Categories: uncategorized
Date: 23 September 2004 21:13:52
Trying to teach my Year Eights yesterday was as effective as opening the fridge door and teaching a tub of margarine and a bag of mixed salad. I told them as much. Do you want to be a lettuce all your life? Amazingly, it worked. This morning we achieved more in five minutes than we had in fifty yesterday!
But, I have to celebrate a success story here! IN Year Seven I have a lad whom all the other teachers are trying valiently to get moved to special school because he's extremely immature and "cannot learn". OK, can you explain to my how my little lad who cannot sit still and concentrate managed to get 14/18 on a test on adding decimals? No, he wasn't copying - I was specifically watching him - and he only got one digit wrong on each of the ones he did make a mistake on. He can add decimals, my little lad who they said would never learn to count. :) Now all I have to do is work the same magic on my latest acquisition, a lad with the emotional age of three (he's actually nine) and an attention span, even when really trying his best, of fifteen seconds. I know, I timed him. There are an awful lot of fifteen seconds in an hour's maths lesson. No wonder we're both exhausted by the end of it. He's far far too excitable to be a lettuce - maybe the caterpillar crawling on it instead.