Wednesday 28/05/08
Prac Block Day Thirteen

Today started with music – we learnt how to play some bass guitar! Pretty fun. I love having the small class, because it means we can go really in deep with teaching stuff and everyone can have a go. There is no way I’d be game enough to give a class of 20 students all guitars and expect to be able to teach them as much as we got through in one lesson.

I then had maths with one of the D classes – not sure which – I always get D1 and D2 mixed up. Most of the students were working on their final tasks – I only had 2 students who were finished early who were playing games. It was their last lesson too, so that will be it for that class! New unit on Tuesday!

I sat with a group of students and tried to encourage good working habits by displaying them, but I’ve found it doesn't work so well. Even though walking around is a lot more effort – it produces much better results in the students’ work.

After this was Maths again with Boat E who worked well. It was their last lesson on the second unit, but about 10 students were already finished their work and were playing games. I sat with some students who were just talking and coaxed a bit more work out of a few of them. One of the girls though, kept making excuses for not doing work and saying she had left it at home or on the computer or on the usb or wherever. It’s disappointing because she was blaming others for her own failures.

The last lesson of the day was Japanese with the beginners. We did cooking. They weren’t as efficient as the second level students were, they were a little bit more boisterous and distracted. I reviewed their hiragana recognition, which was still pretty bad. Trying to think of ways to get the students to remember the characters is so hard! Ahh!!

At the end of the day, I ducked back to Boat E where I had accidentally left my folder in the previous session. When I was there, the music prac teacher asked me if I’d like to teach the piano writing lesson for the music class. Pretty exciting although I don’t know where to start!

I think now I need to write out some lesson plans – I always tend to be writing my lesson plans after I have taught the lessons… it’s a strange strange situation. Another cool thing though is that I get to mark all of the Money Games final tasks! Hooray! Exciting fun! I’m a teacher!!