An evening off

Finding the time to write my blog everyday is more effortful than I thought. What better than tonight though, when I have decided to do absolutely nothing except enjoy my ma’s until this evening MIA delicious food and watch Desperate Housewives. Yes indeed, my parents are back from India after my two lonely months of frequenting the soul destroying eateries that are Macs, KFC, Subway or Lahores (a greasy Bangladeshi spoons next door to work) and purchasing Tesco or M&S ready meals (I have put on a stone!). They arrived yesterday evening after their flight was delayed on Air India (quel surprise) and I am truly very happy to have them back.

It's been a good few days of teaching. I can do no wrong with my year 11s these days (and vice versa!); they are motivated and enthusiastic and are constantly telling me how much they enjoy their maths lessons! I announced the Gorsefield lists (intervention scheme whereby we take selected pupils on a 48 hour residential and do maths) in today’s lesson, and there were looks of utter disappointment on the pupils who haven’t been picked. Need I say more? On Monday my bottom set year 10s (the bane of my existence) got on well with their 8 times table dot-to-dot (a rhinoceros) and after they had spent a lesson doing that and shading in a 8 times table number picture (a bat) (which was only meant to be a 10 minute starter) they happily learnt about linear algebra. My successes were that, 1) I only had to send one pupil out, admittedly 7 minutes after the start of lesson but who’s counting and 2) I got some evidence for WA3 with an EBD (emotional and behavioural difficulties) pupil. Thanks to a discussion with Amanda I finally established my two case studies and she helped me realise that working with an EBD pupil would present an opportunity to develop some useful strategies.



The colourful handout I produced for my EAL pupil went down a treat (although when I asked for her feedback she couldn’t say much as she finds it hard to express herself in English (the irony)). Today I induced a bit of ‘soft’ evidence, as Maggie puts it, with my visual aids to teach her rotational symmetry. Ooooh, isn’t WA3 coming along nicely!

Feels good to have a relaxing evening after, 1) the stressful production of WA3 resources on Sunday, 2) the manic tidying job I was forced to do prior to parents arrival on Monday and 3) Yoga on Tuesday which is quite frankly exhausting when you have to do moves like the downward dog (or the downward facing b-yatch as Taruna puts it). Tomorrow evening is the TF Speakers event and Hustings, but I’m mainly interested in the fact that four of my pupils will be attending the ceremony to collect prizes for their winning entries in the Young Voices Competition. How proud of them am I!