A Busy Week as a Proper Teacher

This week has been absolutely exhausting!  I can't believe that it has only been one week since our half term holiday.  Don't get me wrong, it's been a good week, just really hard work.  On Monday morning I was told that one of the year 5 teachers would be off for the whole week, and that I would be taking his class, because the other TA is now on her placement in year 6.  That was fine.  I really like the year 5's and I know them quite well from various trips and cover work.  

The first thing we did on Monday morning was go on a trip!  I love a surprise trip first thing after the holidays!  The Japanese school in Duisburg had come to visit year 5 in January to play football, so it was now our turn to visit them and learn some Japanese calligraphy.  The kids really enjoyed it, and were taught one on one with the Japanese school students.  Not many of them spoke English, or even German, so it was interesting to see how they managed to communicate with each other.  Most wrote their names in Japanese, and some found out the translations of their names; my favourite being one of the kids whose name means 'fox basket' (I now call this instead of his name on the register).  We got back from the trip at lunch time, and had lessons as normal in the afternoon.  The trip only lasting half a day made the day seem really long, and I was exhausted by the end of it.

I had some really good lessons this week; in art the kids designed their own Aztec pattern (their history topic), which looked great and will be put on display.  My English lessons went brilliantly!  We were doing apostrophes, which are pretty tricky, but the kids worked so well.  I gave two people from this class Achievement Awards at the end of the week.  They were so chuffed, especially the lad, he kept grinning at me, and said he had never got an achievement award before, and that his Mum was going to 'explode'. Haha!  It was very cute.  It has all made me want my own class even more, despite having to do marking, and take on the stress of the year 5 play which is on in just 4 weeks!  Another of the year 5 teachers was off on Thursday and Friday too, so the poor one who was left had a rather stressful week!  It meant that I had to cover some of her lessons too, which was a pain because I had marking to do instead!  Very busy indeed.

Yesterday Matt went off to watch the football with some friends, and I had a nice lazy day recovering from my week as a full time teacher.  I did some crochet and watched a few films and generally relaxed.  This afternoon we are off to an Irish bar in Dusseldorf to watch the rugby with some friends, so that should be fun... or not, depending on the rugby results!!!

This weeks soup club!  Thai red curry......