If you can't beat them...join them!

During assembly the year 6's sit on the benches, its an unsaid rule. Happens in almost every primary school across the country. At my school the rules have changed because the year 6's couldnt sit still and would refuse to join in with the assembly so now whichever class has earned the most assembly points (awarded for how the class enters and leaves, how much they join in etc) get to sit on the benches.

Today the year 5 class i'm teaching now and the class I taught last year won the right to sit on the benches. I was beaming with pride...even tho I had nothing to do with them earning the right but what the hey, having them respond to my stupid grin with an equally silly grin was worth looking stupid over.

As we were walking back I spoke to one of the boys from my last years class. He talked to me about Arsenal's game over the weekend and their 2-1 victory. This got me thinking maybe the boys i'm currently teaching will respond better if I have something in common with them. So being a glory seeker I am now an official Arsenal fan. I may never watch them play - live or otherwise but I WILL go out of my way to find out scores and learn players names for the sake of getting on with the class.

It did actually work the boys talked to me for alot longer with hardly ANY giggling from the boys who were not part of the convo....think i'm making progress! Still sometimes wish I had last years class but this class is growing on me and i'm really starting to like them and the baggage they come with.

Back to planning.....

One minute in my head...

So much 'wow' factors have happened over the last few days that I want to keep a memory of. Rather then go in to great detail about them all, I'll just make brief(ish) bullet point notes about them:

• Writing in first person from a female point of view is hilarious especially if the female in question is in love - according to the boys in my class...They had to read and act out the poem the next day twas hil-ar-eous! Actually that whole day was.
  

• I've started to get on with the boys!! Before whenever one of them would talk to me the rest would giggle and wisper 'you fancy miss' now that doesn't happen as much. 2 of them still go abit red when I talk to them randomly think they scared of being told 'You want to marry miss' the rest will start a converstation with me now instead of avoiding me...FINALLY.

• Treating them like mini adults works SOOO well! Instead of saying things like ' *insert name* your still talking, this is your second warning..' I say '*insert name* look I've told you once to stop the talking you know it's rude, if you can't sit quietly go back to your seat or chose another place to sit' by giving them an option and speaking like I would with an adult they respond soooo much more better. I also say things like 'Do me a favour and hand out these books' as opposed to 'You can hand out the books because you were sat beautifully through that.' (3 WOW factors for this, seeing it work is so much more diffrent then writing about it.)

• As I was walking down a creepy shortcut after school too meet a friend, I walked past a man taking pictures of a building and another young man. I went passed them both got half way down the creepy way and the young man ran behind me and said 'Excuse me, sorry I saw you walk down this way and just felt it was my duty as a muslim brother to tell you it's not safe to walk down here. There's another way its abit longer but its safer...' he then went on to tell me about the other way. Who says gentlemen are distinct?! (have to admit I did get abit scared when he first came up to me, suppose stereotypes have more of an impact on me then I thought!)

• Same day as the above I had forgotten my phone. I got in to town and waited around for my friend for ages but she didn't show. I walked home and got a call turns out she had been upstairs in the library waiting for me. I felt really guilty for not going up there to check and forgetting my phone....REALLY wanted to see her to. Wow factor here? How much we (well I) rely on technology! How did I meet up with people before?! Now its set a time, when it gets closer to the time ring and find out the place or in my case ring to get directions.

• The class assembly this week was by the year 3's about poems. Some of the poems they read were entitled 'One mintue in my head' Try this if your reading set a timer for 1 minute, now concentrate on what you think about. Once the minute is up write down what you thought about. Now turn that in to a poem. Now that you've read it through give it a try!! Here's some of the things the kids wrote: 'Why are elephants fat? Who will play with me today? I hope we have chips for dinner. Who's sat behind me? Why is America taking over? I can smell cheese' Those poems made smile it just showed how problem free their lives are alhamdulliah. I tried it but the places my thoughts went to are not waht i want to blog about!
  

On that last note I'll wrap it up and finish
Now on to planning how to teach fractions......

Behaviour Management

This year i've had behaviour problems (from the children, i don't personaly have behaviour problems) that i've actually struggled to control. This is pretty new for me and by admitting 'i struggle to control some behaviour' is almost like admitting to defeat, like i'm not doing the job properly. I feel I have to justify why im not able to control SOME behaviour. I know I can control alot of behaviour but some it seems I will have to work on.

The behaviour problems i'm struggling with are:

• 2 hyper active kids who can not sit still. It's not just something they do in my lessons but in lessons done by the class teacher too. Admittdly it is alot more in mine then in his. I wouldn't have to much of a problem if they were just keeping to themselves and getting out of their seats but no it can't be as simple as that. The 2 of them have to go around disturbing anyone and everyone and thats the thing I can't deal with.
• A small group of boys. The 'cool' boys. Need i say anymore?
• The last one is the amount of time they taking changing activities. It takes them a good 5 to 10mins to put their books away and come and sit on the carpet.

I've only been teaching 3 days and I know the problems are there because their trying to see how far they can push me, how much i'll let them get away with etc.

I had to exit 2 people in the first lesson I taught. I made an example of one one of the pupils I exited to show that im not giving just empty threats, which I later felt abit guilty about. The law had to be laid tho, I guess.

When I taught during the day visit they must've thought I was doing this as a one of and gave me an easy ride. Ever since they've realised im going to be teaching them 60% of the time for the next 6 weeks without their normal teacher being there....the problems have started in bucket loads.

The first few such as the children moving about and not sitting in their correct carpet place. I dealt with. I doubt they'll ever try that one again.

Things such as 'but sir lets us...' were complty destroyed by me saying 'Well it isn't sir teaching you its me, so your going to have to stick to these rules....'

Noise levals i've been able to control by firstly trying to shout over them kinda worked but not aswell as I wanted it to. Yesterday I counted down from 10 worked abit better but I was still shouting over them as i counted down and today I used a powerpoint timer on the intractive white board....RESULT! I didn't have to do any ok i did very little amounts of shouting.

Now I need to figure out how to deal with the top 3......

Time for a cup of tea me thinks...

After learning to put up pictures I realised the saying can't be read on the poster! I also can't log in to my blog unless I click on the 'forgotten password' link, it then emails me a link which leads me to my blog....strange. Anyway the saying thinga majig:

'Far away there in the sunshine are my aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, belive in them and try to follow where they lead.' (Louisa May Alcott)

Aim for the moon and if you miss at least you'll be amongst the stars. (author: i dunno)

All i've been doing for the past few days is planning, planning and more planning...only trouble is it's just getting done in my head rather then on the pc which is where I need it! Anyway last night as I got in to bed I looked at this poster above my bed...

The saying on the poster is:

This made me think of my future plans, which i started thinking about in mid-term, daily, yearly plans like my teaching one's! I didn't make a new year's resolution so i'm gonna write my thoughts from last night here...which are kinda fuzzy seeing as almost 24hours have past.

Yearly plans:

To become a better muslim by adhering to the rules on modesty. This I know is gonna be a slow process seeing as i'm so attached to clothes. So by the end of the year all jeans shall be banished from my wardrobe. This includes the one's from mango and esp. the miss sixty one's.

Mid-term:(teaching doesn't have monthly plans so i didn't plan my goals for months)

To get all the kids in my class to learn their times tables. I was helping out on the lower ability table during a maths lesson. The oral and mental starter was to write down factors. For every number that came up they had to look at the 1 times table to see if 1 was a factor of that number. I want to change this.

Daily:

To pray at school esp Asr prayer. Im in a school which the student population being mostly muslims, the staff know we pray 5 times a day so what the hell is stopping me from doing this?!! (rhetorical question)

Can't really remember the rest I thought up. Guess one is enough for each of the headings.

Oh and I learnt to include pictures properly without fiddling about for ages......just in case you hadn't noticed ;-)

I'm back at ********* primary! home...sweet...home.

Today was the first day visit and i felt like a celbraity as soon as i walked on to the playground at break. The yr 3's i taught last yr all came and hugged me and kept asking me 'where did you go?', ' do you remember my name?', 'will you be teaching us again?' and the number 1 question of last year....... 'what's your REAL name miss?'

The year 1's i taught last year (now yr 2) remembred me but wernt as clingy as the yr 3's. They've grown soooo much!! They still play with the same friends as they did last yr.

This welcome left me with warm fuzzy feeling i used to get last year. I can't wait to start teaching and getting this sort of reception from the yr 5 class im with this yr.

I felt abit shy around the yr 5's which was really weird! but after what happened during playtime i'm gonna make them like me as much as the yr 3's and yr 1's....time to start planning fun oral and mental starters. The tiger in the box game i made up last year is DEFINTLY going to be used again this year.

For the rest of the day my face was like the one above...yep i looked just as silly as that!