Wow – we’re no sooner back into the swing of the term when we’re all on show with an Expo Day.  This time we all had to do creative writing lessons with the Grade Ones highlighting the THRASS method of teaching.   Visitors to the school are free to wonder in and out of the classrooms to see how our lessons are presented and what the children are capable of doing.

My colleagues and I decided to present different aspects of the THRASS programme and then have the children use the THRASS chart to help them write their sentences.  My brief was to take my class to the I.T. room, do my lesson and have them play the THRASS song book games on the computers. Great idea – I prepared a Power Point presentation of the new graphemes and phonemes they were learning and it all worked perfectly when I tried it on on my computer at home – the words and pictures floated up perfectly at the click of the mouse but when I tried it at school – the letters stuck to together and refused to unstick – Fortunately no visitors had yet appeared so I quickly switched to plan B!   We rapped the chart, sang some songs then went straight to the computers and started the fun part!  And it all went down very well.  The visitors popped in and out and looked reasonable impressed that the Grade Ones were having fun while learning.  PHEW!   No explanation of why the programme didn’t work – but it has taught me to try it out first before presenting it on an unfamiliar computer!  Technology is great till it goes wrong!  One up for the Fearful Freds.   Stress point for the Ambitious Alices.

I consider myself to be fit and healthy.   I eat well, exercise regularly and take my Vitamins.  Before the school holidays I had a bout of laryngitis – but that is pretty normal for a teacher in the winter time.   So when after feeling perfectly well on Sunday night I suddenly had an attack of the shivers followed by vomiting I thought, this should be over in 24 hours.  I took the day off on Monday confident that a GAP student would take good care of the princesses, But my temperature did not come down and I had a dreadful pain in my right breast and round to my back.  Tuesday saw me a the doctor’s office – maybe it’s a bug that needs an antibiotic, I thought.  The doctor was mystified.   My lungs sounded clear, it wasn’t a bladder infection so she thought it was viral.   She sent me for a blood test the results of which revealed a bacterial infection – but where?   The chest pain was the only clue – so off I was sent for chest x-rays which believe it or revealed that I had — Pneumonia!  How did that happen?  So this old teacher is man down and fretting over her poor princesses.  Luckily its a long weekend – Thursday to Sunday.  Hopefully the antibiotic will have done its job by Monday and I will be Back in the Classroom!