Geeks of the World Unite!

I've given in to my geek urges.

I've bought MS FrontPage, which is software to write HTML and make webpages. So, at some point, when I have some spare time (ROFL!) I will be creating a Brooms of Destruction webpage. I've started it, but it'll take a bit of time to get it sorted. If there's anything you think should go on it, let me know via email or by comments box.

Also, my blogroll is working again, so the updated blogs jump to the top. :o)

Ok, geekiness can be suppressed again.

I do like to be beside the Seaside!

Well, I'm back in Scarborough now. After 5 weeks in Hull, apart from half term, I've finished that placement. I PASSED IT! Woo! I got a 'satisfactory', which is just fine by me. (The scale is 'Very Good', 'Good', 'Satisfactory', 'Fail'). My tutor said I should be able to get it up to a 'Good' on my next placement.

I'm gonna miss the kids there, I think. Some of those kids have it sooo tough. I'm guessing that most of the people who are reading this took it for granted when they were at school that they would go wearing an approximately clean uniform, that they'd get some tea/dinner when they got home, etc. Some of the kids I was working with don't have that luxury. I was in the nursery, meaning the kids weren't in uniform. Some of them had maybe 2-3 outfits and regularly came in with several days work of grime/food/muck down the front. They were nearly all wonderful kids though and a joy to deal with, generally.


Half term was fun, although it did involve 3 return trips to York, as I went for both weekends and also for Valentine's, as we didn't have lectures Wednesday/Thursday. (We did Mon/Tue/Fri!). Michael went down with 'flu on the Wednesday though, so that wasn't great. I've managed to avoid getting it myself though, which is good.

This week coming, I have Monday as a 'Study Day', which is nice. Other than that, I'm back in lectures for the next 4 weeks, until Easter.


Right, ought to get on with stuff...
God bless!

Where am I now?

Taking time out from writing lesson plans and evaluations to update you on what's been happening in the past month or so!

Christmas day we went to church in the morning, Nan & Uncle Brian came to ours for lunch and then we all went over to Auntie Sue's for tea and silly games.

Over New Year, Michael & I went up to the Lake District for a few days, visiting Bowness, Windermere & Grasmere. New Year's Eve went joined Michael's parents & some of their friends from Uni, at a hostel (apparently completely in the middle of nowhere!) and then spent a reasonable amount of New Year's Day walking/climbing up to Red Tarn (part way up Helvellyn) ... in the hail, which was just lovely.
January 2nd, we explored Grasmere, visiting Dove Cottage which was the home of William Wordsworth and his family for a significant amount of his life. We also found the 'Jumble Room', which was just wonderful, so if you're ever in Grasmere, do check it out.
I then went home and spent a couple of lovely days attempting to work.

Since then, I've come back to Scarborough, written an essay, moved to Hull, written countless session plans (ok, about 13), taught those sessions, ... etc.

Anyway, I'm being picked up in half an hour to go back to Hull, so I'd better get myself packed, etc.
(I'll be out of contact online for 2 weeks... will check emails when I can).

From Hull...

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year & all that jazz!

Sorry for the break in transmission. I will update on Christmas & New Year escapades at some point, but for the time being... I'm in Hull for the time being on teaching placement, and will have very limited computer time. Indeed, I'm writing this from the class computer...
I got my Child Study assignment (4,000 words on the value and purpose of observing children in class) handed in on time, although it did involve working until 4:30am the night before it was due in (which was last Friday). I then moved temporarily to Hull on Sunday and started placement on Monday. ie. I'm knackered!

Anyhoo, I'd better go. :o)

God bless!

Broken Links Link

Apologies - My BlogRoll has developed a glitch in the past few days, which means that the ** (updated) marks are not appearing.
I've changed it, so that the updated blogs move to the top of the list, but it's not working at the moment. I don't have done all I can, but it seems to be an issue with BlogRoll itself.
(Blogs that do not have Weblogs enabled - Xanga, MySpace & LiveJournal - are now listed separately further down).

God bless!


EDIT:
The mystery seems to have been solved here. The culprit? Splogging!

Coast to Carols

This last week has been fairly busy as these things go...

Wednesday, my alarm went off at 5:45am, as I was being picked up to go visit my new school (46 miles away) at 6:30! Not nice. We'd left about 2 hours to do a journey that AA Route Planner said would take 1hr15. Should've been fine, right? Wrong. A combination of unfamiliar roads, the dark and me thinking that 'Take the 3rd exit at the roundabout' means 'Turn left', meant that we were about 20 mins late. Didn't seem to be too much of a problem in the end though. :o)
I met my new class. I'm in the Nursery class ["Foundation 1"], meaning 3 & 4 year olds, which should be quite fun. The kids are lively and I can see it being a definite enlightening experience. Generally, I'm quite looking forward to it, though. :o)


Since then, I've been catching up on sleep (a little bit), cleaning some of the house for the end of term, packing my life into containers for the 13th consecutive end-of-term, and lugging it on and off of trains.
I came home yesterday with a medium-size trolley case, holdall, laptop and backpack - I somehow managed to arrange things so that I had a spare hand for my ticket! Took the train to York, had an extended lunch-break there with Michael, and then caught a train to Stevenage where M&D picked me up (which was nice of them!).

Today has been the Christingle service this morning and Carol service tonight. For those of you who don't know what a Christingle is, it looks like this:

and all the bits represent different things...
The Orange is the World, the Red ribbon is Jesus' blood and the candle is the 'Light of the World'. The rest depends on who you ask... the four points are the 4 seasons or the 4 compass points and the sweets/raisins represent the Fruits of the Spirit or God's gifts to us (harvest). This site gives a bit more about the history. So in my church, all the children go out and make one and then they process back in with them lit later in the service... yes, we do indeed have 20-30 children stand close together holding lit candles! Nerve-wracking, but a really beautiful sight nevertheless.

Really need to go present shopping this week, as I've bought half a present so far, out of the 8 or so I have to buy. Hmm.

Oh well, nothing much else to say, so I think I'll go back to the jigsaw that I've been working on for about 2 years and see if I can get any more done. :o)

/out/

Update on my world...

Just to say I passed my essay with 61%

And I have somewhere confirmed to live when I'm on placement next term in Hull.

Yay!

Feeling Out of Placement

Is it really almost a month since I last posted?! Wow, it seems less than that.

Since then, I have taught 35-ish lessons (planned & evaluated), written 3 weekly evaluations... oh, this is boring. Basically, I now have a file that is nearly 2 inches thick, full of paper.
And I am tired!

I finished placement last Thursday, and had a tutorial with my supervisor, before catching a train to York to see Michael. Friday night, we cooked Corned Beef Hash, which was delicious and I'm not sure I've had since I was about 8. *yum!*
Saturday, we went to see 'Pipe Dreams' by the Riding Lights Theatre Company. They are a Christian group and the play/performance was all about the privatisation of water and some of the underhand things that different companies around the world are doing with regard to water supplies. It was very good and enjoyable.
Then we went to Evensong at York Minster and dinner at Gert & Henry's. So all in all, a lovely day.

The weekend before, Chris came up to North Yorkshire to visit us, which was very nice indeed. Friday night he stayed with Michael and then on Saturday, I joined them in the morning and we spent the day attempting to Christmas shop in York. Now, I didn't know until I was on the train there, but it was St.Nick's market that weekend, which basically meant, you could not move in the main street faster than a casual crawl. It was sooo busy! Managed to get most of what we were looking for, and I also found a wonderful shop that sells teaching resources ("I am not a teaching geek, I am not a teaching geek,...") but I think it was magic because when I tried to find it again, I couldn't. :o(
Saturday night, C & M came back to mine where I cooked steak & chips for them and a good eating & singing time was had by all.
Sunday was church (where C & M are now famous for being loud, good singers!) followed by a walk down to the beach, homecooked Thai Green curry and then they headed into town and then back to York/Reading, while I did more planning.
All in all, a good weekend!

Oh, I've found out where my next placement is...
Newington Primary, in Hull! I'm going to have to move there, as it's ~45 miles and it's impossible to get there by public transport for 8:30am from here. The OfStEd report (Oct 2006)describes it as "This average-sized primary school serves an area of social deprivation in Hull. A high proportion of pupils leave or enter the school part way through their education. The percentage of pupils claiming free school meals is much higher than average. When children enter the Nursery, their skills level is well below that usually seen. There is a higher proportion of pupils with learning difficulties and/or disabilities than in most schools.
Most pupils come from White British backgrounds and the school caters for a small number of traveller children. A few pupils of Eastern European heritage are at an early stage of learning English as an additional language. The school has experienced some staffing turbulence in recent years. At the time of the inspection, an acting headteacher and acting deputy headteacher were in post."
I'm in the Foundation Stage (Nursery & Reception). Should be fun. :o)

Anyway, less than 2 weeks until I go home for Christmas. Can't wait! However, for now I have plenty to do, so I'd better go.

God bless! xxx

An afternoon in the life of a Reception class teacher

The following all happened this afternoon, during a cut 'n' stick activity:

1. A child had lost their worksheet
2. Several children decided to see what Pritt sticks smell like
3. A number of children spontaneously started singing 'Baa Baa, Black Sheep'
4. A child had 2 worksheets (see no.1)
5. A child sneezed (big time!) and then just dropped the tissue open on the table
6. A child was talking animatedly while holding scissors
7. and finally, a child was eating the leftover paper.

Now, just to clarify, these are not things that are unique to this school/class, nor are they common occurrences here. However, today there must have been something in the water...!

Right, off to write more plans/evaluations/observations...

Submissive Play

Ok, well, since I last posted I have slept (a bit), eaten (a reasonable amount), gone to lectures (quite a lot) and written an essay (every other available minute!).

The essay was on the status and value of play in education. A topic which, until about 2 weeks ago, I knew precious little about. However, I had to write 4,000 words on it, so I needed to find out something. So I read. A lot! (& please can someone thank Denise for lending me all those books - they were a God-send... probably literally!). And stuck in many post-its in a teetering pile of books. And wrote, and quoted, and paraphrased, and summarised. And FINISHED!!
Thus, on Friday, I submitted my first ever essay, which stood at 4,353 words by the end (we could be 10% either way).

And yes, I did say my first ever essay - even my final project was only ~4,800! I did a BSc, which seems to put me very much in the minority on this course. I know of a couple of others who did Business, Environmental Sciences or Food Sciences. However, in general, most people seem to have English or Early Childhood Studies (or similar) degrees. Hence why we are being set 4,000 word essays (marked at Masters level), but being taught how to multiply fractions. Oh well.

Anyway, Michael's been down this weekend, but we've spent most of the time writing lesson plans & sorting out folders of observation proformas, as we're both on placement this week. I'm in school for the next 4 weeks, and he's in this week & then one day a week until Christmas.
I'm a little nervous about going on placement, as it means I have to actually teach. Yes, I know, I know, that is what I'm here for... but I'm still rather nervous about being in front of 26 kids and teaching them something they've never done before. Well, there's something quite exciting about that too, but definitely scary! This week, we're teaching them about nocturnal animals, reinforcing the concepts of '1 more' and '1 less' and on Wednesday, I'm introducing '/r/' (i.e. the sound made by 'r', as in 'rabbit').

So, I'd better go and hunt for some pictures of nocturnal animals and have a think about how to explain 'nocturnal' to 3 & 4 year olds! Hope all is well in the rest of the world.

God bless!