h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

do you make your own ice cream?

i can highly recomend it, my pal got me an ice cream maker for my birthday.
this is totally irrelevant to your page, but i just though i'd boast about my thick, creamy, yummy, *run out of adjectives* ice cream

Currently no, I don't make my own ice cream. I wish I did, though - my mother used to make it when I was little and it was bleedin' marvellous.

Are they expensive then, ice cream makers? Does it take much effort? Christmas is approaching so perhaps I should ask for one?

I think mine was about £30, and they're a bit of a potch, to be honest. You can get ones that freeze themselves, but they're dead expensive. Mine has a silver bowl that had to be frozen, it gets so cold that it freezes the ice cream mixture as the machine stirs it. We went through a phase of having loads, i think tesco's had over-ordered thick and double cream, because there was always a lot of it in the reduced fridge. Whipping cream works just as well, and is cheaper. Fresh banana, with a squeeze of lemon in it is lush, as is fresh strawberry, raspberry, peach.......... My partner makes coconut and almond flavour. We fed ice cream to our friend who has just had a baby, and is breast feeding for the first time, and her baby is piling on the wieght like a sumo wrestler!

i suppose it takes the hassle out of the freezing and stirring business, and it's ready in about 15 minutes........
as there is no ice cream smiley

Thanks for the info - ice cream maker starts this year's Christmas list. It'll probably come from mother - she always seems to give me something to use in the kitchen.

Welcome to h2g2, by the way - that's a very minimalist page you have there. All I can say in reply to it is on behalf of all teachers everywhere 'Sorry.' When I tell parents I'm looking forward to a holiday they always reply something along the lines of 'Well, it's alright for you.'

that's ok, don't apologise, i blame the parents.....oops, that's me..

i know what you mean, (to a certain extent anyway), i did a term of PGCE in secondary, until i got pregnant again. I was supposed to be deferred, but the uni cocked it up, and i had endless trouble with social security and stuff, and end up homeless for 3 months, and only got a house 1 month before the baby was born. so i won't be going back there!
i tried to get back to complete this year, but there were no spaces, so i'm doing an FAETC one day a week at the FE college, which is a lot more convenient, no probs with childcare, i can walk there, and the people are a lot more friendly.
why am i telling you this? sorry!
enjoy your holiday, if you actually get any holiday, what with the paperwork and stuff. I think if it wasn't for school holidays there would be a much bigger problem with staff retention that there already is!

Never trust the government, particularly social security to help you out - sounds like you had an appalling time.

Maybe I'm out of touch - what's an FAETC?

You're right about teacher retention - the holidays are one of the greatest attractions for teachers. But it's also an incredibly varied and (with any luck) rewarding job. Hope you manage the get there, although your choice of secondary over primary .... eeuugh! Makes me shudder just to think about it.

FAETC = further and adult education teaching certificate.

it's for teaching post 16/post compulsory, but i heard a rumour that they might use people with this qualification to teach post 14 in schools, or to get more older pupils involoved in FE colleges to broaden their opportunities.
i'm quite happy teaching all ages, i've done pre-school playgroup in the past, that was great fun. secondary's not so bad, but the secondary pgce was a bit limiting, i could only do IT, even though i've got French to almost as high a level, and they expected me to teach maths, but the maths tutors were complete fascists. if any child ws make to feel like that in any class, then the teacher should have been shot! strangely enough, i am teaching maths now, but only key skills level 2, which is easy peasy.
its not that i can't do maths, it's just that mathamaticians destroyed my condfidence.
primary would be lovely to teach, because you get to keep a whole class all to yourself, yum

From what I've heard there's a real shortage of secondary maths (and science) teachers, which may be why you were pushed into it. I got the same impression when I did my PGCE - that some of the tutors were there not because they were particularly good at their job, but because they were fed up of teaching children.

You're right about primary teaching - getting to keep the class does have huge benefits as you can get to know the kids a lot better, build relationships, that sort of thing. And it really works cos they (sometimes) really feed off your pleasure or displeasure with them or their work. Just like every teacher says it's damned hard work, but I personally wouldn't change my job given the chance, and if I did it certainly wouldn't be to any other age group in teaching. Except maybe preschool. One of my colleagues has just came to us via that route - she was a preschool 'leader', did her training on the job in our school, and now teaches our 4/5 year old newies.

I apologise if I'm rambling a bit, we've drifted off the subject a bit. Still, I wish you the very best of success - if there's any way in which I can be of assistance let me know (ideas for lessons, maths games, that type of thing.)

thankyou
so far i havn't been given responsability for a group, i just do the teaching bit, thier *proper* tutor still supervises (for that, read "is in same room, but gets on with paper work") and does all the admin. and such (phew). a very different experience to school, where i was in charge of a year 10 class from the first lesson i tuaght them. i wasn't supposed to be, but as they did't riot, their teacher figured i could cope ok, and went off to do exclusions and stuff (he was head of upper school). also, the other IT student and I were put in charge of "the year 9 from hell" (who were ok, incidently, just did n't like their regular teacher) because their teacher was afraid of them. a total breakdown in communictaion, they felt he was being unfair, he coulnd't handle them at all. nightmare situation! stay in primary!
it is interesting teaching maths, i have got two groups doing the same stuff, but they are really different to each other, a completely different approach works with each. god, look at me rabbiting on, sorry, its just nice to have someone to talk to *at the chalkface* () who isn't really jaded..
cheers!

'At the chalkface'!? With a sense of humour like that, well you'll probably go a long way with kids.

Groups of children are funny like that, each with their own approach and attitude. The dynamics of a group (or whole class) can change dramatically with just one child missing. As for your tutor doing paperwork instead of particpating, that probably means she/he has faith in you. It's a bit of a backhanded compliment, but I'd take it as such if I were you. I personally prefer the old system of letting them get on with it - there's no substitute for having full responsibility. It's sometimes quite hard not to butt in or to admonish a misbehaving child, when really I should bite my tongue and let the student teacher learn for themselves.

Ah, school. Having just got back from the first day of a new half-term I now have to write today's lesson plans (oops!) and maybe tomorrow's as well, though I'm off to a PTA meeting in a bit so I may not get very far.

Ta-ra,

i though it was just me who did lesson planning that way round!

Oh, I'm sure we're not the only ones - it does after all make your planning incredibly accurate. Tonight I have to plan today and this week's literacy and numeracy. 'Half-term is meant to be a holiday!' is my rather poor excuse.

we don't have literacy and numeracy here in wales, the hours i mean, (before anyone thinks i'm saying we're all thick) are they a pain in the proverbial, or do they actually do some good?

Literacy, despite all the hassle it caused when introduced, has to my mind had a beneficial effect on children's learning. With a focus in a piece of text you can really get into it, discussing the characters, why the author used particular words, what could happen next, etc. For a teacher who's quite into books it can be an enjoyable lesson.

Numeracy, on the other hand, I don't enjoy. The actual structure of the lesson (not necessarily an hour for Numeracy) is OK and the emphasis on mental/oral work is good. The problem is that the rest of the work can get very, very repetitive. I mean, there's only so many ways you can cover 'written methods of addition and subtraction' with 10 year old kids, and yet I'm meant to spend about 6 weeks on it over the course of a year! They took too much of the non-arithmetic stuff out - shapes, measures, data handling, that sort of thing if you ask me.

Having said all that, neither Literacy nor Numeracy help much when it comes to revising for the SATs (we shouldn't, but I'm sure nearly every Year 6 teacher does SATs revision).

If I'm not careful I'll go on for hours about this sort of thing, so I'll stop now.

Are there any plans to introduce Lit and Num in Wales? Numeracy, I know, is soon to be introduced in high schools. I've got a Year 7 teacher coming to watch me next week - better make sure I'm planned properly!

wow that's really interesting!
i've had three kids now go through the year 6 sats thing, luckily with no probs at all (4's and 5's), but i have seen other parents get really stressed about it, and consequently stress their children out. it seems to have gone from an assesment to see where a child is at to something that has to be 'passed'. i don't think many parents really understand why sats are done. they have scrapped sats for 7 year olds here in wales, and the league tables.

back to the numeracy/literacy thing....i'm sure schools here cover all the same stuff, but not in such a prescribed way maybe?

You've hit the nail on the head about literacy and numeracy being very prescribed. There isn't the freedom there used to be. One good thing about numeracy particularly, is that it forces you to be a bit more inventive when teaching certain things - playing maths games that reinforce certain objectives, that sort of thing (this also means less marking, too!)

As for SATs - no, most parents don't see it as an assessment which actually (for the majority of children) means sod all when they reach high school. I've just had a maths head of department tell me that year 7 is a 'consolidation' year - what this means is that the kids cover the same stuff they did in year 6 causing a lot of them to get bored. And they wonder why discipline goes down the pan at high school! How have your children found high school?

It's quite a trick really, getting the kids to realise that 'You've got to do the best you can, but hey, it doesn't matter at all if you do really badly.' I've been lucky in that most of my parents have been pretty chill and supportive about the whole thing when I've taught year 6.

And I'll refrain from commenting on league tables - makes my blood boil just thinking about them. They don't... It's just... Grrr!

its quite funny, kids going to high school, because i've had two lots to compare now (the reason why i had so many, to do comparative studies). when my eldest went, they did streaming and she was put in the fast track class ( i initially thought this was for kids who needed to be brought up to speed, but it was in fact the top set. cor.)and loaded to death with homework, but got sod all in year 8. i had twins go up this year, no longer stream in year 7 (officialy), not nearly as much homework.
mind you, thinking about it, it could just be that the twins have a more pragmatic attitude to work - an hour's homework takes them an hour (result - one neatly presented, detailed peice of work, and one scribble - "well, it's done isn't it?")whereas an hour's homework would take my eldest at least 3 hours, including full histrionics and dramatic flouncing.
i've forgotten what i was going to say now, but i'm sure it wasn't that.........

one student teacher who taught my twins in year 5 or 6, had them doing probability, using little boxes of smarties. they had to work out the prob. of the colours, then they got to eat them. a very popular lesson

i'm teaching key skills maths at the mo, and its an uphill struggle.
18 16-19 yr olds with mouths on them like you would not believe! one can breeze through the work in 10 mins, the rest don't know how many cm in a metre. ho hum.

sorry, i just remembered what i was going to say, it was about yr 7 being a consolidation year........yeah it's the same here, my girl-twin is soooooooooooo bored in maths, because she says its too easy and its all stuff they did last year anyway.

and about the comparitive studies thing.....while i was pregnant with my youngest, his father got teased because he has a behavioural science degree, it was said he wanted twins and would call them "subject" and "control" because of all the psychology he had done. um....is that funny, or is it a behavioural science thing?

Well I thought it was quite funny, but then I'm like that.

Probability lessons with Smarties - one of the most widely used lessons on the subject (at least, by students) but a very effective one. Another good one involving chocolate is to take a large slab of Dairy Milk, split it into a third and two thirds, then let the kids decide, one by one, which part they want some of. As more children make their choices the fraction of the bar they'll get diminishes, so they have to constantly reasses which bit will give them more chocolate.

Not sure that it would work with your students - they'd probably eat it before the other kids got anywhere near it. They sound a rum lot!

no, i don't think it would work with them.....their *proper* tutor got so fed up with them on tuesday, that he walked out of the class. still, i suppose it means he trusts me with them.

whilst 18 pupils must sound like a dream class size to school teachers, its just too many for these students. they need more one-on-one and small group work, school obviously didn't work for them, cos they know sod all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! anything that remotely resembles school-type layout or lessons, and they just switch off, and become defensive and hostile and sooooo mouthy. stuff that would work in school classes just doesn't with this lot. it would help if they actually wanted to be there maybe.....
oh well, i suppose it's a challenge....
annoying thing is, i'm not even a maths teacher, i do IT, but somehow i always end up doing maths. POO!