My first Lesson

The first lesson was a wearl wind really. A defiant learning curve that was full with 60 existed children.   My first lesson was paper mashaing the balloons and as I got to the school I meat the year 6 teachers who I had not meat before I was shown to the class rooms and started to set up my sections giving each child a ballon making sure there was enough news paper on each table and making a OPVA mix for the children to use.

as the children filled in from lunch all existed and asking lots of questions I was introduced as Miss Ellen. With both classes assembled sat cross legged in front of me I put my powerpoint on that I had prepared to show the children of selected pages out of my sketch book that had influenced and helped shap the design. And then I reveled the costume. this went down extremely well they were all asking to try it on and perad around the room in it. I was so relieved that the costume had gone down well the the children and the colour was not a problem I thought maybe some of the boys might have more of a problem with that but everything seemed fine.

As I demonstrated how big to blow up the ballon and what was the best way to paper masha them it all seemed less intimidating and I felt my self ease more into the teaching role. As they all went and sat down at there seats and started to blow up the balloons I was unprepared for the calling on my name that seemed to escalate to see if the ballon they were blowing up was the right size after more demonstrating and a lot of tying of the balloons we had 60 fairly similar sized balloons to start the papper mashaing.

As I was going round the first class checking on them helping them out to make sure everyone was happy with what they were doing I realised that there was another 30 children working in the other classroom for me to check on as well. As I was finishing checking on this classroom I had children form the other coming in saying they were finished. This shocked me as it was only about 2.30 so hurried back into see how this child was doing. On closer inspection more layers were needed but once one person had said they were finished they all thought they were finished (when they hadn't they just didn't want to be left behind)

At 3.00pm in one classroom I had children finishing off there balloons and in the other I had children where you could still see they majority of there balloons it was very stressfull. So the children didn't get bored as some had now moved on to helping there friends and were also coming to the end of that, I asked the teacher to pack away with them and if they had any other work or reading they could do for the last 10minis of the class wile I was next door franticly trying to get atlees two layers of papper masha done on some of there balloons.

When 3.15 came and the children had packed away and the cleaners were coming in to clean away the debery of my class I could breath. I had defiantly not been prepared for the rush, excitement, adrenalin and a little bit of stress thrown in for good mesher that had come from that lesson. I put all the balloons on the window sills to dry and thanked the teachers for there help on the afternoon.

The hole day had been so fun but also one massive learning curve. Even though the blown up balloons would have been more hassle to carry in I do think that I would have got more even sized eyes to work with. How ever many times you show some of the boys how to paper masha a strip at a time using a paint brush they will always be one who will try and put a hole sheet of news paper onto there ballon in one go and refuse to use nothing but there hands as a paint brush.

Over all I was pleased with the out come and I think we did achieve 60 useable paper masha eyes, which was the aim of the day. It's such a shame that I have to weeks to wait for my next lesson as its on the 23rd May