Yesterday was "No Pens Day" at St. Michael's. The idea is to encourage verbal communication skills, emphasising the importance of speaking and listening. We did things like make puppets for a story, do a mock-interview, discuss ideas with talk partners, big maths, etc. To put their names on their work, they had to cut their name out off a class list and glue it on their paper. They really didn't touch a pen or pencil all day! By the end of the day, however, all the children said they wanted to use pens and pencils the next day because they missed them. Funny! I also learned that one of the students in my class speaks Afrikaans as his first language. I had never even heard of Afrikaans! Apparently it's spoken in South Africa.
I taught a small group science activity where the children had to choose an object out of a bag and then talk to their talk partners about the similarities and differences between the materials. One girl had her fingers in her mouth, so I asked her to go wash her hands before she put them in the bag. 5 minutes later, she still wasn't out of the loo. So I went in there to find her standing in the middle of the room. I said "What are you doing?" and she says (I'm not kidding) "Miss Keys, I wet myself." WHILE SHE WAS STANDING IN THE BATHROOM! Are you kidding me? I literally said "Really? Standing in the bathroom?" and sent her to the office. Come on.
I also got a letter from a student yesterday. Here it is:
I told her I was staying until the end of fall term. Then I asked her what she meant about her brother's birthday. She said "My brother's birthday is December 1st. You'll still be here." I asked if she wanted me to come to her brother's birthday and she said "Well no. You don't even know my brother!"............. so I have no idea what the point of the letter was, but it's cute! She even attached a rubber band to the top.... why? I have no idea. Too funny!
Last night, I took the train (by myself for the first time!) to meet the girls and some people from their school at the cinema in Epsom. Cost me £3.60 to spend 15 minutes on the train and only go 2 stops! Seems a bit steep. Anyway, we saw Crazy, Stupid, Love. The cinema has a 2 for 1 deal on Wednesdays if you have an Orange phone (Orange is a phone company), so we did that! The movie was pretty good. Started out really slow, but was really funny at the end. I don't know if the movie was just long, or if there were just a lot of previews, but we got to the theatre at 6 and didn't leave until 8:40! Then we went to eat at a place called Pizza Express, because they also have a 2 for 1 Orange deal. That also took forever! Definitely not superb customer service in British restaurants. (On Megan's birthday, we waited 45 minutes for our check!). We didn't leave the restaurant until 10 or 10:15. Paul (Kate's teacher) drove us back to Dorking (because he lives here too).
Today, my teacher was back for the first time in over a week (after her holiday in Barbados). The children were calling her the wrong name all day because they hadn't seen her in so long! I observed a dance lesson taught by the head today as well. I'm teaching dance next week. No worries though.. it's a CD and we just follow the instructions (hardly counts as actual dancing so I won't scare any little kids!).
I still have a cough. It's just so hard to get caught up on sleep and get healthy here because 1) the children are gross and 2) I don't want to waste my time in England sleeping! I feel like I'll be at least a little sick the entire time I'm here. I need a new immune system.
Fun fact: The children were playing tic-tac-toe on the bus on the way home from Hever Castle.. but they call it "knots and crosses."
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