Week 1: Wednesday

Yesterday the whole school participated in cross country. It was a really cool thing to see. Again, you would never see something like this happen at an elementary school in the States. All the classes come together and run in age divisions around what’s called the ‘oval.’ Obviously, the distance they run depends on their age. If I remember correctly, the oldest grades ran a 2K.

The neatest part about this event was how the school was divided up into “Houses.” The students were divided up by their last names into four teams. It reminded me a lot about Harry Potter. I believe they have a few whole-school competitions throughout the year. Each team has a house chant too. The names and colors are Yarrah(Red), Namoi(Yellow), Mangiri(Blue), and Willungo(Green). You well know now that most schools in Australia wear uniforms. For sport day each student wears their sport shirt which represents their team’s color of course. They also turn their hats inside out, which displays their sport color too.

We also had our first weekly “check in” meeting with one of the principals. This school has one head principal and then three or four “deputy principals.” The deputy principals are all responsible for a few year levels in the school. Anyway, this was just a time for all of us to come together and reflect. I was slightly distracted during this meeting because I knew the moment I got back to my classroom I had to teach my first lesson.

I taught a math lesson that started with a math warm up if Around the World multiplication and then the class divided into four stations. I had one station working with decimals, place values, expanded form, and standard form of numbers. The next station was at the interactive white board where the students practice working with fractions in four different ways. The third station was where I walked them through equivalent fractions by folding and shading pieces of paper. Finally, the fourth station was a division practice board game. Each of these stations lasted twenty minutes. For me, this was a very large lesson to teach so soon to students I felt like I barely knew, but it really did go pretty well. My teacher gave me a lot of helpful feedback,
which I appreciated greatly.

It was Jordyn’s 24th birthday on Wednesday! We all made plans to go to the Caboolture Sports Club for supper. We all waited after school for people to get done with their grade level meetings and then we ventured over to Angie’s for some social time before we were ferried to the
Club. It was so nice to kick back with the girls and enjoy some good laughs. Unfortunately,
Kari and I were bummed to find that the Club’s food was nothing compared to our host mum’s cooking. Kimberly bought a cheesecake for Jordyn which we were all lucky enough to enjoy together. It. Was. AWESOME. Best cheesecake I’ve had in quite a while!

After the party we headed home to rest for the evening and I was able to call my parents before they headed off to work! I loved talking to them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen as often as I would like due to the time change!

Weeks in the classroom just seem to fly by. And it’s crazy to think that I only two weeks of holiday and then two weeks in the classroom and I’ll be home again.

Here are a couple of phrases that differ from ours.
“Good on ya!” – This is like us saying, “Good for you!”
“Straight away.” – This is like us saying. “Right away.” I almost feel like the students don’t know what I mean when I say “right away.”

The bonnet – the hood of a car (get it, bonnet – hood, pretty neat! J)

Take care, all!! Xoxo