Primary School Visit

Firstly, Bertie, I am very glad you're reading this, hope you've been keeping your eye out for the lesbionic facebook banter - I've been trying hard to impress you on this front.

Secondly, two quotes from today that I like:

Jade (during my rather funny piano lesson...bless my fingers): "it's meant to make a sound - it's music!"
Emma (during a cheeky drink at the Cuckfield, which by the way has been fabulously redone and is now clearly going to become one of my favourite places to drink): "I've got my head screwed on when I take drugs."

Thirdly, after a delightful meeting tonight my father has confirmed builders will be returning chez nous in the middle of August for 6+ weeks. Excellent, I am eager for this to happen. As eager as I am to teach my Y8s aaaaall day long.

So, on to the primary school visit. I give it an 8 out of 10 - it loses two marks because sports day got rained off towards the end, and because I didn't actually get to watch any maths teaching.

Good points about my day and also primary school teaching at Parkhill in general:

• the kids are smaller than you and thus infinitely more controllable
• they are keen to learn and able to concentrate
• they produced some wonderful creative writing and poster work
• the whole atmosphere of primary schools is colourful and fun and friendly and positive
• there aren't any of the ridiculous secondary school type issues e.g. llittle Jonny and little Sarah trying to sneak into your classroom at break to get their ends away
• better socio-economic status, which leads to a more positive attitude to learning, more resources, more enthusiastic parents, better support from parents, greater aspirations etc.
• you can teach a wide range of things and with more control over how you do it
• you can really mould your kids and build good relationships with them

Bad things about teaching primary:

• the need to socialise kids into behaviour and the ways of school (although I guess you do that at secondary too)
• being with the same, very young kids aaaaall day
• assessment and pressures on kids that is pretty unnecessary in my opinion
• needing to be able to teach lots of things but always at a fairly basic level

Well, Parkhill is a good school - it was rated outstanding in its last OFSTED and gets excellent KS2 results (61% level 5+ in science, 31% level 5+ in English, 38% level 5+ in maths - and all that's with a supposedly "dodgy" year group), not that that's the best way to judge a school. But just being in the place filled me with a sense of the purposeful nature of the school. Once again I am inspired. Maybe a bit of primary teaching wouldn't go amiss with me...?

And finally, was mightily impressed with the school's dyslexic and dyspraxic PE co-ordinator. A delightful man, who organised a wonderful sports day, which the children all thoroughly enjoyed. He even spent time with me explaining how he differentiated PE, a far cry from our streamed PE groups at Forest - whose bright idea was it to put all the PE haters in one group?!

Bierodrome, Instantly Fit People, Finals

Went to the temple yesterday, good stuff. Decided this made me well enough to resume battle so completed Bierodrome Take II last night. Bon. Lots of nice Belgian beer. Music a bit loud and the ladies' lavatories smelt of dried fish, but the barmen were fit. Allegedly.

Puja wimped out early in the game, perhaps in sympathy for the temporarily absent Sparrow. Luckily Jade was able to soldier on and so we completed five glorious toasts.

1. To the beautiful weather and may it last evermore (Puja, Lindemans Cassis, nice toast nice drink).
2. To a happy Tamil New Year for everyone (Me, Lindemans Framboise. Not convinced this was raspberry, tasted more like cherry).
3. To health, wealth and happiness (Jade, Chimay Rouge. A traditional Chinese greeting for a strong Trappist Ale).
4. To fit people (Me, Lindemans Cassis again. Yes, the standard of toast dropped here).
5. To true love and may we find it this year (Jade, two glasses of beer, one passion fruit, one apple. What a soppy toast, bless!)

Realised just now that we missed out Delirium, some beer that Braden was raving about in Montreal. Also didn't drink any Kwak, the good stuff in the sciencey-type glasses. Would def go again then, if only to finish off the menu (we have a looong way to go!)

At some point we discussed the concept of instantly fit people, and decided we didn't really know that many. Our contenders:

They will remain unnamed for legal purposes, and they're not the best photos, but I'd like to point out that clearly my contender, "blue tie", is fitter than the other two. Right girls?

And finally, you wanted to see photos of finishing finals. Well, I sadly can't locate mine, but here are some others:

Venice Part II - Verona and Venice Proper

After Castelfranco we spent a day in Verona - very pretty and lovely and old, you will see once Jade puts the photos up! Here we did lots of walking around. Obvy lots of references to Romeo and Juliette, including a building they've turned into her "house" with a balcony, museum and big statue outside it. Supposedly touching Juliette's right breast will give you luck in love, so we all did a bit of that and are now waiting for the magic to happen!

One night in Verona and then we headed to Venice proper. Stayed in a lovely lovely apartment called BB-Venice in Favaro - about 30 mins on the bus from Venice proper, but SO nice and pink it was worth it!


Two days were spent getting lost amongst the many canals and rios and alleys and pontes in Canal - it all looked the same! Luckily Sparrow was a master map reader and so we were never really lost, just a bit lost now and then. Still, even the skills of the mighty Sparrow couldn't find us the excellent gelataria we went to randomly on the first day but then couldn't find at all ever again despite searching desperately for it. Sigh. I miss ice cream. But not all the scary masks and things in the shop windows, check this one out, how much do they wanna cram in there?!


Best way to see Venice was taking the Number 1 vaporetta (public water bus) from Pizziale Roma down to Campo San Marco, thus catching all the highlights along the Grand Canal, then taking the day to stroll back up. Spent a good amount of time (and money!) drinking cocktails in Cafe Florian, a fancy schmancy famous place in St Mark's Square. Also had lovely pizza in the hard to find Ae Oche, with the Queen Goose logo. It seems very Americanised, but the food's great, even if the waiters were rushed off their feet!


We played cards at a cafe by a canal, sat in the same random square lots of times (forgotten which square!) and soaked up the sun and prettiness. Venice is so pretty and a pedestrian's dream - plus since it's so heavily dependant upon tourism, people are really friendly everywhere! Perhaps a little more expensive than other European cities, but definitely worth a visit if you've not already been. I'm sure Bertie would love to have you!

Venice - Part I, Castelfranco

I have submitted my WA3, woo hoo!

I am now meant to be creating my unit of work on Multicultural Maths. However, I can't be bothered to do that yet. Please understand, I really am very excited about this unit of work, but what with the bloody foxes screeching all night, the crazy man next door holding long distance phone calls at 1am in his back garden (annoyingly close to my bedroom window), and the builders starting their relentless drilling (and singing!) at 8am, well, I am pretty tired today. Except when it comes to using bold in my writing.

Ok, ranting over. Before I bring you part I of the Venice trip, some points of note. In list form for Bertie.

1. Jade, p244 of Captain Corelli's Mandolin: "I am the breve, Carlo here is the semibreve, he is the crotchet". A mere 6 pages later: "he could sit with unnerving patience watching Pelagia's hands doing the formal dance of the crochet." So that's how you spell them. Really, what are the chances?
2. RIP the Facebook man. Those of you who have met my littlest brother know that he is almost the splitting image of the facebook man, so this is a sad day for us indeed. Initially I was annoyed by the FB changes, but now I am starting to appreciate their true potential stalker powers.

Venice Part I
So we went here, the Veneto region in the northeast of Italy:


Map's not great, but Bertie lives in that place just south of the 5 - Castelfranco. Very exciting place - it seems Berts has found himself an Aylesbury in Italy. Some people would have thought this was impossible, but where there's a will there's a way.

Our holiday began with a little trip on the train. Both transport and drama were to feature strongly in the week (alongside ice cream, strong coffee, and spritz - more on this delight later). Bertie met us at Treviso station and we got on the train to Castelfranco. Strangely none of the stations had any signs on them, and despite purporting to know his way around, we completely missed our stop and ended up in Venice proper (aka Venezia aka the old swampy bit with the canals etc.) Our tickets weren't valid for this journey but luckily some random Australian Italians in our carriage were having a huge long kick-off with the ticket conductors about their tickets, so they didn't catch us. Excellent.

Anyway, to cut a loooong story short, eventually we made it to Castelfranco (learning lots of useful Italian along the way, particularly colours, mmmm gello treno.) Lots of people stared at us, I'd like to think it was because we were stunning rather than because were brown-skinned. Important note: there are about 4 brown people in the whole of Italy, 2 of whom were Dina (Sparrow) and I (I guess Jade counts as half ethnic, congrats Jade!).

Once in Castelfranco we spent a delightful two days wandering around and eating things. Highlights here include (once again in list form):

1. Bertie's lovely flatmate Francesca, who gave up her room for us, and spent many a happy evening chortling away in front of her computer (much like me, heehee)
   
2. Pushing two beds together and then sleeping sideways on them with Sparrow and Jade, and then slowly falling into the growing gap between the beds during the night
3. The electricity cutting out just in our apartment after a crazy loud storm with thunder and lightening and everything. We all hid in the bed and had a lovely nap and then chatted away.
   
4. Being trialled in an informal court by "Grandma Pink" and "Carmela" held in front of Bertie's building - this was particularly dramatastic because people kept popping their heads out of their windows and chucking their two pence in. Basically "Grandma Pink" bumped into us leaving Bertie's place on Tuesday morning and told him it was against the rules to have guests in Castelfranco unless they were registered with the carabinieri (aka Italian military police aka the Sardinies). Castelfranco apparently is a hot bed for illegal immigrants (where were they all, I didn't see any!) and so they were worried Bertie was setting up some kinda immigration racket (obviously, duh, I mean why else would he know any brown people?). "Carmela" joined in the fun and thus it was decided we couldn't stay there any more. However, later they softened and touched our faces and chatted with us etc. and then decided we could stay after all. Very strange procedures indeed.
5. Drinking numerous spritzes while wandering around Castelfranco for hours (strange it took us this long, it's not actually that big). I think this was Bertie's elaborate plan to stop us getting on trains all over Italy - sabotage, *sigh*. Anyway from Wiki: Spritz, an alcoholic beverage has its origins in the Veneto Region, Italy. Spritz is a bitter, summery pre-dinner aperitif made of either Aperol or Campari and mixed with White Wine or Prosecco and Sparkling Mineral Water. It is usually served in a lowball glass with ice, a slice of orange, and sometimes an olive. Particularly like the bit where they say it's a pre-dinner aperitif - one day we started drinking it at about 11am in Beppe's bar, and there was already a bloke in there drinking before us! Sure the Italians don't binge drink - they just drink all day instead.
6. Sparrow getting proposed to by the Internet cafe owner (ok, this didn't really happen, but it could have).
7. Teaching them to play 304 - an old school Jaffna card game, quite complicated, made more so by having to play with a local Trentine card deck, which is rather different to our standard Americo-French deck.

Can't really remember much more, and that all sounds rather droll, but really, it was a laugh a minute! Particularly trying to speak Italian - gosh we were awful! Tales from Verona tomorrow.