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