We have spent our first week and a half settling in and learning the ropes. The first few days here on my own were spent clearing through the schoolroom cupboards and sorting resources till late at night, re-organising display walls, attempting to organise a timetable and teaching.
Our timetable is full on, from 8am to 3.30pm, as we work around up to 7 on-air sessions a day, our teaching sessions, and smoko and lunch which are all cooked and ready for us when we arrive. It's very important to be on time! So I have set my iPod to make interesting noises at every change ... It barks, sounds alarms, goes boing, plays the marimba and sings at us. The boys are getting good at knowing which sound is for what ! (dinner is also provided for us, so no cooking)
Our first few teaching days went well if you don't think about anything to do with communications ! The boys had trouble logging in to SODE (School of The Air) and the main computer went down. Then the laptop had to be used for lessons which meant only one child at a time for on air lessons and no other videos, tutorials, or teaching tools could be accessed on line for the other boys. The headsets with phone wouldn't work so the poor boys had to hold phone to ear while working. But amazingly we all had a good first few days? Usually up until lunch time we may have one of the boys accessing an on -air lesson while we teach the other two. This teaching time could include accessing short videos or tutorials of up to about 5 minutes, or teaching tools online or discs. Our youngest boy is doing Prep/Kinder so he may watch and listen to interactive videos with rhymes, songs or letter and number recognition activities. By Thursday we had sussed out all the problems and corrected them and it was much better .... but now ! ! there are no on-air lessons for a week and a half while children from outlying stations take it in turns to head in for cluster meets for a day at regional towns. Our closest is Windorah, about 5 and a half hours away.
Our learning time is very full on but we have spent the last half hour or so of our days shooting baskets, making African habitats in the sandpit, making and investigating the properties of gloop, making lemonade in our kitchen, stretching our minds with tricky games, showing us around part of their 8,910 square km back yard, and getting to know each other.
Overall it has been a good week !
Posted by Lynne
