Day 11- So teaching is hard, who knew??

Today was our first day of teaching and after an unsuccessful night of sleep (we slept in the same room as some random water bottle that we couldn't find kept randomly cracking in a strangely terrifying manner-trust me it was scarier than it sounds) we woke up slightly anxious for the day ahead as we realised we were genuinely going to be in charge of these small humans and in charge of their experience with writing, no biggie.

We started off with Year 9's at 9:55, using our presentation containing photographs of what we believed to be well known and well written characters, that also linked up with our breakdown of a character (see previous blog entry). This seemed to go rather well, the class got more enthusiastic as we went on, especially when we split them into groups to create a character per group with special emphasis on:

• Name
•Age
•Gender
•Physical Description
•Strengths/Flaws
•Relationships.

It worked out rather well, we got much further than we thought we would but also realized that we would need even more classes with the year group for the Story writing itself and the stage adaptation.

We had Year 7's afterwards just before the break who were lively and enthusiastic (probably a youth thing, all that energy) from the moment we walked in. We continued with the same presentation as before but the Year 7's characters were even more intriguing than the Year 9's somehow! These are some creative kids, that's for sure.

After class we went home where we went on an adventure to look for quirky stuff we could bring in for the kids to use alongside prompts for their stories but alas it was siesta time and when we looked again later nothing really stood out.

We then proceeded to thoroughly search both the internet and my book of prompts for a collection of ten for the year groups to choose from. After successfully doing that we began our blog entries before calling it a night and having some wonderful Vodka and Coke/Orange Juice. Teacher life, am I right? Can't wait to do it all tomorrow.

On a serious note though we are genuinely looking forward to working with the kids and everyone at the school has been extremely helpful, so it has actually been easy going so far despite what my amusing title states.