Almost Concussed by a Stanley Knife...BUT STILL BLOGGING!

When I worked at High Wycombe IGA back home, I was always afraid of the Stanley knives that we used when cutting up boxes, slicing through tape and essentially had to make our jobs easier. For me, the ease that the knife presented was always just another way for the klutzy Steph to emerge once more and I was forever back and forth from the first aid kit patching up yet another cut that I had managed to inflict on myself. The worst cut I ever had was on my stomach. That’s right, I broke the first rule of Stanley knife use; never slice towards you! Of course for most people, accidentally cutting themselves is the main Stanley knife injury. However today, me being one of the most imaginative people around when it comes to accidentally inflicting injuries upon themselves managed to almost concuss myself with one. Today I copped a Stanley knife to the forehead. And I can’t even blame it on a third person; there was no children involved, no-one yelling ‘heads’ before a foreign and unidentifiable object came right at me and certainly no-one doing it on purpose. It was just me, myself and I, lifting a box off the shelf above my head not realizing a metal Stanley knife was on top and, well, the rest is history. Being one of those really strong, pure metal and therefore heavy ones, it hurt a lot! I thought I was ok until I got home and fell asleep for two hours (I was VERY woozy, three guesses why) and then woke up to find a lovely bruise on my forehead and now it hurts to move my head. So for your entertainment, there is yet another klutzy story that only I can manage to have happen to me. Add that to the ever growing list!

Mondayitis was not at all present today with eleven students coming into Primary C this morning before 10am. Jenny and I had our hands full however it helped that all the kids were really eager to learn and behaved quite well during our literacy and math’s time. I don’t think I’ve ever explained our daily routine so I’ll get you all up to speed because it is quite interesting. The school bell rings at 8.20am and we begin with a small number until Robert takes the school bus around and brings a few more students in. When a student comes into Primary C in the morning, they get their name on the board next to the time they arrived (which is essential to include when I do the role later on in the day). They then go and do their Breathe, Cough, Blow which is a Kimberley health initiative enforced in every classroom and we also include teeth brushing and face washing. Each student then climbs the word wall and whatever word they get stuck on is written ten times on a blackboard. The word wall lists 200 of the most commonly used words and each student begins backwards from the lowest word in the column up as far as they can go, moving their name each time they get a word correctly. For those students past 200 words, they have a list of 1000 words in their personal reader which they go through every morning. Jenny, myself and sometimes Jim when it really gets busy then listen to each student read and for those who finish all that before 9am, they get a bit of free time.

The word wall and morning instructions.

Jenny then does a whole class Literacy activity or handwriting session with the students before breaking them into four groups; green, red, purple and brown. These groups are targeted at the understanding level of each child so each activity we run is different. We rotate between educational games on the computer, writing with Jenny, English games with me and English games/spelling/comprehension with whoever else is around, whether it is an ATA, KP or the new teacher which we will hopefully be getting next week (more about that later). After we have rotated all groups, we move on to Maths. As well as Math computer games we have worksheets with me, sums with Jenny and more math games with our third person. The morning session goes until about 10.50am when we break for Mangarri. After lunch we have a bit of integrated science or religion, the sport and afterwards a PATHs or RE lesson (PATHs is a program designed at developing an understanding of feelings, emotions and such amongst the students). As you can see, when 2pm comes Primary C students (and me and Jenny) are pretty tired!

Running a literacy group with Cody and Francis.

The boys are SO much smarter than me!

Julian :)

(Photos by James Camden)

As part of our Human Body theme this term, a competition all classes at Luurnpa has registered into will very much tie in well with this. It’s all about promoting a healthy lifestyle and asks that each class does one lesson on physical activity/eating well a lesson whilst engaging each day in some physical exercise. For every fifteen minutes the class completes, a sticker gets placed on a poster we have which is a map of a basic Kimberley community. On the map, as well as the walkway are things like the school, the shop, the clinic and the Police station and a special sticker gets placed on each of these places each time a lesson is completed. When we fill in the whole poster, the class gets a special certificate. We also had to think of a team name and Jenny chose wisely; Balgo Superstars. The students are really looking forward to completing all their physical activity as the school is also a part of Jump Rope for Heart which involves a lot of skipping. There are some great prizes up for grabs at Luurnpa funded by the competition including three scooters, basketballs, footballs and lots more for the best skippers. Watch this space to see how things go with that!

As I mentioned before, we are getting a new member of staff at Luurnpa to fill in a blank position. This is going to be quite exciting because a, they’ll be working a bit in Primary C and b, being such a small school it’s great to have new faces around. We’re all very much anticipating their arrival this weekend.

Around the whole of Australia at the moment is the Census. In Balgo, this means getting as many kids as possible to school and unfortunately for Brother Rick, going to each absent students house to determine the reason of their absence for recording purposes. It also brings up a personal issue here in our little STM community; we need to elect a head of the house. Brother Lou told me about this the other day and whilst the only responsibility is filling in the census form, you never know how tooth and nail the fight for head of the house may get. Me being the youngest is most unlikely to be awarded such a prestigious title but for someone who strangely enjoys filling in forms, I’m totally hoping the boys cave. We’ll see!

With quite a few children come in reasonably early today, I read with quite a few Primary C students. However my favourite storyteller was Julian, who read a story about a traffic light who didn’t like the noise of traffic or the tooting of people waiting. He was SO good, developing excellent expression and doing the BRRRRRMMMMM sound effects incredibly well. He really sounded like a car driving away and made Sharelle laugh a lot who then made me laugh. Unfortunately Julian thought Sharelle was laughing AT him and got a bit upset until he realized how funny he was and then kept showing off with his new found talent. Gotta love it!

During my half-concussed afternoon nap today, I only awoke because I could hear some serious drumming not far away. From the sounds of it, it appears someone in the community has a new drum set and is going all at it with their new toy. Here’s hoping it stops before 8.30pm tonight because like the Nanna I am, I’m retiring early!