Hands up…

So today was the day. My first real “teaching episode” being observed by a real teacher and being written up to put in my file. I was so, so scared. But it turned out OK. I knew I talked too quickly – I always do when I’m nervous because I worry I’ll run out of time!

One of our first lectures at university was about pupil assessment. The one thing I remember from that lecture is to never ask pupils who have their hands up. They’re the ones who know the answers – you know it and they know it. You need to find the pupils who (think they) don’t know the answer and prise it out of them. But I had to resort to the “hands up” approach half way through my starter because the whole class just started shouting answers at me! But then the same people kept putting their hands up, and I couldn’t select individuals to answer questions because I didn’t know their names and it’s rude to point.

Nothing awful happened, I didn’t teach them any rubbish and it all went OK-ish. Apart from me being too short to reach the top of the interactive whiteboard! But I guess that was always going to be the case. I don’t think even six-inch heels could help me!

I spoke to David after the lesson and he said he was impressed – it was good for a first ever teaching spell! He picked up on the “hands up” thing and said that whilst he could understand I didn’t want to keep asking the same pupils for the answers, I have to do whatever it is my tutors want me to do to get QTS!

I can honestly say, hand on heart, that I really enjoyed it. I also like telling people off in a really sarcastic manner too, I discovered. Yesterday, a group of Year 12 boys weren’t working and I said to them, “Wow, that’s incredible – you can answer questions from the textbook without having it open!” They sheepishly opened their books after that.

On a different note, I’d like to congratulate my boyfriend on the birth of his niece. Love to all the family, especially the new parents

Puttin’ on the Ritz

So yesterday I, as my mother delightfully put it, “got to see what the other half live like”. For my Christmas present last year, my older brother gave me a gift voucher for afternoon tea for two at The Ritz. Yesterday was the day I got to use it. I’d bought a lovely summery outfit from a generic Arcadia store, only for it to not stop raining at all yesterday. I left home ridiculously early as I know what London Underground is like and made my way to Green Park station to meet my friend, where I changed my flats for stupidly high heels that I could barely walk in. But when we walked into the hotel – oh. My. God. It was the stuff of dreams. Men to open doors for you and apologising profusely if you were unfortunate enough to have to even touch a door handle yourself, chandliers, dim lighting, the works. We were shown to our table in the Palm Court and the waiter pulled our chairs out for us and put our napkins on our laps. We had the Ritz blend tea, which I can highly recommend. It tasted like, well, tea. But I like tea Once our sterling silver pot of tea had been brought over, a stand was put on our table with finger sandwiches (without crusts, as my friend pointed out excitedly) and pastries. The sandwiches were unfussy and sandwichy. (Have a look here if you want to see the menu in detail.) But what got us the most excited was the giant pot of clotted cream for the scones that would be brought out later. We like clotted cream.

I had the most wonderful time living in that little dream world for nearly two hours. Even the “powder room” was over the top and even had pink sofas. (We even took photos of ourselves there!) It was lovely being waited on hand and foot. The food was incredibly mediocre and it was only then that I realised that what makes Afternoon Tea at The Ritz the institution it is is the fact you are transported to a dream world for those two hours. It’s not the food, it’s not the service that you pay for – it’s the dream. I might do it again, but only if someone else paid or teaching suddenly became the type of profession where you could actually earn money. But it’s still something everyone should do at least once. One of my cousins goes on about the Christmas Tea they do in December – might give that a go.

On another note, it was nice to have a break from revising GCSE Biology. Now I do actually have a GCSE in Biology, but I’m improving my “subject knowledge” ready for September. However, having had a look at the KS3 and KS4 National Curriculum for 2008 onwards, there’s no actual science in the science syllabus. There’s no “green plants as organisms” section where you learn about how plants feed etc etc. Gone is quite a lot of stuff that I would class as fundamental. The emphasis is now on how science works in the real world and in industry, but there’s nothing about the science behind it. I’m hoping more will be explained when I start my PGCE in September because it really looks like you don’t even need to know science to teach this. Maybe that’s the plan…