The two days have been rather different from each other, and I'm glad I had today, because after yesterday I felt exhausted and a bit of a failure. I think I was a victim of 'supply teacher syndrome' in middle class yesterday! Having seen how well-behaved they are with their teacher, and beginning the day with them listening attentively, it was a little bit of a shock how quickly things deteriorated when they'd had enough time to get used to me (about 5 minutes!) They did what I asked them to but they were very noisy about it, and kept asking for the rubber or the toilet - ah, the old tricks! As the morning progressed I started to learn ways of dealing with them - not the same ways as I would use at home - and things mostly improved. In fact I took one child outside the door to have a quiet word and made her cry - oops - but she was really well-behaved after that and she had been a pain before!! As a bonus I think the rest of the class were a bit shocked by how mean I could be when it was needed. My best part of the day was doing a 'creative' lesson where I'd decided to read 'The Gruffalo' (a favourite of mine!) and then get them to draw their own monsters. I drew the characters on the board and named them (ooh just realised that was sort-of pre-teaching like we learnt on the TESOL course I did!) and then began to read... and they were engrossed! They were so quiet! I read but also talked about the story to make sure they understood, and acted bits out for them, and they listened the whole time! I was wondering just how long I could spin this story out as it was so peaceful! Anyway, they did some nice drawings afterwards too so I felt at least that lesson was relatively successful!
So today I had to take the top class. I felt on slightly firmer ground with them because I know them from choir, where I've had to be pretty strict to get them to stay on task and sing rather than mess around! I had prepared a 'fill in the gaps' phonics sheet for them for language, then I gave them zillions of + and - sums for maths (they're mainly doing revision). After long break we had half an hour of music and movement, where I did choir-type stuff and action songs, then we had 'social skills'. I'd checked it was ok to use this time to get them to do a picture of themselves and write a couple of sentences to make a book that I'll send to All Saints (my school in the UK). I managed to explain this to them and get them to understand the task (thank you again, TESOL training!) and the results are quite fun!
Anyway, it's getting late so I shall leave you with a photo of my extension task from the phonics lesson - not the most thought-out list of words (sea was too difficult) but I was quite proud of my board work with chalk! (By the way that's a hook as used to get fruit down from a tree, before anyone quibbles with it!!)
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