A milestone and an inspiration

**written last week - posted today!**

I have been caught up with school and family life these last few weeks and it has left me feeling very drained. But I am feeling more myself today - I have the day off and except for a 20 minute tutorial at midday and after working all day yesterday I have broken the back of my lesson plans for the week.

I passed my first milestone last Friday: I taught a full hour class. I was with year 7 (about 11 years old, fresh from primary school) and we were looking at using adjectives and adverbs to make sentences interesting. We played the 'washing line' game where I gave them an envelope full of words and they had 30 seconds to make an interesting sentence and then 'peg' it up on the washing line (a piece of string) that I also provided. Although it felt totally chaotic and I struggled to bring them back to me when I needed their attention, the kids were engaged and having fun. I hope there was some good learning going on (I'll be able to see from the homework task I set them!). It is one thing planning a fun lesson and seeing the students participating but it is difficult to tell if they are actually learning anything. That is an area I need to work on.

I also observed my first proper literature lesson on Thursday - so far English literature has been thin on the ground. But there is one teacher in the English department who I immediately warmed to and I asked whether I could watch one of her lesson on Thursday - she was covering the first scene in Romeo and Juliet. Her passion for her subject was inspirational and I loved her approach to the lesson - she actually brought the text alive. First off, she asked the students to stand up and insult her in 'Elizabethan'. As their homework she had asked them to translate an insult into 'Elizabethan' - the students loved this and some of the insults were hilarious. Then she took the kids outside to act out that first scene ("do you bite your thumb at me sir?") because she wanted them to 'feel the wind in their hair'. She has taken me under her wing which I am grateful for - I knew as soon as I met her that she is the sort of English teacher that I aspire to be.