Sunday, April 7, 2013

aubergenious!

Yes - he's real!

Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann's books are favourites of mine.

This guy appeared in our Harvest Hub bag this week! (J added eyes). He was just the thing I needed to accompany me to work as I was to teach Year Five for a whole day. It was the first time I'd taught Year Five since I was a casual teacher ten years ago (although I do teach this class weekly in the library.)

I think that it is difficult to teach a person to possess the traits of a teacher. I believe that teachers have a natural bossy instructive nature. There are tricks-of-the-trade that you can't learn at uni and that you only pick up by being in schools, around other teachers and with children. It helps to have a bit of a creative brain and a think-outside-the-box brain too!

So - my day with Year Five began with the usual house-keeping: notes, roll call, run-down of the day.

And then the class needed to choose a name for the guy and these were the suggestions: Bob, Ovo (as in egg), Stumpy, Pinnocio, Bobo, Huggo, Obo and Pope. Then out of left-field came the name voted most popular: George William, Henry, McDonald III Junior Senior. How very English! (Ironic for a school with a population of predominantly backgrounds other than English and 60% of students with English as a Second Language).

George (for short) did spelling, writing, listened to an ANZAC story and completed a writing task. He completed a Mathematics pretest and had a session of PE. In the afternoon he was cuddled while watching the My Place series and doing the accompanying exercises.

All-in-all it was a really enjoyable day and I doubt the kids realised my hesitation which soon wore off. It's important, when teaching, to be pushed out of your comfort zone and, in reality, I don't think you're doing your job properly if you're not because teaching requires constant learning and evaluation of the job you're doing and how your students are progressing.

The inevitable is awaiting poor George, though, now, as he faces the saucepan.....

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