The school year is coming to an end...

Things have been very busy here at school, as we have only two weeks left and it seems are trying to quickly fit in everything. Today we took the students who help the school in some way (PE Monitors, Road Patrolers, Librarians, etc) to Rainbow's End. Rainbow's End is New Zealand's largest theme park. Many of the students in my class give up their time for these jobs, so Mrs. Thompson and I were able to also go. This was nice because we didn't have to chaperone, but were allowed to just wander from group to group. The theme park wasn't very big (about 1/3 the size of Great America), but we still were running from ride to ride and didn't get them all in.

During class, we are trying to quickly finish up all of our units. In English they were assigned their big advertising project and all the students in the class have taken off with it. They had to create a product and then two print ads and a radio advertisement for it-then they will present it to me next week. It really proved that when the students are able to do something of interest they will work. We've got Fergie perfume, muffins, the kid who normally sits and reads car magazines is now designing a car ad, and even the two boys who sit and graffiti their notebooks are now making ads for some product they designed that will make graffititing easier :). I'm hoping to still squeeze in looking at some commercials from Super Bowl next week and also looking at this Front Line video called "Merchants of Cool," which talks about how companies such as MTV and Sprite market to teens. I thought that would be an entertaining way to wrap up this unit. Also, I really lucked out here because we happen to also be teaching a new unit starting this week on none other than ....puberty. We have to do six lessons on it and one of the lessons is going to be on media stereotyping and effects on self-esteem...so we will look once again at magazines and tie this and the "Merchants of Cool" together. Luckily, the difficult lessons on puberty (or the ones that result in all the giggling) are being conducted by a lady coming in from Family Planning-so I could wipe the sweat off my forehead on that one.


Finally, the students are taking questions they generated about different parts of the world and researching one question this week. Next week they will need to present their findings to the class. We also just started up a quick unit on fractions, decimals, and percents in math. Add into these plans singing practices for our Leaver's Assembly (this is for the Year 8's-a graduation for them as they leave to go to high school) and art, fitness, spelling, a Christmas concert, etc...and I don't know how we are going to get it all in. The students have also been helping take down the classroom and the last day of school will be spent moving Mrs. Thompson's things to her new classroom.

In life outside the classroom, I'm also trying to get in some last minute activities before my three weeks of backpacking begin and at the same time do some relaxing. Last weekend I spent relaxing as Jan and her boyfriend were away in Wellington seeing Beckham play. This weekend is looking like it will get me into the Christmas spirit (something that has been unusually hard and I think it is because I am still in shorts)-Friday we have the staff Christmas party in Auckland. Then Saturday I think Jan and I are doing some Christmas shopping and/or the Lion Brewery Tour, and Sunday Cory and I are planning on making Christmas cookies (he already told the class that we are making them all cookies!!). Overall, the time is just going to fly by these next two weeks!