Nerves...

Well, who'd have thought it? I just took my first part of a lesson, and I was so scared! I have no fear of the kids, and I'm more than happy to work with them in smaller groups, but this was the first time that I've had to stand at the front of a whole class and write on the board. The first time that I've had to actually teach them something entirely new.

We were looking at time, and counting in five minute intervals between designated times. They caught on really quickly, and I was fairly confident that they'd achieved the objective of the session. Then the teacher came and took over for the rest of the time. She observed me as I taught, and gave me some valuable feedback, which you can find below:

Introduced the topic. You need to ask child rather than look at the whole class. Direct questions.
Good. Let children see their own mistake and work out the answer to correct themselves. Ask them to say how they worked things out (eg 14x5=70). Drew out well the 60 minutes = 1 hour.
Always ask the child to explain. Some do this automatically. A child's explanation is sometimes better than ours, as some children listen to other pupils better.

I feel much more confident now, as I feel that I've got over the biggest hurdle, and I've also recieved some valuable advice into the bargain.

It was a funny morning too. When we first came into the class, one child was showing me the latest addition to his pencil case - a bendy pencil. It looks like, and works like a normal pencil, but you can bend it to a certain extent. The boy next to him also had one. He was so pleased with it, and very keen to demonstrate how bendy it was. But he was a bit too rough, and snapped it in half... Ha ha ha ha. The other hilarious incident from this morning was in games. We were in the gym, and the children were in pairs, throwing a ball to each other, and catching it with one hand. The teacher asked them to use the hand that they use the least i.e. if you're right handed, catch with your left; if you're left handed, catch with your right. One boy announced proudly that he could catch equally well with both hands. The teacher told him that he should use whichever one he wanted. I had to laugh when I saw the look on his partner's face, as she threw him the ball for the first time, and he fumbled it and dropped it on the floor. Priceless...

A fun weekend was had, all in all. I went to a party on Saturday night at a very posh house. Full of people who thought that the most fun thing you can do at a party is stand around chatting politely with people of the same social class as you. We went outside and caused a ruccus. Butch invented a game where you had to kick cookie over a fence. Some random guy that realised we were having much more fun than anyone else came out and had a go. But his shoe came off and flew into next door's garden. Hilarious...
I got up a bit late on Sunday as a result though, and only made it to church for the Word (which Mashworth explained was a particularly significant name for it). The sermon was really good, and challenged me on a couple of things. Basically, it was looking at Annaneus and Saphira, and how they edged closer and closer to sin, playing chicken with it, until they took the final step; when what they should have done was run the other way when the idea came to them. I had a bit of a chat with God afterwards, and agreed with him some ways that I can avoid falling into the trap of playing chicken with sin. Really useful stuff, actually.

In the afternoon, I cleaned the house finally, so it looks great again. My parents have just got back from the Carribean, and they brought me a bunch of gifts and stuff. Hilariously, after I made the decision that morning to stop drinking alcoholf for the forseeable future, they gave me a bottle of fine Trinidad rum. Nuts. Not sure what I'll do with that... It was good to see them though, and they told me that they're decorating my old room, so the bed that's in there at the moment is going spare. I need a new bed, so they're bringing it up for me. And my old wardrobe, which I can paint. I was planning to decorate my room in February when Bethany's over, so that works out really nicely.

We had some great cheese last night too. A superb mature blue stilton. Ate it with Tim and Butch after a game of Fluxx. I thoroughly recommend this game to all that can get hold of a copy. Along with Scrabble, it's our favourite game for 2006.
Right, that's quite enough of that. There's work to be done. Catch you later...