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