This week went by pretty fast even though I spent the last half of it nursing a nasty cold. I’m definitely adjusting better in the classroom…realizing where to pick my battles. We started looking at advertising in magazines this week, which was interesting. A teacher’s aid that was in the classroom in while I was teaching one lesson commented, “They seemed really into it.” That they did-trouble was I’m not sure whether they were in to looking at the ads or the articles—some were definitely more intrigued by pictures of Britney Spears picking a zit than cutting and pasting advertisements into different categories. I’m definitely going to rethink how I do part II of this lesson. In the middle of next week I’m assigning them their big advertising project so hopefully I can figure out a way for them to pay attention so they can use the information from the next time we look at ads(types of propaganda used) in their projects. The good news is that they did happily do some sharing this time around—I had them discuss different ads they found in their groups and share the one they thought was the best. From now on I think I will be having groups share instead of individuals because the teeth-pulling was at a minimum. Because I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to compete with their talking, I revised our English lesson and took advantage of their NIE program. They get free newspapers for their school (I think they rotate which classroom gets them each week) and teachers were given a book of activities that can be used with them. I’m hoping to copy some of these activities because they would work great at almost all levels. I had the students do some activities that were in the book: one in which they had to write about an advertisement they found in the paper, one where they found an article about a place and answered questions, and a fun one where they looked through the paper and listed five gifts they would like to give someone and their total cost). The activities in this book were really great in that they could be adapted for any newspaper and were geared towards all different areas and intelligences. I chose activities that I thought corresponded with what we were doing in class (countries and advertising) as well as telling them the last one was to get ready for Christmas shopping –wish that activity was for real because I would have scored some great trips to Fiji!!
One of the students I’m very fond of also helped make my week special. From the first day he has been very curious about America (I think he watches too many movies because he is the one who asked me if Americans all sit outside on their porches all the time). Dragging myself to school sick one day wishing I was still in bed, he came in the classroom and immediately ran over to me and was like, “Miss Castleberry, I got you a present.” Of course, cynical Sarah was like, “is this a joke?” How cute…he went Christmas shopping and was handing out his presents the next day. So my sick day was brightened with my new doggie keychain (of course I’d been rambling about my puppies during one of our breaks). It was nice on that day to remember that not all 30 students are rolling their eyes at me.
Saturday we took advantage of the awesome weather and headed into Auckland. We went to Kelly Tarton’s Antarctic Encounter. It was pretty much an aquarium with an Antarctica theme. They had this ride that you go on where you look like you are getting into one of the machines they drive in Antarctica. Then you go around by the seals-it was cool how close you got to them this way and they seemed to come closer and be just as interested in you as you were of them. They had a lot of interesting exhibits about the explorers that have gone to Antarctica, but anyone who knows me and museums knows I didn’t spend too much time reading all the exhibits…though the pictures and displays were enjoyable.
After spending some time here we headed to one of the many beaches. Cory made some friends and played in the water while Jan and I just did some sunbathing…or sun-snoozing. Then we treated ourselves to ice cream and headed home.

Sunday Jan and I went to a cafe to listen to a band..it was very relaxing and great way to end the weekend!