose at 5:15am. Now, I hear that to people with small children, this is practically considered a sleep-in. However, as I do not have any small children, or any children at all for that matter, anytime before 6-6:30am does not exist in my mind. On weekends, anytime before 9am doesn't exist.

I was off to meet my new class! I had the intention of leaving home at 6:30am. I even wrote '4th June - School visit - leave home @ 6:30am' on my whiteboard, factoring in the likelihood of being so delusional when my alarm went off, that I would probably just wander round in circles for a while without any instructions. All intention was lost, and I didn't leave home til 6:50! Even with the message, I was up too early to function properly. I left in a rush and forgot to take a notebook (that was written on my whiteboard too).

I had another left-in-a-rush moment a couple of months ago; I was doing a volunteer day at a school on the north-side, and I had literally gone almost half the day with my top on inside out, and back to front. I had been to morning tea in the staff room, met the school principal, met about half a dozen other staff members, and no one had said anything. Either they were just pretending not to notice, or my open-flowy-cardigan-thing, that I was wearing over aforementioned top, hid enough of it, so that no one really did notice. I like to think the latter is what happened. Upon realising my wardrobe malfunction, I quickly excused myself to the toilets, all was fixed, and I returned to the PE lesson, as if nothing had happened.

While I was in class today, I had a repeat moment, and I thought I had put my dress on inside out. I hadn't, and the more I thought about it, the more I realised I would have definitely noticed, before I had gotten to school, if I had. I breathed a sigh of relief!

The hour and a half drive to my school was filled with Taylor Swift sing-a-longs, and fog. That's right. Fog. And lots of it! About 40 minutes of the drive consisted of fog, in varying degrees of vision obscurity. I kept thinking of that really bad 'thriller' about a killer fog, in the aptly named movie 'The Fog'. It has Selma Blair in it, and I could just remember the scene where she's in her little radio broadcasting studio, working away, and she's talking with a friend on the phone, and while she's talking to him, the fog kills him, then it surrounds her studio! It's a movie, with an immense and complex plot, and I highly recommend it. It was actually on tv when I was last in Tamworth, and I watched it with my mum, and we pulled it apart, talking about how lame and predictable it was. I had actually hired it on dvd before too, I am ashamed to admit!

Anyway, after driving through the non-killer, but very thick fog, I got to school at 8:10, so I had 20 minutes to spare, which was perfect!

I spent the day with my new class, got to know them a bit and did a bit of work with them. I also met their teacher, who is lovely! She was really helpful, and helped me feel a bit more relaxed about the job. I met some of the other lower-primary staff too, all really lovely too! The head of primary is wonderful! I think I am really going to enjoy working with her, she's pretty hilarious! Really approachable too.

My class is small, just 17 kids, but very varied in terms of abilities. I am looking forward to the challenge of trying to help some of the kids catch up to 'grade level', while also encouraging other students to push further. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm excited! The kids are lovely, and I think we're going to have a lot of fun while I'm with them :)

Anyway, 8 days til I officially start! Monday is a public holiday, so I start on the Tuesday, and the kids have sport all day on Friday! I think a 3-day week will be a good way to ease in a bit to this whole 'teaching' gig :)

Watch this space...

Blue about my jeans

My favourite jeans finally wore through, on my left knee. It must be my favoured knee, as the right knee has a ways to go before it wears through.
In 2003, another pair of jeans I had wore through on both knees within the space of 2 or 3 wears. Back then I must have just fallen forwards and taken the full impact of the fall on my knees. I was so hardcore back then.
I actually cut the legs off those 2003 jeans, and wore them as shorts. After I wore them for about a year, I remembered that it wasn't 1987, and I gave them to Vinnies.
I am genuinely sad about my 2012 jeans. I reckon I've had them for about 4 or 5 years. They are well and truly broken in, and they are so super comfy! We've been through so much together. They were there when I graduated...not that I wore them to my graduation (though I would've if I could've!) but they were hangin' out at my house, awaiting my return from graduation. They moved to Brisbane with me, I probably did wear them on the drive up. They've lived in 7 different houses with me. They were there when I got my job at Life Ed, they've been with my on a few relief teaching days, and they were hanging in my wardrobe when I got the call about my upcoming teaching contract. They have been faithful to the end *sniff*
Ok, so I'm not totally devastated.
I probably won't get rid of them just yet though. I will have to find a replacement pair before they move on. As much as I dislike clothes shopping, jeans are my favourite piece of clothing, so it might* be fun to get a new pair.
Over and out.


*It might be, but it probably won't be. Fitting rooms were never designed to make you feel good about clothes shopping.