sponsored bounce

if you were following any of my tweets you will know that it went well. hmmmm, as well as could be expected. It was still pretty fun thought.

The highlights for me were;
Lots of pizza
Breakfast being delivered by the head
Coffee generously given by a parent
(and just to prove that my world doesn't revolve around food) learning how to do a back drop

I have a feeling that none of the kids knew what sleep deprivation meant before that night. Having been with the TSYT I know A) what its like and B) I'm a grumpy little so and so. I did try telling them all, but they were all pretty adamant that they were going to stay awake ALL night. I give them their due, about 4 of them managed it. The rest of them hit the deck, either in sleeping bags, on chairs or literally on the deck at around 4:30. By 8, which was when it finished, everyone was in various stages of zombification. And they all managed to pull the 'death warmed up' look off with a smile, and lots of cheering during the countdown!

as you can probably tell, I was pretty tired too. Its taken me 2 days to get around to writing this and posting it up. I'm still pretty tired. Had to check myself into a hotel. My house was the stage of a party, and I really really needed my sleep. Glad I did. By the sounds of it, things were still going till the wee small hours.

I had loads of fun. Reminded me that I should try and find some adult gym lessons. Some of the kids taught me how to do sit drops and back drops. Now all i have to do is master the turning in the air thing. Not as easy as it looks. And I have the bruises to prove it.

Lots of pictures were taken. They should be on the school website soon. And i will let you know how much money was raised when the final figures come it.

Cant wait for next year!

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topsy turvy

I just knew it couldn't last!
The past few weeks have been really quiet in terms of practicals that teachers have ordered. It meant that I could get through my stock take and help out a lot more with DoE and with GFA planning. I thought that was it until the end of the year. I mean, we only have 2 weeks until we break up. Literally.

But I tell you what, it has been incredibly busy this week. My work sheet has been double banked!I'm not knocking it. Its been a real challenge getting everything out after I had mentally wound down on that front. And doing all the other stuff related to end of school year.

Yesterday I was helping put with the citizenship students. They are helping to transform a sunken garden into the Memorial Garden. Its going to take them quite a while to get it done I think. Its a huge area and the weeds are like bushes.

I also made a bag for the Panotmeter in textiles. Mrs Rose was lovely, and she helped me to make it. Its actually rather good. I also made the pantometer, and its a bit bigger and heavier than a retail one, which is why I decided that a bag was in order. I am actually in the middle of writing an instructable on how to make a pantometer. Its devastating to know how very useful they are in the field, especially on line transects, and yet how many establishments and field studies centers do not possess one.

The biology field trip is next week. Wednesday and Friday. I am going on Wednesday. The students will have a tour of the site, and some practice using the equipment, before they start to plan their pilot study. I am just hoping its not going to be as hot as it has been for the past 10 days. That will be just too much.

Same goes for Duke of Edinburgh expedition. That's going to be next week too. Most of these kids will have never walked so far, nor carried so much weight. Combine the two in stupidly hot temperatures, and its asking for trouble. I am going to have to make sure I get them to pack extra water and dioralite.

I am actually looking forward to next week. I wont actually be in school the majority of the week what with all the stuff going on. So far no one has asked me for anything, and I am hoping that it will stay like that.

In the meantime, I am going to be in school for a whole 24 hours. PE are running a sonsored bounce starting from 8:45 this morning right through until tomorrow. I dont deal to well with sleep deprivation so I have brought a sleeping bag with me. How I intend to sleep with kids on trampolines is going to be another story. I think I may be twittering quite a bit tonight.

Right, its off to work for me!

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Code Changes

I have just been ending a couple of posts (look!!! constructive criticism. It does happen), when I noticed my layout was all out of wack.

I am terrible sorry. I appears that Blogger has changed a few lines of widget code and its pushed everything else out. Please bear with me. I will try and sort it out over the weekend. I am not particularly good at this, and there are 7 pages of code to go through!

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Going old skewl

A GCSE practical calls for lots of microscops and slides of cells. The slides are not an issue, but with so many microscopes out of action (both repairable and iriparable) at the moment it was possible to get a class set of microscopes out there. Instead, Miss Carnell found an old slide projector which worked and a whole BOX full of biological slides. Very good ones too.
Even I don't remember using slide projectors at school!

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Pre-PEC

Last night was pre-PEC for the DoE kids. It was a lot of hard work for both myself and the teams. I spent a couple of days last week setting it up (and was a little annoyed when people couldn't follow instruction, but that is another story.)


(Team; Tesco's Finest walking in the wrong direction)

pre-PEC is the pre-Practise Expedition Challenge, and it sees them navigating around the school grounds following a route card like they will have on expedition and finding pictures of signs they might see (such as Permissive FootPath or waymarkers) or they may have to perform an activity such as putting up a tent, first aid scenario, meeting up with a teacher, and I also put in a pack weighing task and checked their competence in using the safety fuel bottles.


(yes, there was only one member in this team. The rest didnt bother turning up!)

All in all, there were 21 stations for them to visit, and I believe I underestimated their speed... or lack there of. By 5pm, only two of the teams had gotten half way around! When I timed myself, I got round in an hour, so I thought I would give them an hour and a half! But 2 hours, and only 1 team had gone more than half way!


(The A-Team forgot to fake their sprain, still talked First Aid though)

Some of them didn't have all their kit yet! I couldn't believe it when one of them told me her pack hadn't arrived in the post yet. I mean, the practice expedition (which was cancelled) was supposed to be last week. One of the girls arrived with the tags still on her walking shoes! Two days in those shoes are going to kill her feet. And its not as if we haven't been on the case. Every week.

I believe the expedition is going to be interesting.


(Little Miss & Mr Men team photo)

I think they enjoyed it. Slow as they were, I didn't hear any complaints at the end. A couple looked a bit disappointed when I told them to stop and meet up in the dinning room! It was good. Nice and sunny. Sat out at my station. I was on first aid. I had briefed one member in each team to fake a sprain when they came to me. The responses were very different. One team didn't even notice that one of their team members had fallen over. That was very funny. The rest were really good though. One girl faked it so well, that they thought she had actually done in her ankle. The boys were most put out when they found out it was all an act.

This is Ben, one of the 6th formers. He was kind enough to help me set out all the pictures and he was a marshal during the exercise, keeping everyone chivying along and in the right direction. If you are wondering, he is sitting on a bin we found. Some kid had the bright idea of turning it into a rocking chair! Actually quite comfortable, not that I approve of such behaviour of course.

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The Rabbids have arrived!!!!!

and they can now cheer me up while I am doing my paper work!!!!
I actually manged to find the whole set, which is pretty spectacular since they are rarer than live e-coli in virkon.

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