Pen-pushing

Raining when I left my flat so I drove into work. Feel as though the cold is on it's way out which is a surprise. Thanks CC Lemon! Might have a coldsore coming though :-(

Found out from Meguro-sensei that our team-teaching this afternoon was cancelled so I had the whole day to myself. First thing was to prepare an extra 20 copies of my TV schedule activity for the SHS ALT meeting tomorrow. Then I had to do my answer sheet for the CLAIR Japanese Self Study course. Must remember to post it this week. I had English club today so I had to prepare that. I thought I would have had some ideas over the weekend but my current lethargy wouldn't let me. So I resorted to looking through the Board of Education guidebooks I'd found during the post-quake tidy up. After a good hour or so I eventually found a couple of activities. The first was a warm-up; given a sheet with the alphabet on it, the students, in groups, had to think of the longest word they could for each letter. This worked well. The second activity was "Shipwrecked!". In groups, the students had to choose five items from a list that would help them survive on a desert island. This worked really well when I aksed each group "What did you take?"After they said an item, I asked "Why did you take it?" and the students had to answer. This was great because it gave an oppertunity for the students to think of an answer in free-form, that is without using a model sentence. It also gave an oppertunity for me to just talk about what I thought would be good things to take so they had an oppertunity to listen to me.

Time to leave school to get ready for tonight's send-off for Holly and Kieona. Annie has booked a couple of cottages at Belnatio, the hotel in the mountains where the Croatian football team trained during the World Cup in 2002. It's supposed to be really nice up there with luxurious cabins. Before then, I have to buy a goodbye pressie, collect stuff my stuff from the flat and meet Annie at the station. Best get a move on.