Evidence my class/colleagues are losing it in the run-up to SATs #1

• One child (not realising anyone could see him) walking out of the computer suite in what can only be described as the style of a Thunderbird puppet.
• Me mistakenly telling my class to "make sure you are looking at someone else's answers" (obviously I meant to say "make sure you AREN'T looking at anyone else's answers")
• The corridors ringing with the sounds of teachers crying " Why would you write that...Why? Why?"
• And "Why are you making up your own methods for addition, subtraction etc on the spot when you could be using the ones you have been perfecting for the last 5 years? Why? Why?"
• and many other similar semi-hysterical rhetorical questions.
• A boy taking the same reading test twice in 24 hours and it not even seeming vaguely familiar the second time (in fact he scored 6 points fewer)
• Aforementioned "Thunderbird" disturbing whole class by pausing briefly in his writing, singing "Ta-da!" and starting his writing again as if nothing had happened.
• Random outbreaks of shimmying/ nervous humming (mainly the children but it's early days!)
• A small boy timing the strokes of his writing to the theme of the A-team (which he maintains he didn't even realising he was doing)
• Me wondering how on earth I will get round my hobbit-hole of a classroom with all the desks spread out exam style without having to use a metre stick to pole vault over them.
• The children taking half an hour to calm down after me suggesting the meter-stick/pole vaulting combi.
• Me taking half an hour to calm down having realised their laughter was totally unfounded as no-one actually knew what pole-vaulting was.
  

8 school days to go.

The Lady with the Limp: Things I never knew about the work of Florence Nightingale...

Here follow some quotes from the newspaper reports on Florence Nightingale, written by my class. It is amazing how many things I did not know about her life:

One of the boys in my class actually WAS a nurse during the Crimean War "Florence Nightingale reported that my work had been made more difficult by the terrible conditions" I must say he looks good on it!

Florence Nightingale was a keen cooker of Chinese food: "Florence Nightingale reported that her wok had been greatly affected by the unhygienic hospitals"

Heaven help us: SATS are only a few weeks away.

p.s. Real facts that I happen to like about Florrie N

1. She drew the long straw being born in Florence; her poor sister was born in Naples and had to put up with being called Parthenope (the Greek name for Naples). There will be a small prize available for the person who can come up with the worst place to be born if your parents insist on naming you after that place! (Bognor anyone?)




2. She invented the pie chart. Yes, thanks to dear old Flozza, I have to try and get 11 year olds to understand the concept of 360 degrees in a circle, each degree representing a different number of people, depending on how many people the pie chart is talking about of course and then to work out how many people each section of the chart represents and that even if both pie charts show that half the children in each class like cheese and onion crisps best, this does not mean that the same number of children in each class like cheese and onion because each circle may not represent the same number of children...If only she'd stuck to Chinese cookery and not branched out into pie-making!




3. She was apparently not the angelic character we have been led to believe - hehe.

Will I ever REALLY learn?

Well, I was looking back just a moment ago at the list of things I had supposedly learnt during February half term and found it interesting how my life seems to be very much of the one step forward, two steps back variety. Another half term and its holiday have passed by (along with a big-ish birthday) and surprise, surprise I would appear to have fallen into many of the same traps again! Here is the addendum to the previous list:

1. Diaries are absolutely no use if all you have done is stuck in the free stickers from "Autosport" magazine telling you when the Grand Prix are and then left it under the sofa for another 6 weeks.

2. I may not have needed to buy any t-shirts but I have in fact bought about 5. And a new bag (see above) which I didn't need either.

6. Keeping loose change in your jeans pockets is easier; even though I know it will be a real nuisance scrabbling about under the bed for it all, at the time, those extra few seconds I gain in bed from not wasting 4 or 5 seconds removing the money as I remove my jeans seems worth it.

16. I cannot play in 6 flats either, ref. "Songs from the Shows" circa March 2007.

20. Housemaid's knee does not go away when you stop housework and in fact can morph into "school teacher's knee" under the correct conditions. Still at least my dramatic limping everytime I get up from kneeling seemed to amuse my family over the holidays.

So that's about it. On a different subject we are spending loads of time practising for SATS at school at the moment (16 days to go) and I managed to inadvertantly make a political statement about the writing papers by getting my tongue in a twist and calling a "short writing task" a "shite writing task". Oops.

In the meantime...

I have some Spring Harvest-based bloggin' in the pipeline as promised but in the meantime, the Vicar of Wibbly sent me this link (click on the Nun!)