The Good, The Bad and The Frustrating

This week has had a bit of everything in it. Most teachers would find they have weeks like this. Let’s start off with…

The Good

We headed off to Healesville Sanctuary on Thursday for an excursion to see some Australian animals. We have been learning a lot about Australian animals over the last two weeks. It’s amazing to see the language taught in the classroom come together when we are out and about. Students also want to  communicate with us, because excursions are so exciting!

The bit that I didn’t get is when all them began shouting “Koala! Koala! Koala!” at the same to the poor sleeping creature in the tree.

Some of the other ‘Good’ for this week included some very impromptu and unplanned lessons that resulted in a lot of language being used. After the excursion, the students and I were exhausted on the Friday. So I gave them some finger puppets to make – a platypus, a kangaroo, a koala and an emu. The students had a great time making them and then I bribed them to come up the front in pairs and have conversations between their puppets. It was fascinating to see how much oral language came out from most of the students as they moved into the characters of their puppets. For ‘having-a-go’, and other good behaviour for the day, most of them got chocolate smelling stickers. I just wish I had recorded their conversations with my iPad.

 

The Bad

Believe it or not, the Bad was also Healesville Sanctuary. With a few challenging students from my class and a few challenging students from the other class that we walked around with, it certainly made for a challenging day. Throw into the mix the other teacher and I both had head colds and the public’s perception of what student behaviour should be on excursions…

 

The Frustrating

Being unwell whilst teaching is hard. But leaving work for another teacher can be harder. This week I just continued on. As did most of the other sick teachers at school.

This week also saw two of my students not telling me when they needed ‘to go’. That’s frustrating. Enough said.

This week also saw one of my students get so worked up in a fight with another student that he began vomiting. That’s frustrating. Enough said there too.

 

How’s your week been?