Another week done

Well I wouldn’t really call it a week as I don’t teach on Thursdays as it’s my release day and on Friday we had an INSET day. This is where all the members of staff come into school to have a training session on something. This time it was Literacy and how to encourage poetry writing which was….a little boring.

On Thursday I had my first NQT training session. This was informative about the courses I will take through the year many of it didn’t apply to me as I am not on the LEA (Local Education Authority) pay roll. The school have a private company, so I spent the last half an hour listening to things that didn’t apply to me! It was good though as I got to meet other NQTs, one of whom was in my class at Secondary school!

Other than that the week was uneventful and stress-free. Tomorrow I have to teach swimming for the first time…so wish me luck!

The top of the hill!

 

While on placement we used to call Wednesday ‘The top of the hill’ because from here there is only two days until the weekend; which is the bottom of the hill. YAY!

This week has been good and they are starting to listen to me now! Only two children have been given a playtime detention so it is going well. However the children have lost about 9 minutes of Golden Time (this is when the children are given 20 minutes to do what they would like to do – within reason!) due to not following the class rules. But today they got the right to start gaining Golden Time back for good behaviour; they had two lunchtimes in a row with NO bad feedback! But I did tell them they must continue to have good lunchtimes otherwise the right to earn back Golden Time can be taken away. So my fingers are crossed!

However, I am getting a bit stressed and feeling a bit down in the dumps. When on placement I would just walk into the classroom and take over where the teacher had got to. This meant that the children knew exactly what was expected of them. However, I am the teacher so I need to set the behaviour expectations. This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I am battling on in the hope that it will soon get better.

Another reason for being a bit down is that I am missing uni life more than I though I would. I miss the social bit of it, going out to the pub with a moments notice. I am just too tired to be able to get anywhere or even have a ‘normal’ conversation with anyone! Again this will change as I get more confident with the work/social life balance.

On a better note I feel that most of the children are warming to me and my teaching. I am hearing less of ‘Last year…’ or ‘In year three…’ or ‘Mrs Sullivan…’ which I am liking! Plus one of the parents told me that her child came home singing my praises; now that did cheer me up this morning!

Another thing that is cheering me up is that I have non-contact time all day tomorrow. This is due to the fact that I am an Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) otherwise I would only get half of Thursday. During my non-contact time I will be catching up on paperwork that I have not managed to get done the rest of the week. In the afternoon I will be planning with the other Year 4 teacher for next week. So a nice relaxing but eye-hurting day.

Tomorrow is Thursday so I am seeing the Thursday Gang (such an original name haha) so I will get some contact with people my age, I actually cannot wait!

NB: I am sorry for the grammar mistakes; I am hypocritical teacher as I don’t read over my work…I really must start doing what I preach!

The night before the first full week

 

To say I’m worried is an understatement…There is so much going around my head!

Worry one: That the swimming trip will be a disaster…assembly will over-run which means we will be late and then there is the coach journey. Oh and that at least 10 children will forgot their swimming kit/leave something behind/lose something.

Worry two: That the lessons will go wrong and that the ICT stuff won’t work.

Worry three: I will forget to do something.

Worry four: Am I doing the right thing?

Worry five: Will I survive the week?

These are probably worries that every new teacher (whether straight from uni or at a new school) but this doesn’t help. I know that it will all be fine and that it’s only the first week so things will go wrong but I want to prove to myself that I can do this right from the beginning.

Stress level: 8

Tiredness level: 2

My first days at school.

 

Wednesday: School started for me on Wednesday with a whole school INSET day. This is when teachers can catch up with each other and new teachers (such as myself) have to stand up in front of everyone so that they know who you are!

The first half of the morning was spent looking at what was good about last year and what was going to happen this year; there was also a quick look at some of the school’s policies. The second half of the morning was spent looking at the school’s new online learning centre, known as Fronter. Due to my ‘newness’ I was not on this yet, so I spent the two hours making notes and looking at another teacher’s screen.

When you are new to any school it is important to make notes about any training or information you are told so that when, in a few days or weeks, you are asked a question or cannot remember something you can look at these notes. I have already done this about ten times!

The afternoon was spent making sure that the classroom was ready for the children’s arrival.

Thursday: First day as a teacher!! The children were eager to get into class and see me plus the new classroom. The morning was spent in assembly (all the junior classes had to come into the hall twice and they had all forgotten how to behave when coming into assembly). After that we came up with the class rules.

The class rules are a good way for children to recall what the school rules are as well as creating some for use in the classroom. These are then displayed in the class with all the children signing (decorating a piece of paper with their name on) it to say they agree with it.

In the afternoon the children set their own targets. These were written in either a cloud or a kite and then displayed in the classroom so that they can see if they are achieving their target. After October half-term these targets will be set by me and have more of an educational aim!

Friday: This was the day that the children tried the boundaries. I admit that in the morning they got away with a lot more than they should of but that changed after lunch, more of that later.

The first part of the morning was spent checking the class rules. I had typed these up and changed a few so all the children had to agree with the changes, which thankfully they did.

The second part of the morning was spent doing an activity called ‘Design a village’ which I had created for them to do. They had a price list and a budget of £25,000 for which they had to design a village. Many of the children enjoyed doing this and it was interesting to see how they worked as a group.

The lunchtime arrive, which was nice for me as it was Deli Day. But not so good for the poor dinner lady. The class pushed their luck to the limit. When I found this out I was very cross with them. So spent about 20 minutes telling them off and reminding them of how they should behave in the dinner hall.

After lunch they were meant to finish the ‘Design a village’ task but due to the lunchtime fiasco and having ICT they were unable to do this (it will be finished at some point, when I don’t know!). In the end they only spent 15 minutes in the ICT room as it took them 10 minutes to line up in a straight line without pushing and talking but we eventually got there. I feel like we have turned a corner now though so fingers crossed!

Stress level: 5

Tiredness level: 5

August Bank Holiday Weekend

This is also known as my last weekend of freedom before school starts.

I spent the weekend in Newhaven (about 10 minuets from Brighton) with 8 of my friends.

 

(From left to right: Soph, Becky, Gem, Jack, Chris, Maira, Jordan and Dan)

We rented three rooms in a hotel from hell!! There was damp in ALL three rooms and it was really overpriced. They also treated us really badly. They knew that we were all young people so we assumed that they would realise that we would spend the whole weekend drinking which would mean LOTS of noise. They clearly didn’t as they complained about the noise we made. On the Saturday morning they woke us all up at 6.30AM by banging on our doors and shouting an obscenity at us…we were not happy.

We travelled down on the Friday, boys in one car and girls in another. Needless to say the girls got there first! We then unloaded the cars and went into our rooms. We had a bit of a wander around Newhaven and soon realised there wasn’t much there! We walked back to our accommodation (which was above a pub) to get some food and have some drinks. Then we headed to the boys room to start the drinking games…the night ended rather messily!!!

Saturday we decided we would try to find some other accommodation as we were clearly not wanted at our current one. However we couldn’t so we stayed but decided to spend our cash in the pub by the beach. There we managed to drink the pub dry of….wait for it….blackcurrant cordial haha. This is because we were all playing a game involving cider and black. To quote the bar lady “you have all drunk the amount of blackcurrant I sell in 6 months in one day!”

Sunday we checked out (and not a moment too soon!) and spent the day in Brighton. Walking along the seafront and playing in the arcades. I managed to win two ducks and a mug (not bad when I only spent £1). Then we drove back home and went to a local pub for the final dinner.

Monday – day of rest!!

There is some bad news in this weekend…my camera is no more :( I believe that the damp in the hotel may have caused this. Therefore a new camera will be purchased in the next few days.

School is open tomorrow which means I will be able to sort our bits of paperwork…the amount is endless!

Planning, planning and more planning

So I managed to finish my science plans for Autumn Term…so only another two left to do! However I spent today, well this afternoon as I went shopping this morning, making my table signs. These are used so that all the children know where they are sitting for Numeracy and Literacy (that’s English and maths to non-teachers!) as well as Topic work.

It took me hours to work out the groups and make the signs but they look awesome now. Each group has a different name. Numeracy groups are named after Egyptian Gods, Literacy are named after Roman Gods, reading groups are name after famous authors and Topic groups are different habitats. I chose these as the three Topics this year are Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome and Habitats & the Local Environment.

Below is a picture of one of the signs. They are folded so that they stand freely on the table and inside are the names of the children for that group.

So tomorrow’s job is to start (and finish) the science plans for the spring term…we shall see how that goes!

However, with this stress my normally calm manner has been stretched to the max. Unfortunately this means that take my stress out on the people closest to me. This is not a good thing. My parents, who I am living with due to massive debts and high cost of living, have been very understanding however the bloke (who shall be known as Mr H) is not taking it so well. It doesn’t help that he has been busy at work either but today he cancelled on me (again! Long story which I won’t get into) and that was the last straw. So I broke it off with him. He seemed very unaffected by what I said so I may have taken it all out on him, which got him more annoyed…it ended with us taking a break and waiting to see what happened after he comes back from holiday. While he is away it gives me more time to think about my future, and see if he can be a part of it, and what I want my future to be like. Thankfully I have the start of school soon so I won’t be able to spend too much time thinking about Mr H.

So I am now off to watch Bones (the best TV programme EVER) and Big Brother! Yes I know what you are going to say…why would an intellectual girl like me watch such bad TV…my excuse…it’s the last one ever!

The beginning of what could be a long week

So this is my first time at attemptting to blog....so where do I start???

Lets start with why I am blogging. It is my first year of teaching after graduating from university and I am starting this blog in the hope that it will amuse and entertain you, the reader, as well as help other first year teachers with the ups and downs of having your very own class. Some of my friends have blogs (http://sandhysown.blogspot.com/ and http://theramblingsoftracey.blogspot.com/ to name but a few) and I have been able to see how this is an easier way of keeping people up to date with what is happening in my life.

The school I am working at is roughly 5 minutes from my house and in a nice area of outer London (which means more pay for me!) I will be teaching Year 4, which is my desired year group, with a total of 31 children. This is going to be a slight shock to the system of me since I only had 15 children in my last placement, thats twice as many books to mark (there goes my social life for the next 3 months!) I have a few children with more challenging issues (I will come to this more later) so I can tell that my first few weeks at school are going to be VERY interesting!

I am very nearly prepared...my classroom is ready and waiting for the children to do some beautiful work to put up on the walls. The planning, on the other hand, is not happening. Most of the plans have been done already by the last teacher (which I forgot to save onto my USB stick when school was open, that was not a clever thing!) so I only have to do the science plans for the year...and my motivation is at about zero right now! I have written a rough plan, done when hungover so who knows what it contains! I just need to put it in a format suitable for school and find the resources, the most timec onsuming thing EVER! So I best get on with them.

Here are some photos of my classroom so far...

This is the sign on my classroom door

The tables set out ready of the children