A quiet week

[Interestingly if I had changed two letters in that sentence (Quite a week) then the Blog post would have a completely different meaning to the one that it actually does. Isn't the English language fun!]

As you may have noticed there has been a distinct lack of blogging this past week. This was due to a variety of reason. The start of the month hails the start of lesson observations again and all the joy that brings. Don't get me wrong I am extremely grateful for the observations and I am certain they are a great help to grow as a teacher and improve on the areas that I am struggling with.

As per usual instructions came up as a major point of discussion, although it was noted that I am improving a lot here and picking up when students haven't understood a lot quicker. In addition it was pointed out that I need to make sure my tone is actually one that is telling people off when I am telling them off! And finally it isn't always best to tell people off for using L1, sometimes we have to encourage them to try and use English as they are embarrassed/unconfident.

All in all some good things to work on and I hope to take them on board very quickly.

Other than this the week has been pretty quiet, the only real events of note are the non stop salsa party last night (where if you danced with the most people you got free entry to the next one, I came second somehow!) and the ice skatting today...speaking of which I must go.

Hopefully I will blog a bit more in the coming week but until then I am about to post a link to some articles on L1 in the class room... the good and bad.

Getting more than you bargained for

As the rolling stones once sang "you can't always get what you want" (actually they sang this many times but that would ruin the saying). However sometimes we actually get what we want and more. In a follow up action to the conference I asked if I could observe some more experienced teachers (as I hadn't had the chance to see any since I have been here and it is certainly a great way to pick up tips for teaching your own class). The response was highly positive towards my suggestions! "Of course you can, in fact why don't we do what we did last year" [alarm bells] "a peer observation week when any teacher can observe any other teacher with no for warning" [arg!!!] plus we can do lesson observation master classes where experienced teachers take your class and you can see how they deal with the class and pick up some things from them."

Okay so this will actually be a great experience and to be honest we often only get a very short notification that we will be observed anyway [and our lessons should be good enough for observations even if they aren't observed!] so it should actually be a great experience. Still I was hoping to observe more lesson and not to be observed more!