Farewell

I'm not sure I have ever felt so Christmassy in my life.

(Well, it probably ties with the time we sang Rudolf-the-red-nosed Reindeer in Chapel Methodist with Lee doing the "like a lolipop" bit when I was 12).

But this Christmassy feeling has got a lot less to do with it being the final Christmas concert of a run of 16 and knowing that Miss Ellis will put away the carols until next August, and more to do with all the other non-singing related parts of Christmas.

"Teaching" has gradually disintegrated into "careful colouring" and watching Disney. One lesson I was supervising worksheets - teachers are off sick all over the place and school has become chaos, last minute activity planning means giving the photocopier a good workout.

One sheet asked them to find musical instruments in a word search and had pictures of the instruments at the bottom to give them clues. One child presented me with his sheet "Finished, Miss!". I had a quick scan, and pointed to the picture of the guitar.
"What's that, Derek?"
"A guitar, Miss."
"Well, do you think you should perhaps find that word as well?" I said, eyeing the letters GUITAR in the middle of the page with no pencil line around them.
"I have miss," said Derek,"there". He switfly points to the letters above where I am looking: GTAAA. How can you argue with such logic?


School is now out. It is time to look back at all my blogs and reflect on how far I've come. But not tonight. Tonight it is time to reflect on red or white. Or beer.

Spatulas, Bows and Ribbons

This weekend was the school Christmas Fayre.

I was allocated to the "Present-Wrapping-Room" with a big sign on the door which said "NO PARENTS". There was an impressive array of bottles of bubble bath, lip gloss, make-up bags, leather credit card holders, air fresheners, and other gifty items spread out around the room. In the centre were 4 tables piled high with ribbons and wrapping paper and sellotape and bows and labels, and pens and pencils for writing labels.

The idea was for children to come in (leaving mum or dad outside with their mulled wine), choose a present, hand over a sweaty pound coin to teacher (mwhahaha - that's me now! I'm teacher!), and then wrap up aforementioned present (probably with help from teacher).

I was quite looking forward to it (I spoke to Mum before hand and it sent her spinning off into delighted reminiscences; I heard all about how my cousin Mark had bought her a sachet of shampoo and wrapped it up all by himself and it was just the cutest thing when little ponters give you something they've chosen all by themselves! This forced me to point out to her that however delightful it might be for Mum, for a student teacher who has one day off a week and has to spend it up to the eyeballs in sellotape with children the idea has considerably less charm).

Anyway, Present-Wrapping-Room. The first child enters clutching her sweaty pound, and announces she's looking for a present for Dad. We look at all the nice presents on the first table. She ponders the shampoo, the air fresheners . . . nope. Not right for Dad. So we move onto the next table, toiletry bag? C.D. holder? . . . nope, not for Daddy. . . Moving on to the last table . . . leather credit card holder? cuddly toy? No. None of them are right. I'm a bit puzzled, but before I have time to stop her, she has moved onto the wrapping up table.
"This is perfect! Dad'll love this!"
She is holding one of Year 6's chewed yellow and black pencils, and thrusting her pound at me.

I stand there a bit stunned.
Help.
I've just sold a small child one of the school's pencils - I'm not sure that's even allowed, and she's definitely been ripped off.
But she's so happy with the pencil!

I had to think quick, so I grabbed the first present I see. This happens to be (*****) = I'm still not sure what it was. It was square and green and had a loose top bit and hideous leaf shaped patterns on it.
"How about you give this to Daddy, AS WELL as the pencil?"

So on Christmas day, someone, somewhere, will be presented with a present which rattles ominously when moved, and open it to find a hideous square green leaf thing, housing a chewed Year 6 pencil. "Thank you SO much, Isobel, it's just what I've always wanted".


P.S. Who is Brian Blessed?

The Beagle III

This week I taught a lesson of ICT (Information Communication Technology), i.e. computers.
The national curriculum expects children to learn how to give machines instructions in order to "make things happen".

The school has two little robots which you can programme to move around the floor, so I took them home and taught them how to crash into the pepper pot on our kitchen lino. (And I taught them how to sing Frere Jacque. My Nanna would be proud).

The next day, whilst the children were in assembly, I re-created the surface of Mars (a row of garish aliens with an unusual number of legs; "space rocks" (shiny paper) and blue Martian bricks) and laboriously programmed one of the little robots to travel in and out of the various obstacles. This is trickier than it needs to be, because the programme is cumulative, so each time you plug in a new instruction you have to carry the wretched thing back to the beginning so it can grate through the whole programme again. (The point of this was to demonstrate to the children firstly, how the robot can move. Secondly, I could then re-run the programme after having moved an obstacle into the path of the robot, so we could discuss whether the robot was alive, and whether it could see. After that, the children could have a go at programming some very simple instructions themselves, like forward 2 or backwards 6, to win jelly babies.)

Eventually, after moving the space mountains a bit to the left, and changing the robot's launch pad a bit to the right, and entering the wrong instructions, wiping the memory and starting all over again at least twice, then shunting the space bricks backwards, and twisting the garish aliens closer to the door, and squashing the space mountains closer together, the robot finally glided effortlessly around my space rocks and aliens and Martian bricks, to the robot food (jelly babies). I was ready for children.

The children returned, all merrily humming "this little light of mine" (and I didn't even think about laughing). I sat them down and explained that we were setting off on a dangerous mission to mars to explore the surface of the red planet. I explained that it was SO dangerous that we had to get a robot to explore for us, and we were all going to be captains of mission control.

Mission control then lined up at the door, ready for take-off, blasted into outer space and sat in a circle around the surface of mars. I went to retrieve the robot from it's hiding place, but it slipped in my hands; CRASHing to the floor (sweet spatulas above, by the hammer of Thor; I didn't kill a child. Or even injure one.)

The robot was also still in one piece, (they're pretty tough) and I set it down onto it's launch pad. The class is hanging onto my every word (jelly babies are an extraordinarily powerful teaching tool); and to be honest, I'm pretty excited to be on the surface of mars myself. I reach down to turn on the little exploring robot, and, holding my breath, I punch "GO".

The robot starts to move. Instead of gliding smoothly along my carefully prepared obstacle course, it starts spinning around on the spot, heads off at an angle towards the children (who rapidly scoot back on their bottoms to get away), then starts spinning again, darting about unfathomably, then stops, and bleeps out "Frere Jacques".

I should've known something would go wrong. Us Brits don't seem to have much luck at exploring Mars.