Hello Everyone!
This week overall has been fairly good. Tuesday at prac I worked with mostly with Ned (a austistic boy) in my class so that i can put into practise the techniques my teacher told me to teach him. It actually went really well overall. For my craft club the kids worked really well and ended up making so amazing masks! They also loved the examples Nate and i made for them, i made the blue and the green ones, Nate made the spiderman one. The school then asked us grad students to come back on thursday for the Mystery Festival. Every year the school (mainly the parents)puts on this day of experiments and general mystery for all the students. They start the day with the entire student body watching a play that the parents wrote. This year the play was about a bunch of people flying around in a spaceship looking to buy property on one of six planets: Bubblurn (planet covered in bubbles), Lodestond (planet full of floating rocks), Nomoon (planet covered in aluminium), Geiser (planet covered in geisers), Burnus (planet on fire) or White planet (covered in white chalky discs). After they take off back to earth after visiting the planets they realize that Mr. E (the gr 7 teacher) isnt on the ship, which means hes on one of the planets. They do howvere have his backpack and know that he collects a sample from every plane hes been on. Then the play ends and all the students return to class and the first grade level comes down to do the experiments. They were broken into groups of about 4 kids and each sent to a station (i was station one!!!) to do thier experiments. For each experiment they had to compare the sample given from each planet to the sample in the backpack. If it was the same then Mr E had both been and returned from that planet. They LOVED the experiments, they made lava lamps, became a human battery, made rocks float, and played with dry ice (if you ever get a chance pour water with dish soap in it over some dry ice). Then they got to watch the last two experiments. By the end of their time they had figured out that three of them he has been to and back from, and three thats uncertain. This continues with all of the grades throughout the day then at the end the teachers in their class play the powerpoint which contains 6 huge collages of every student in the school and they had to look in the three planets for Mr Es picture. All in all a fantastic way to encourage science in the school. Here are some pics of me doing the experiments with the grade 6s : http://s636.photobucket.com/albums/uu81/mcawesome-in-aussie/Working%20with%20the%20kids/
Then improving my week even more was i got my first mark back (their grading scalle goes from 1-7) which was a 5 - (somewhere between a 66-72%) !! I was really excited by this! YAY!
On Sat Nate and I went to the convention center on Southbank for the Education Fair. They had a ton of free stuff however wouldnt give us any cuz we are just pre-service teachers. Once i realized this we spent the rest of the day telling ppl we were actual teachers! lol it was actually alot of fun, cant wait for the real thing! After we finished there we had about 4 hours before the fireworks started at 7pm (even thought there was people claiming their spot at 11 am..)so we went to the mall and grabbed a dice game called Greed$ (which is exactly like Farkle lol) then headed back to the beach. Oh while at the mall we found a lego darth vader (sp?) and a a random hidden pagoda at the beach so we took pics of that too. We wernt really sure where to grab a seat but the guy informed us anywhere we would be able to see so we grabed a spot next to the boom camera from channel 7 figuring they would grab a good spot. About 530 to entertain everyone they had planes come in for an air show right above us. It was pretty sweet! After that Nate decided to go get us some fries at about 6. At 7pm he still wasnt back - thats how many ppl were there. There wasnt a spot to be had (sitting or standing) anywhere along the boardwalk. while he was gone i was actually on tv as they had the camera scanning the crowds while they did the live broadcasts. At 7 he finally got back just in time to watch the begining of the show. And what better way to start it then by two jets flying directly above us breaking the sound barrier! The fireworks were amazing! Not only because they were all put to music but also because they were everywhere! and i do mean everywhere, from the tops of the city buildings, to the bridge to the bardge in the middle of the river! You didnt really notice the coreographing of the music until Halo by Beyonce came on, then whenever she said halo a circle firework would go off and look exactly like said halo! Then a slow song came on and everyone was like wtf? rainbows?wat? LOL but then some went "look over there" so we look to the bridge and the fireworks were coming off the bridge like a waterfall! it was so pretty! then the song mentioned somthing about skies of blue and the whole sky lit up with blue fireworks. it was awesome. After about a half hour or so the show was over and the jets flew over again to end it all. (when you look at the pics the gets just look like balls of fire) It then took us ever to get home. Over all a very very good day! http://s636.photobucket.com/albums/uu81/mcawesome-in-aussie/Fireworks%20at%20southbank/
As for the close future: i have 2 assignments due, and two next week then a week off then 4 weeks of prac teaching. sigh..
Status of assignments: 1 down - 3 to go....