Welcome To England

Welcome To England

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Are you one of the American girls?

DAY 2 AT THE SCHOOLS:
        Walking to the tram was not too bad. Although it did take forever for a tram to arrive at the stop, much longer than we anticipated. The tram ride to the school is about 30 minutes. However, on Tuesday it took a bit longer. Sheffield does not have school buses to transport their students to and from school. The students use public transportation. It is very different here. Once we finally arrived at our school all of the students stared at us and asked if we were the "American girls!" Their British accents are so cute!  After having a brief meeting with our "school mum" we were off to our classrooms for the day. Once I entered the classroom I was quickly filled with even more culture shock. The second graders are doing multiplication and division. Also, the room was completely filled with students, 38 to be exact. WOW.. that is a huge class! After the students completed their morning work they began working on a standardized type test. This made the morning DRAG by.  Finally it was time for recess. The students are just dismissed to go to recess. They are not walked out to the yard by their teacher. Support teachers in the school go to the yard during recess to supervise the students. After recess the students completed a mental math portion of the standardized test. Then it was time for lunch. The students and staff have an hour for lunch. This is so amazing! After the students finish their lunch they are allowed to go back out to the yard and play. The students have so much play time here. Maybe that is why they are so well behaved (for the most part) here.  After lunch the students do numeracy (math) and then they did science. All of the learning here is so much more hands on than it is back in the states. The daily assembly was canceled so the teacher read a chapter from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" to the class. After this the class was dismissed for the day.

When we arrived at our apartment we found that our stove had still not been fixed. So we would have to go out to eat once again! But we decided to take a short nap first. That was the best nap I have had in a long time!!!! We were woken up by a phone call from the girls at the other schools. (they stopped at the mall on the way home.) We got up and walked to meet the girls and find somewhere to eat for supper. Once we met up with the other girls. everyone was so exhausted and cranky! You can only imagine 11 girls being cranky at the same time! We finally all decided to eat at the "Frog and Parrot" again!! After we finished eating we came back to the apartment and goofed off a little since we were so delirious. And finally decided it was best to go to bed!!

Well thats all for tonight. I will post again tomorrow night. Sorry there are no pictures.

Cheers!
KM

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