Tuesday 21/10/08 – Prac Block Day Eleven

I’m ready to go for the grade nines in about fifteen minutes. I can do this. I’m a teacher.

The professional development day yesterday was really helpful for my grade 8 music tech class. In fact, it seems like there is a lot of really useful and well thought out music technology out there, it’s just fiddly to set up and is still fairly expensive. I did learn though, that to get the grove music encyclopaedia for the school, it’s only 500$ for the year, which is good.


Japanese was good. The kids were a bit drained by the writing, but after hearing the “what is kanji?” and “what is hiragana” comments, I’m glad I made them do it. The Asian kids tend to speed through a bit, but on the whole, they all need to practice their writing of kanji and hiragana.

The lesson dragged a bit in the middle, I think sometimes I’m a bit too efficient for the kids. They liked the using clocks that they had made to practice turning the hands to find the times. They understood mae a lot better than I think Tara anticipated. It was a bit strange, because Tara spent quite a bit of time stressing to me that it would take them ages to understand how to say “ten to balh” and then on Friday she says “some of them wont’ get it, and we will just have to move on.” And then today, it didn’t take them too long at all. Bit strange really.

I think they kids are really wanting to get on with things and use all this time stuff in a real life situation. I think had I been taking the class, I would have moved on long ago. Strange.


Thursday 23/10/08 – Practicum Block Day 13 (and apparently mole day for the chemists?)

Tara thinks I worked the kids a bit too hard on Tuesday and said that they needed a break. I’m a bit like, meh they can take it. ☺ They did get a break, we revised mae on Wednesday and then they did a cultural activity, investigating the lives of these school kids in Japan. The resource for it is really good, but because it wasn’t my activity, I did a bad job of introducing it. Could have done a lot better.

In any case, the kids were happy to be doing something in groups where they got to find out stuff so that was good.

Tuesday’s music lesson – last period, went really well. The students bought in a huge range of stuff, Sara Bellis, John Farnham and Bullet for My Valentine. It was interesting to see the different reactions to the music. The boys thought that the Sara B chick was boring and the girls commented that screaming is not a talent after listening to Bullet for my Valentine.

Good times.

On Wednesday, I taught the grade 8 kids how to melody write and they took it quite well. They skimmed through the stuff thtey knew, were quiet when writing down the rules of melody writing and only one kid didn’t actually do the group task at the end. Yay! Also, we practiced our Platitude rhythms which was good. They really like to make music.

For a music tech class, I think half of them are more into the making than the tech part and half of them are wondering when the tech stuff gets to happen again. Also, some of them also do music foundation or music extension (lucky ducks!) so some of what we are doing is revision. Oh well!

In Wednesdays grade 11 music class, I went through the filing cabinet for a song. I’ve decided that if they want to learn to conduct, they might as well learn something to conduct. ☺ Yay! We are going to sing “My Guy” from Sister Act. Hooray! I really like that class, even if it is because they are enthusiastic about learning.

Today, I’ve planned lessons for most of next week, and got the internet working on my computer (yay!) I’ve got my music tech class in 20 mins and then I’m off to ice skating with Tara and the students. I like having things planned. It’s a good feeling.


Friday 24/10/08 Prac Block Day 14

Music Technology yesterday went pretty well. The students actually get the melody writing process, but they forget bits of it. Oh well. I also actually went ice skating this week. The kids that go are pretty good, and also pretty decent. There was a whole heap of boys who decided I was American or Canadian and subsequently followed me around wanting to know the maple syrup content of Canada. Grade 8’s probably.

Today, I took the music lesson this morning – students were just doing performance practice. Nothing too stressful. I got to hear some of them and they sound really good. There are a few boys who just want to bludge, one of them is talented enough to, but it didn’t take much to shake them out of it and get them practising.

Then I have two break lessons to plan stuff. I typed up a criteria sheet for the grade 8 music tech kids and then organised activity sheets for Japanese. I’ll probably work on another one for Tuesday soon, but I’m actually teaching after lunch, so maybe not. We will see.

I can’t believe I’m half way through already. It’s the end of week three and only 3 weeks (and one day) to go. Wow.


Wednesday 29-10-08 Prac Block Day 17… no wait… make that 18. :D

That’s right – I just called the prac office and they said that the day that I did professional development counts as a day that I was on prac. Hooray! No extra make up day for me. :D unbelievably happy. Only 2 weeks and 2 days to go. :D