Up up up! Down down down (Marcus)

Ah it's not all bad, the teaching thing, but by the end of the week, no matter whether the lesson is a complete success or just so-so, I am thoroughly over doing the same thing so many times in a row. Particularly on Friday's where it's 4 of the same lesson in one day, blergh.

So this week for our Seniors we did the exercise where you are in a plane crash type scenario and have to prioratise from 10 salvaged items etc etc - I am sure everyone has done this. It worked out pretty good actually, but I am glad it's over as it gets boring after the 4th or 5th time.

For the juniors and gifted we did a second lesson on time. Last week we did Time Bingo(tm) which was great fun. They loved having prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd. We bought them things like packets of biscuits, packets of chips etc etc from the local school shop. They're always hungry in class and being able to suddenly have these was a treat for them.

This week the guts of the lesson was a Clock Race(tm). We drew up two clocks(actually I don't think Courtney even did this once...) on the board and then divided the class into two teams of around 25ish each.

I discovered that later in the week they enjoyed picking their own team names, so we went with that. They were also SUPER damned noisy. Being a race, they all got completely into it, and were often cheering and clapping each kid as he came up to the front to compete.

The rules were simple - 2 empty clock faces, 2 kids. I would call random times and the first to draw the hands correctly wins a point for their team - first to 12.

Here we've got two of my gifted. Parker on the left, wearing my sunglasses to look cool, and 'Mr Sexy'. Mr Sexy has been the name of this kid ever since we did the Cat excercise where they had to find verbs for every letter of the alphabet to describe a cat. Well this poor kid said Sexy, and I've been milking it ever since. I call him Mr Sexy and the kids fkng love it. The kid behind him even sits there ALL class with a little homemade sign pointing at him, "Mr Sexy ->"

So it was Team Parker vs Team Sexy. Every time Team Sexy won a point, I'd turn around and say all dramatic like, "Sooo sexy," and they'd just love it. Ah these kids crack me up. The two gifted classes are the best part of my week. I think class 1 with Mr Sexy is now my favourite.

This kid, Parker, along with two others, one named Taylor the other I cant remember, run to escort me to class every week now. It was initially just Taylor, now there's 3 of them. Parker wears sunglasses as I think his eyes are quite sensitive to bright light when he's out. They're such cool little kids; i'd happily adopt them and bring them home to raise as my minions anyday.

Here we have the post-game blackboard melee that took place after Team Strawberry defeated Team Dinosaur. As we played, I had any kids who were being annoyingly noisy come and draw either a strawberry or a dinosaur on their teams side of the board.

At the end of the class, I dragged up all of the 'Dinosaur' team and forced them to cover the board in strawberries - you know, seeing the strawberries had the glory and all. Initially it went smoothly until they started doing dinosaurs as well to which the Strawberry team wouldn't settle for and the above board melee was the end result. The noise factor was extreme, but it was all highly amusing.

I'd love to know what the other Chinese teachers think are going on inside my classes as the cheering with the Clock race itself was hellishly loud also.

Ah the joys of it all. I definitely prefer these age groups to the teens - although the teens do have their highlights, they're just frustratingly hard to get speaking. We can effectively throw anything at the kids knowing they will volunteer to speak or participate.