Project 52 Week 9

Week Nine.
Much less disruption from the weather this week, which meant the arrival of some big school groups of French teenagers on their half-term break. One school needed exam techniques for the FCE and the other group wanted Baccalaureate preparation. One thing I can say about my job- it is never dull and routine.

Sunday

Sunday started fair and after dropping Cairis up to the fort, I went for a drive to the North Coast. The island is shaped like a slice of cake on its side, from North to South. The sea is a long way down from the cliffs on the north, and the south is at sea level. I walked along to Les Platons. This is the highest point of the island, and you can see the television and radio mast on the right. Just across the water are Guernsey and Sark, and you can just make them out on the horizon.

Monday

We were busy today. The plan was to have a CPD session, but the group who were leaving on Friday asked us to teach on our Monday afternoon off, so it was moved to next week. The kids are very nice, so it wasn't a problem, and means I'll have Friday instead. Also, their timetable is slightly different from the adults, so I get Wednesday afternoon as well-Yay! In the evening we had a visit from friends who brought us flowers for our anniversary. They managed to find a bouquet which had some of the flowers in the original one from 25 years ago.

M went Morris dancing, and bought all the men a drink to celebrate the event too. I stayed home and had a discussion online with the other ELTChat moderators.

Tuesday 

Silver wedding anniversary. It doesn't feel like 25 years since we got married. My friend said that we hadn't changed much, but I think she was being kind :-) M has definitely turned silver.  I lost my wedding ring many years ago. It was made of Skye silver, and had a deep Celtic design. Unfortunately, I have short fingers and I found it hard to bend my finger, so didn't wear my ring often. Malcolm replaced it with a new one- silver of course! I bought him a silver collar and a 25-year-old bottle of Calvados. In the evening we had a lovely meal at the local steakhouse.

Wednesday

No afternoon teaching today, so I met my friend in town for a bit of shopping. We had lunch in town, and when I returned home I realised that we had no internet connection. This was a problem as I had been planning to moderate the evening chat. Fortunately I had two of the important people's phone numbers, so I sent a text message explaining my predicament. Of course I forgot to write my name on the message. I'm so used to social media telling everyone who you are when you post something, duh! The connection came back about 5 minutes before the end of the chat. In the meantime, I curled up to watch the news. I hope my friends in Ukraine are okay- it looks very hairy in the Crimea.

Thursday

Last afternoon with the kids. I decided to do a task-based lesson with them, as they had been to visit Durrell the previous day. I dug out the Penny Ur book to use the Zoo task, and adapted the idea to make the discussion/task  more visual and kinaesthetic. The teacher who had accompanied them to Jersey asked if he could observe the lesson, which I didn't mind at all. I explained the rationale behind what I was going to do, and then discussed the lesson with him afterwards. He thoroughly enjoyed watching the critical thinking and collaboration which took place, and the kids were happy to present their findings afterwards. They are usually in such large groups that they don't get much opportunity to speak, so our smaller classes were exactly what they needed.

Friday 

Another afternoon off. What a luxury! I had some preparation to do for the Cert course which starts tomorrow, so spent most of the afternoon at my desk. The cats were my close companions for the afternoon. In the evening we went to the Farmer's Inn, in St Ouen. This is a Parish in the West of the island.

Saturday

End of the week and getting ready for the next one. I spent my time indoors. The sky was blue in the morning, but quickly clouded over and the wind was biting. . In the evening we popped out for a quick bite in a local pub.  On our return,we decided to light the fire and stay home to watch some of the programmes we had pre-recorded ages ago.

Next week will be busy, busy, busy:-)