January 9th

Scotland is such a beautiful country!! I had no problems arriving here, and so far I have liked all the food (I haven’t had to try the haggis yet…) The weather is much like home, except it rains a lot more and is very windy. My host family, Mike, Kath, Lizzie (11) and Mikey (4) are also very nice. The Thursday I arrived involved much sleep and getting settled in. On Friday, my host family took me into Berwick for some things I had forgotten when packing. Saturday Kim and I travelled to Edinburgh, which is the capitol of Scotland. It is a gorgeous city, very historic and full of culture. We did a lot of shopping, took lots of pictures, did a bus tour, and found some familiar McDonalds food. J Sunday I went to church and just relaxed and prepared for the first day of school.
This is now the second day of school and I really like it. I walk about 1 mile to school each day. School starts at 9:00am and ends at 3:15pm. I am in a P7 class, which consists of 11 and 12 year olds. These first couple of day have just flown by. Yesterday was kind of a day for the students to just get settled back in and be introduced to the new units and topics for this term. The students also had a lot of questions for me. Shakespeare is one of the big units that we will be covering this term. The students did a little bit of brainstorming and finding out facts about Shakespeare and his life. They also drew pictures of him and things that they thought represented him. I was surprised at how much the students already knew. We also read a shortened version of the Twelfth Night and tried to act it out. It was very fun and it kept the students very involved. Today the students were put into groups and were able to pick a Shakespeare play that they would like to perform for the class. They were to read a short version of the play, design and create puppets and costumes, and create a script. The students are just loving this!! We will be doing this for a few more days. We are even transforming the back of our classroom into the Globe Theatre and have a giant sized drawing of Shakespeare on our wall. It’s amazing how enthused they are about this. It’s going to be a very fun unit. These last 2 days the students have also done a bit of comprehension and math (or as they call it here maths ). Yesterday I worked with a group of 6 students on the reading comprehension of a short story they were reading. I was also able to listen to a couple of the students read independently to me. For math, the 2 P7 classes split to a high math and a low math. I stayed with the lower math and helped them work on time, mainly story problems dealing with the addition and subtraction of it. It was fun because I was used as the main example because of the time difference between here and home. This also spurred many more questions about myself. The kids also had gym today, where they played badminton and they have swimming lessons tomorrow morning. I was surprised to here that they gave swimming lessons during the school day but I think it’s a great idea!
My cooperating teacher, Mrs. Higson is wonderful! She is so full of energy and makes the learning fun for the students. I like that everything that is done is all hands on work and engages the students. She has a great personality, and the students really look up to her. I’m very excited to have the opportunity to be in her class!