Edinburgh, Dunblane Cathedral, and Teaching Away!

Clearly, I have not written in a very long time! Two weeks in fact! A lot has happened...so much that this morning I slept in until noon to catch up on sleep! :) So I am going to spend some of this lovely (sarcasm) Saturday morning catching all of you up on what I have been busy doing! At the end of last week, I completely took over math which feels very good because it is the biggest subject of the day besides reading and writing. In reading, I have suggested to Claire that I start taking a group out each week (twice a week), to work on comprehension skills, word work skills, questioning skills, etc. (depending on the group and what skills they need) that will help them become better readers. It is working very well so far. Oh..also I have been drug into the Senior school's outdoor education week in mid June. I am crossing my fingers that the weather gets better because this means that I am going to be doing a hill walk with them. It sounds so nice and innocent, a "hill walk". But I've heard it is going to take all day to climb this thing. Great! On the other hand...I bet it is going to be an awesome way to see the scenery of Scotland once we get to the top!! This past week, I had my supervisor come on Wednesday. That meant that I had to have everything perfectly planned for him to watch me teach the whole day!! I did math in the morning as usual and then a creative writing unit which I have also taken over recently. For math we had been doing shapes...which I am an expert at teaching because that was my big TPA unit before coming here last quarter. For creative writing, I planned something very fun and the children enjoyed it a lot. I proposed the question of "what would you do if you woke up and were only one inch tall?" They had to write about the problems they came across, such as how to get out of bed, how to open the door, what would they eat for breakfast, how would they get to school, etc.!! It was very fun and they were very creative with it. I also started my mapping unit with the kids. Beaconhurst is an open campus with multiple building, so we went outside to figure out how we would put the campus onto a piece of paper. After walking around, the kids were able to spatially figure out that there was one big building in the middle and smaller buildings that surround it. Here's what one student created! Pretty good, eh?

So after my tutor left, I received good remarks. Said that I could take over the class now if I wanted to! :)...which Claire is loving. She is able to go observe the J1 classroom and see what the students are like that will be be joining her next year. On Thursday, we went to Dunblane Cathedral (obviously in Dunblane) which is about 10-15 minutes away from Bridge of Allan. This was part of the Religious and Moral Education being Special Places to go and to worship at. The Cathedral was beautiful and the kids enjoyed leaving school for a couple hours! A few years ago there was a shooting in Dunblane where a child was murdered. Inside the cathedral there was a memorial for the child. Very precious!

Over the weekend, I went to Edinburgh with a friend. It was amazing...at least! We took the 11pm train there and then took the 11pm train home! Probably could have spent the night because I couldn't get enough of it! We got off the train at Waverly and walked around Princess Street Gardens, Princess St., and the Royal Mile up to the Castle and down to the parliament. The guy that kindly toured me around Edinburgh, his sister lives there and works at one of the small galleries (not the huge main attraction gallery), and so we went in to see what was currently there. We also went to the Elephant House to eat dinner. This is considered "The birthplace of Harry Potter" because it is where J.K Rowling started writing all of the Harry Potter books. Towards the end of the night, we went into some of Edinburgh's pubs to finish our night off right! Can't go to Edinburgh without trying some of their brews! ;) I didn't go into the parliament or the castle or anything because I am waiting until my mom and dad come...can't see EVERYTHING before they get here!! But it was fun to just walk around and see the views and get familiar with the streets. We were lucky that it happened to be a beautiful day! This weekend I am laying low and planning for the upcoming week. However, next weekend I am going to go check out Glasgow!