Prac Block – Day 6 - Monday 13/10/08

You feel really satisfied at the end of a day when your lessons which you worked so hard to plan went really well. On Friday, I had music in the morning, Grade 11’s practicing for their performances. Then I had breaks all day until last lesson when I took the Japanese class. Half of the students were missing because of dance oddessy (performance Saturday some how meaning they didn’t have to go to school on Friday (go figure)) but we introduced how to tell the time in minutes anyway. We got through quite a lot of stuff for a 35 min lesson last class on a Friday.

I got home on Friday to find that some quality uni/student life friends had pulled together and gotten me some flowers. It was awesome to know I wasn’t being forgotten while I was on prac, and they were all still praying for me  thanks guys you are legends!

This morning, Sam (who I’m car pooling with) and I were a bit late, but it was alright none the less. I took the grade 8 music tech class and it went surprisingly well! YAY! I had 3 or 4 students almost finish their work, and the rest are generally on task – except for maybe one or two. I’m now going to have to think of more things to plan for next lesson, but it’s awesome to think that they can work well! Yay!

After that, I took the grade 11’s for music  we studied Mack the Knife (after starting the class by singing in Japanese). A few surprises though, they were happy enough to listen to the song, but they got fairly bored with it after a while. Also, (after listening to Louie Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald sing the song) when I put on the Robbie Williams version  there was almost a riot! No one was impressed with Robbie Williams at all. Bit of a shock. We got through the stuff though, and they did do all the work, so that was good.

Sandy gave me really good feedback from the lesson  most major point is that I need to work on my questioning technique and make sure I’m asking specific people, after I’ve asked the question (otherwise the kids will turn off). So that’s pretty good; something to work on for tomorrow.

After watching the grade 11’s do Japanese, I then taught the grade 9s. First lesson I’ve begun with actually writing things down and doing sentence patterns and even though it was quite a lot of material to get through, and it was hard to bring all the students up to date with what we had covered (students who missed out on Friday needed to know minutes information etc), the students worked really well for the lesson. I was impressed. I’m glad I’m giving them a break tomorrow, because there is some strange thing on and so we are doing a culture lesson.

I planned the last two lessons of the day – feeling a lot more on top of what I have to do this week. Glory to God for giving me the peace and focus to do what I need to do! I’ve also taken my flowers to school to put on my desk, because that’s where I currently spend the most time in a day.