Counting Down

Three weeks left of teaching... Oh My Gosh! Tomorrow I start my ten consecutive days of teaching and I'm not quite ready for them. I want to end with a bang and take all I have learned and give it all I've got! I keep thinking about how fast my time in Australia has gone and how relieved I am that I'm almost done student teaching. Then I think, I'm really almost done with college! How surreal. In about a month, I will be back in the states and preparing myself for graduation and whatever job is ahead. I guess I'm growing up.

This past week at school was a blur. Monday and Tuesday I taught literacy and maths, Tuesday was also the Melbourne Cup = kids not really focused, Wednesday I stayed home sick in bed, Thursday was our planning day so I hardly even saw the kids, and Friday Jacqui was out and I was co-teaching with a relief teacher. It has also warmed up quite a bit here and has even been humid. Ugh! I feel like I'm back in a Tuscaloosa summer. I wanted it warm and I guess I got it! There is no air condition in the school, so we open the doors throughout the day and turn the fans on. The flies are pretty bad here too... and dumb. They are huge and can't take the hint when you swat at them. I will probably have great arm strength by the time I get home from waving all day.

Today I am spending my time planning for the upcoming week and working on some of my online classwork that I have been putting off. Since it is time for my ten consecutive days again, I plan everything from start to finish. I am teaching indirect measurement with the kids this week. In Australia, miles, pounds, inches, and feet are not the primary units. They use kilometers, kilograms, centimeter, and meters. I am fairly familiar with centimeters and meters, but I will really have to focus on kilometers and kilograms. Luckily, this week we will only be dealing with an abstract view of measurement. For literacy I am teaching a unit on contextual understanding with a focus on fiction books. I am going with a Dr. Seuss theme for this one and will tie it into science with Oobleck. For those of you who don't know what Oobleck is, there is a Dr. Seuss book called Bartholomew and the Oobleck that talks about an unknown substance that falls from the sky (Oobleck) when King Bartholomew gets bored with the normal weather. Oobleck is made up of corn starch, water, and food coloring. When you touch the substance, it becomes a solid, but just sitting in the cool, it remains a liquid. Last semester I taught a similar lesson using Oobleck, but focused on weather. This time I am going to gear it towards change and what happens when you touch Oobleck, etc. So my maths, literacy, and science lessons will take up a majority of the time this week. The students are also learning about Australian settlement, so Jacqui and I have decided to do some team-teaching with that since I haven't a clue about it. I can't wait to learn about it!

Well, I just wanted to give everyone an update and let y'all know that this time next month I'll be home... and I'll be 23, but whatever! I hope everyone has a wonderful fall week - and ROLL TIDE!