Day 122: 2/5/13
Back to the same school again today which means getting up around 5:30! I could try and get a train a little bit later but all the trains seem to be delayed this weather so I don't want to get a later one incase it's too late! Some days a car would be very handy!
Today I had the 1/2 class. They call this v2 in this school- to do with the Vels curriculum they have. They are moving away from that now anyway to an all- Australian Curriculum.
There didn't seem to be any work left but there's a student teacher there and an SNA. The student teacher was teaching first so I tried to figure out what we might do afterwards. Their timetable said spelling so I had a few activities in my head but then an email came from the teacher with a plan on it. She wanted them to put their words into alphabetical order. It was new to them so we spent a while going through it. The only problem was that grade 1 had a whole page of sw and sn words which meant they were looking at te third and fourth letters to figure it out, making it really difficult- one of the hardest set of lists to try to do!
After recess they had Maths for an hour. We practiced some counting first and then she had left sheets with problem solving on them. There were six sums that they had to write down vertically. Everything is so laid back here- six sums in an hour!! A lot of them did get onto extra work, thankfully.
After Maths the student teacher did show and tell with them. There are certain people each day and there is a certain topic to talk about- this week was their favourite sport. They have a microphone and a speaker so they can address the class- it was really good!
After lunch they had to finish an activity about recycling. They were sticking in rubbish to the correct bin. That was easy enough!
After that the whole school had Care Groups. All the children in each class are in a particular house. Children from the same houses got together- so I had a bunch of people in the Murray house from Prep right up to year 6. The year 5,6's had a chant and a song that they prepared at camp and they taught it to the younger ones. Then we were supposed to come up with a group name and make a banner. They had to trace their handprints to put on their banner. We had only about 15 minutes to do this by the time we sorted out who was in what group! We didn't even pick a name! I don't think any other class got it finished either so it wasn't too bad! It was pretty chaotic though, especially as I didn't know what they were supposed to do!
There was an Irish girl in the school today, teaching in the class I was in yesterday. I was chatting to her for a while at lunch and her and her two friends are all on the guaranteed list aswell. They haven't known in advance any day where they are going and this morning they were just told to go to the train station and they had to wait for a call to see which train to get! I'm really lucky so far to have known in advance. They went to Froebel so they have four years in college so I don't know if that's important to be on the guaranteed list? I though I'd get talking to her after school but she was gone before me!
In the hostel this evening they had the free wine and cheese so I went with Alex, the German girl. Kathrin went home actually- she was here the whole time I was here. They have a blind date kind of thing then that is fairly cringe but entertaining enough.
There was a new girl from Estonia in the room this evening and she was living in Ireland for 8 years, in Sligo and in Galway. When I asked how she was she said- 'I'm good, how bout yourself?!'- which noone else says! It's cool- she talks Irish English, with an Estonian accent!