Just call me Jamie Oliver

I took about 70 apples into work today and after lunch set about peeling them and stewing them. I realised by then end that was not nearly enough for the whole school to eat tomorrow but the head tried them and thinks that they kids will like them and she even suggested ways to store them for winter.  So maybe now that the horse has eaten most of the apples a use for the rest of them has been found. However, it does mean I am scrumping on a major scale as it was the guest house that I thought would take up the ideas as this is where the apples are grown.  I just hope that keeping it in the family is okay as the school and guest house are connected.  It is however, these kinds of things that make one want to have a long term goal here rather than just a year to see if some ideas get embedded.  For instance both the Head and I hope that there will be a garden at the school with apple trees. However the head is keen that I make lots of notes so that if I am not here next year she has a sort of scheme of work and resources to hand.  At the moment I am photographing the children according to initial  letter to help me get to know their names and to use in alphabet work e.g. Dastan does not like dogs.. I am also photographing things around the village that can be use for the same purpose.

It is interesting, today for the second time I tried getting the children to stand in a row near the board to do an activity then go to the back of the row.  The idea was that the student at the back, write a number on the back of their person in front etc, until the message reaches the board.  The total confusion of 2B made me realise that I have to teach, front, back, row and go to the back, before attemtping such activities.  However, their blatant cheating by whispering the numbers slightly defeated the idea anyway.  I am pleased to say doing it with 3 students in a row and not in a competitive situation improved comprehension when I tried it with 2A, but whilst some of the children had a clear ability to write a number on someone's back, others could only stroke the back of the person in front who had no chance of getting it right.   These children are learning such a large number of skills all at once and they are also having to get to grips with Russian too. They tend to be much more comfortable using books even if they do not really know what they are doing there either. Yet they actually do quite a lot of work at the board in their normal lessons, but not in this way. Peeking through the window today they were drawing the most wonderful helmets during their art class on the board yet they were also painting typically Russian style decorative pictures too at their desks, so I was not quite sure what the topic was.