Morning Break has Broken

At morning break, two girls in year 5 approached me and said "Mr Trent". I ignored them for a couple of seconds, then said "What do you want?". They nodded their heads a lot and said nothing, paused and muttered "Shall we say it?" and "It's not important," and "No, no".

I said "What is it, I am very interested" and then one of the girls told me that next week she is getting a labrador puppy for her birthday. It is three weeks old and she has a picture of it in her bag at school. At this point, God Save The Queen boy shouted "'Scuse" at me and stood with a tennis ball that he was using as a cricket ball above his head in a semi threatening manner.




Look. This looks great doesn't it? We all love jumping in leaves. I told lots of children off at playtime. They were building houses made out of leaves. Giant houses which came up to their waists. It looked like a lot of fun, but it is against the school rules. They knew they shouldn't be doing it. I wouldn't have told them off but two sneaky little grasses from year 3 came and told on them.

The tops of my ears are cold and my fingers find it difficult to type.

Before break we consolidated yesterday's learning to subtract by counting on, using a number line. It is a funny method. You have to add all the numbers up at the end, and this often becomes confusing. Apparently it aids understanding. It is now more important to understand the process than to get the answer right. Some weeks I love teaching maths and some weeks I hate it. This week I am hating it.



I've been in 20 minutes now and my fingers are still unthawed. The children are doing some planning and writing of reports on "senses". Whilst this offers me some time to do silly stuff like blog now, the thought of 30 written reports to mark by tomorrow fills me with utter anxiety. Every new piece of work is a new piece of marking. I should have asked them to write me a report on Punk Rock. Then I would be interested in marking it - although years ago I tried to get my class to write reports about ska and reggae and this was even worse, as the reports contained many little inaccuracies, which prickled me as I read them.