The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
and my felt board offerings. Usually successful with little ones, wanting to fiddle with them !!
Tag Archives: blog
Welcome everyone !!
I see from my site stats that I have been getting some traffic on here from Senegal and Ivory Coast. That is fabulous as it means I am not forgotten in this part of the world, so dear to my heart. I led training workshops in Dakar and Abidjian for 9 years running and so met a huge number of people and worked with some great colleagues. If you recognize yourselves in this, please be assured that I have not forgotten you and what I learned from my time spent with you – the warmth, the laughs and the same desire to do our best for our kids, to help to bring out the best in them. If you were one of the participants who learned all the verses of The Court of King Caractacus, I hope you can still remember them (!!) and you might enjoy a sing-along to this video.
If you had the ultimate pleasure of singing “I am the Music Man” and learning to dance to the bagpipe music of “Scotland the Brave”, I am sure just the mere mention of it will bring a smile to your faces. As we always did a Friday special on the final day of the course, there you were, in all your Friday finery, boogie-ing your way down along with this :
I no longer work in West Africa – sadly, as I loved those yearly trips – but I continue the teacher training and still maintain that desire to bring fun and enjoyment to the world of language learning. Please feel free to “Like” this post, if you are one of my West Africa friends …
A new week ahead
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Streamlining and Downsizing
Over the course of summer 2016, I am going to be streamlining my Big English Blog with a view to downsizing a little. It has become too big to handle.
You may have noticed that a large number of the tabs have disappeared. The information is still here – it has just been tidied up a bit. If you can’t locate what you are looking for, try the SEARCH box.
I am also going to be relocating all training resources and information onto the sister blog : http://www.jennylegertraining.wordpress.com
You can find where to go by visiting the FORMATION tab and you will be pointed on your merry way to the correct place.
Any comments or questions always welcome via the CONTACT page.
Enjoy your visit and thanks for dropping by !!
Holiday clean-up
As lessons will be coming to an end in the coming fortnight, I shall be starting my big clean-up on this blog. It will be three years old soon and needs a bit of a tidy-up. If you find it is off-line, do not worry. it is only because it is being given a make-over and it will be back, sparkly and new in September.
Almost there !!!
As I open up the front page of my blog today, I see the number of hits is 44,982. That means that in just 18 more hits, I will have reached 45,000 hits on my humble little blog. I am truly gobsmacked (and anyone who knows me will know that it takes a lot to render me speechless !!!). This blog venture began about seven years ago, when I created my first googlesite to be able to share mp3 files with my students to prolong their listening work out of the classroom and to stop me from having to copy onto USB flashdrives countless times. How things have moved on !! In that time, I have moved over to wordpress and I have even become a “dotcom” in my own right !! It was reported back to me recently that some teachers think I am mad to have created this blog. “Elle est folle” were the exact words. I believe they were referring to the sheer size of the blog today and the quantity of resources that are contained herein. I like to tell myself they weren’t referring to my mental state !!! This blog has actually existed in its current form since July 4th 2012, so it is fast approaching its 3rd birthday. Of course, over the course of those three years, it has grown and grown and will continue to grow. It didn’t start immediately in its current form, of course. It was a much smaller and less ambitious proposition then.
To everyone who visits me here, I thank you wholeheartedly for your support. I hope you continue to find useful stuff here and also on my sister blogs, on Funology, on British pronunciation and on general musings about teaching and teacher training.
So, hold on your hats for when we reach 45,000 !!!
Another goal to reach
As I am writing, the number of hits on this blog is 18,374. With three and a half weeks until the Easter holidays, my goal is to reach 20,000 hits before Easter. Can we do it ? Yes, we can !! I know we can. How do I know this ? Because I am confident in the knowledge that my pupils are working hard and using this blog to do so. I can see it on the stats as I follow who is doing what. I see it in their work in the classroom as they re-invest what they have been doing at home.
I know we can do it because I see also the countries that are following my blog too. I check my stats page every day to see which countries are there and I smile to myself as I realize that people around the world are checking out what I have to offer. It is very exciting being part of the blogosphere and to know I am being read around the world.
So, we’re on the road to 20,000 before April 19th. Let’s see how quickly we can get there, everyone.
The big switch off
One of the aspects of the job of being a teacher that I am finding harder and harder to manage is the “switch off”. I seem to have one of these notices attached to me :
I am finding it more difficult to deal with the never-ending nature of the job. You have never finished because there is always more forward-thinking that you can do. My lessons for the coming week are ready, noted down, on my USB drive (which is safely stored in my bag – as I have a terrible habit of forgetting it), papers are marked and Bob’s your uncle. But there are then the dratted reports to write – no, done those for this week). And of course, I also run training courses – but Friday’s is more or less ready and can be tweaked during the week – so, have I finished ? Well, I guess technically, I could say yes, but there is another lesson that I want to give some thought to, and my blog pages could do with tidying up a bit, and my office and my desk, well, how many piles of stuff can I accumulate in such a small space ? It all needs sorting and filing. And I have this new training course that will be in May … and for next year, I ought to add some new stuff to the training I will be doing on October …
NO ! STOP !
I entitled this blogpost “The Big Switch-off” because that is what I am about to do. My desk light actually conked out on me last night, flickered a bit, fizzed and then died. So I took it as a sign. It is Friday and I have a whole weekend ahead of me. In approximately five minutes, I am going to switch off my computer, not just standby, but actual switch off, and close the door on this corner of my life.
I will not return until Sunday evening, not even to spy on my statistics to see who has read this blogpost in which countries. I will not fiddle, twiddle, tweak or even peak at any of it. I have the in-laws coming for the weekend and I will relax !! I have selected three novels to read – proper paper books and not e-books – and I am going to get halfway through at least one of them. I think it will be the juicy scandal about Henry VIII – the sort of novel I love but don’t take time to read. I will light a roaring fire in the fireplace, make an apple cake and enjoy a nice cup of tea, watching the blue tits on the feeder in the garden, hoping they will find the nesting box that my dad made me for Christmas.
Do you believe me ?
I am determined to do it. How difficult should it be to decide not to work over the weekend ? It is, in my view, one of the big issues that faces teachers (and I am sure, other professions, but I don’t know about them). Surely anyone who works from home will empathize. I am not going to feel guilty about it. I am going to enjoy the downtime. If you are a teacher reading this, and you fancy joining me on the “Downtime Cruisade”, well, welcome aboard but don’t message me here about it, as I won’t be looking. This computer is now officially out of bounds. Do not enter. Go away and relax – yes, Frankie says Relax, so now go and do it. The Big Switch Off offically starts HERE …
The Big English Blog 