New Schedule, New Beginning

Monday morning I walked in to school refreshed from break, and excited to start the day, or at least see the other teachers. There sitting on my desk were three objects that I had not left there. One was a package from my fabulous mother, full of enough goodies that I will gain 200 pounds and have a diabetic shock if I eat it all.
The next was a letter from Austria, addressed not to me, but rather to the other non-Hungarian Briggi.
Finally on top was a small white slip of paper with my new school schedule. The return of two teachers has meant an entire overhaul of the daily plans. Not only are my classes in a completely new order, I have two entirely new classes. I look forward to another couple of weeks of getting lost, and trying to figure out how Week B has 23 classes, while Week A has only 21.
Coming back to school after a blissful two-week break, reminds me how much I appreciate and missed my kids. As crazy as they behave, and as much as they do not listen, forget their homework, and complain about working, it is all worth it. Helping even one student further their education, or understand something just a bit better, makes the bad days worth it.

Stuff we have done: (or holy cow, actual teaching stuff)

The monster mash: Used it as a listening exercise in two ways - as a cloze activity and as an action activity. Assign key words with an action, and when they occur in the song, students must make the action. This is better for younger students, highly energetic students and Saturday school.

The song/movie line dialogue: Another teacher from Szolnok suggested this activity, and so far it has worked really well. Have students write a line from a song or movie, and then collect them. Randomly hand them back to Students in groups and have them create a dialogue using these two lines.

Past Simple review dialogues: Asking students to discuss their break, write sentences on the board. Then circle irregular verbs and box regular endings to create visual difference, and go through regular and irregular verbs. Then ask about our example character…my crazy friend Joe’s break and then ask the students to box or circle the verbs. Then have them create short dialogues using at least six verbs, three regular and three irregular. This is meant as a review activity, not as a means to teach the difference.


After Obama's win on Tuesday, I now have a new name: HalloBriggiTanarnő has been replaced with ObamaistheWinnerBriggiTanarnő. Well at least in the hallway as I search for my classes.