Hang on, I've had another idea...

I'm starting to get the hang of lesson plans. The transformation from sympathetic teaching assistant to object of hatred has begun. I spent most of yesterday planning for Monday and Tuesday, mostly because I kept coming up with better ideas, so had to go back and change things. Not for maths. Maths is maths, and has no 'scope for the imagination' as Anne Shirley would say. Literacy, on the other hand... I feel my computer will soon stop asking if I would like to 'save changes to document' and will instead ask 'Are you sure about this? Or do you want to fart about with the document for another couple of hours?'

We're meant to be doing 'list poems'. (And I've just realised I've called them 'line poems' on Wednesday's plans. Sigh...) Anyway, after the initial 'what is a list poem?' lesson, we were going to write poems about ourselves. So I planned that all out. Then I looked for a good example of a list poem on the internet, because my poetry is not up to being scrutinised by 30 little children. I found a nice example of one about a cat looking out of a window, and all the things he (it?) could see. That's nice, I thought, I'll do that instead. So I changed the lesson plan. Then, whilst watching The Voice, I thought, hang on, what if the poem's about us looking out of a window? And the window could be anywhere. A hut on top of a mountain? A submarine? A space rocket? So I changed the lesson plan. And now I'm nearly out of printer ink and patience. I hope the class teacher doesn't read this, or he may be getting worried about his children. 

And it's only going to get worse because, after the half term holiday (which will be a week of planning and re-planning lessons, no doubt), we're looking at story characters, and writing adventure stories. I have a big pile of stories that I want to share with the children, but I think I'm going to have to whittle it down a bit, or we won't have time for any other lessons. But the best bit about having to do adventure stories was when the class teacher said, 'You won't be able to use the stories on file, because I used those last year.' Brilliant - I will introduce the children to Neil Gaiman, through Fortunately the Milk, which is a great adventure story about a dad who goes out to buy milk and ends up: being abducted by aliens, captured by pirates, bargaining with Aztecs and travelling in a hot-air balloon with a stegosaurus, amongst other things. 

I am looking forward to taking the class. I'm getting a little tired of particular people asking if I'm certain I can cope, and telling me that it's natural to be nervous when standing in front of the class for the first time. Seeing as it's several years since I first stood in front of a class, that bit's been the least of my worries. As long as the Boss Lady approves of the way I've planned the lessons, I'm fine. It'll actually be a nice change from the year 6 class, as they're getting a bit noisy and manic. My new lot are not quite young enough to be leaky and whingey, although one does pretend to be a rabbit quite a lot, which makes me grit my teeth. But they are young enough to more or less do as they're told asked. 

Here's hoping, anyway...