I'm back!

As I'm sure you'll have noticed, there's been a lack of posts lately as I'm now back at uni, term has started - and the work is piling up! It's nice to be back, though I do miss Kye. It's nice to catch up with everyone again. Our timetable is less intense but we've got lots of assignments due for the first few weeks of term. So far I've had feedback from Science and Social Subjects from last term - and handed in Language & Drama and Maths for this term. And I'm working on Art & Design, ICT and Health & Wellbeing and PE - as well as tasks for RME, Music, the list goes on ...... So I've got a good excuse for my lack of posts here.

Here's photos of 2 of the games I've made - one is a language & drama game and the other is for maths - I'm sure you'll manage to work out which is which. I've learned a lot about Microsoft Publisher and various other ICT skills when making these games - which can hopefully also feed into my ICT assignment also.

VHF course

OK, I'll try and do some updating from the last few days now. It's been a very busy few days trying to get as much of the paperwork and making of resources done as possible so I could take the day off on Sunday to do my VHF course.

Friday we were back in uni for our day on campus. It was good to see everyone again but it all felt like a huge rush from lecture to tutor meetings to lunch and then on to hand in our GTCS forms. Most folk rushed straight off afterwards as everyone had a lot of writing up and lesson planning to do. We got the results of our group assessments back - I was quite pleased with ours, which forms part of our final mark for the course.


Sunday I had a lovely drive up to Largs - early. Left the house at 7.30am - it was a beautiful, still day, cold but clear. Luckily the roads were very quiet at that time so I was able to take in the scenery - lots of beautiful, frosty trees - it's been a long time since I've seen trees like that! There was a big bank of fog off Ardrossan so I couldn't see a lot of Arran.


It was beautiful and still in Largs with clear views all around.

By the end of the course (at 5.30pm) it was very frosty again and the car was all iced up.

The VHF short wave radio course (with 1st Scotsail Training) was excellent. I really enjoyed it! I had been looking on it as a necessary evil as you need to be licenced to use a VHF radio legally, and I knew a lot of the course would be relevant to small boats and not to handheld sets for kayaks, so I was surprised at how enjoyable I found it all. There was a huge amount to take in - I made 10 pages of notes! And there was a practical exam as well as a written one at the end. Virtually the whole course was to do with DSC (digital selective channel) which is not a function of my handheld VHF, but it was fascinating stuff. I was extremely pleased not only to pass (so I can now apply to OFCOM for my lifetime licence for a mere £25), but to get 100% in the written exam!!! Now if I ever take a school trip on a yachting trip, I'll feel confident that if the skipper and crew were unable to, I could call for help on the VHF and would know how to go about it all, the correct things to say, the information required, etc.

Update

It's been a busy few days. It was my birthday - I got lots of great presents, including the new This is the Sea 4 DVD. That'll be my evening watching for the next few nights. I went up to Andy & Clair's for the night on Friday - had a lovely birthday tea including some dairy free sticky toffee pudding which was great. I had a brilliant time, as always, playing with Steven - who said "Fona here to visit me" when I tried to sit on a comfy seat and chat to Andy & Clair when I first arrived. So I'm supposed to play with him the whole time - right, now I know.

Steven kindly helped me open some presents, although he decided the one from Callum made a good seat for watching Fireman Sam on. Then he helped me open it and he liked the look of the two boxes of dairy free chocolates (luckily the alcohol & DVDs didn't hold much appeal for him). He was into the first box of chocolates in about 5 seconds. It was mint chocolates and we split one in half and he had half and I had half. Then I packed everything away into the big box again for putting back in the car. 2 mins later Steven's back into the box and got the box of mints, ripped it open and took out 2 - then handed one of them to me!!! Cute.

We got the marks back from our active learning assessment on Friday - that was the powerpoint presentation we had to do. I was quite pleased with my marks and thought they were fair, so I'm happy. We get the marks for the group assessment back on 28th November which is our day back on campus during our placements. Other than that day we're now out on placement until Christmas. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow and meeting my class again, although the sheer amount of paperwork in this placement is a little daunting.

Met up with Ann and her wee daughter Catriona (who is great) today and we went to Prestwick to visit the Moffats. Worked out that we last saw them 17 years ago in Arran! It doesn't feel as long ago as that that we were climbing the Witches Step and going swimming in the Blue Pool in Glen Rosa!

Lots of assessments

Well we did our 'sparkling introductions' assessment this morning - it seemed to go ok though it's always hard to tell. Our group were doing a lesson about map making and had turned it into treasure maps for pirates, so we were all dressed as pirates. Our pirate song seemed to go down quite well :-)

This photo will give you all a laugh at least - this is about the most flattering one of me - by quite a long way. Oh dear!

I've also now submitted my Social Subjects assessment (due tomorrow) and my Science assessment (due Thursday) - it's been a busy week for assessments! We also have a formative assessment of a group task in Language tomorrow, but it's not been nearly as onerous as the others and is formatively assessed rather than contributing to our overall course mark, so it's not nearly as stressful - thank goodness!

Now I can finally start looking forward to my next placement which starts on Monday for 5 weeks - in a composite P1/P2 class - and read up on all the things I need to know for that and remind myself which lessons I'm going to have to teach and do full lesson plans for, etc.