Tuesday

Today went well. I had two classes: year 7 poetry before recess and Romeo and Juliet with year nine after recess. It was my third lesson with year seven, and the one lesson of the week they have with a different teacher. We got through more work than I expected, and I made a point of moving around the class, getting to know the students. Some of my instructions were a bit messy and some of the students were confused, but all in all, the lesson went well. Learnt about not putting the OHP to close to the board, as some students couldn’t see.

After recess I had my first class with year nine. I planned to have them write a condensed form of the play, discuss it and then have a quiz. After some initial complaints that they had done it all before, they worked together really well, apart from one student, who wouldn’t stop talking. After they had finished the summary I got them to read out what they had done. I wasn’t sure if they were bored or not as some students were critiquing other work, but many seemed a bit disengaged, but perhaps that is just my lack of self-confidence.

It took longer than I expected to go through this and I wanted to change tack because the activity had clearly run its course. There were only five minutes to go however, and I told them they could pack up and wait for the bell, but realised I couldn’t really leave them just sitting there. It seemed like a perfectly fine thing for teachers to do when I was at school, but now felt awkward. I went over and asked my supervising teacher, Fred, what I should do about it (Ihave a different supervisor for each class) and he suggested going through some of the questions from the quiz before the bell.

I felt a bit silly for ending the lesson so scruffily, but he said it was okay and that he liked the way I had used the group time to wander around the class.

In the afternoon we had sport. I went to basketball and was coerced into playing a game I haven’t in to many years to mention. It was great fun. Didn’t embarrass myself and saw a couple of the more troublesome boys in their element. Haven’t run so hard in forever and I felt awesome afterwards.