The last week hasn't been too great. I am one of those relative rarities... a 'grown up' with severe asthma. And last week, whenever all the other adults in school went down with a cold that lasted about 5 days.... mine went to my chest and has had me on the verge of being rushed to hospital since Tuesday. :( I missed 3.5 days at school, which has been very frustrating, as it's only a 3.5 week placement. I've been nebulised at the doctors, put on such a high inhaler dose that it's made me lose my voice, and now I'm on high dosage steroid pills.... which is fun. Every morning I wake up so wheezy that I can hardly get out of bed.... I haven't been this bad in years.

But.... I'm going back to school tomorrow. I am! I'm really enjoying this placement, which is why it's so frustrating to be missing a chunk of it, and I'm looking forward to getting back. The kids are great, and my placement partner and I are getting on really well. This is our final week, and I'm going to miss the kids a lot... although the Easter holiday will be a welcome break...

... until I remember that 6,000 word masters assignment 2 I have to get done...!

In under 3 months I'll be a qualified teacher.... wow. :)

Just posting quickly to let the few people who read this know that my 2nd placement is going really well. I'm loving being with year 1, and this die hard key stage 2 specialist is actually being tempted towards key stage 1...! Ideally I'd love to work in a primary school where I can jump around all years... but that's all wishful thinking at the moment as there are very few jobs going in Southampton right now...

We're teaching about 50% timetable at the moment, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm currently planning literacy lessons for next week (non chronological reports) which involve letters from Alfie the Alien....!

I started my 2nd placement on Wednesday and so far it's gone really well. I'm in a Year 1 class in a single form entry infant school - so there are 90 children in the entire school! Compared to my last placement school which was a Junior school of 600, it's quite a culture shock. I'm really enjoying being in KS1, and although I'm pretty sure i'm still a KS2 specialist at hearts, I do want to teach KS1 in my teaching career too. It's very different to working with the older ones, but there are elements I really love, such as the amount of singing/music you can bring into the day.

The focus of this placement is 'team teaching', so I'm in the same class as one of my friends. We start teaching on Monday, and are doing a 50-60% timetable for 3 weeks. We've not been given much guidance from the uni on this team teaching lark, so we're still finding our feet in terms of planning/splitting things down etc. But I'm sure we'll be fine.

I'm feeling really good as it's Saturday evening and I've finished my planning for next week. Wheeee! :)