School, Goodbyes and Museums

It is nice to know that my students miss me, even when I'm gone for half a day. Monday of last week I woke up and wasn't feeling so great. I went into work around noon and was surrounded by questions of, "Where were you Miss Kendle?" "We missed you this morning." "When we said, "Good Morning Miss Tuite and Miss Kendle, you weren't there!"" It was cute and felt good to be missed.

For the past week my students continued to work on the art project of the Phoenix which is being auctioned off next weekend. Here is the progress -

They got to choose one white spot to color a star on. These two boys were helping to glue on a few remaining feathers.

This little girl was coloring in her star. She was doing such a great job!

This is what it looked like after everyone painted and glittered their stars. The final product to come!

My class started learning about the solar system as this week is science week. Last week we went into a planetarium that was put together inside of the hall (auditorium). Each class was able to spend an hour inside with a real life astronomer who taught the students about the stars, planets, constellations and rotation of the Earth. It was quite fascinating as I have never been inside of one. It was cold inside though, because of the air they were pumping in to keep it up.

As we were leaving the guy asked me to stay inside and make sure all the kids got out. The planetarium starts to deflate as students go out and by the time I got them all out I could almost touch the ceiling of the planetarium!The whole experience was amazing and I definitely learned a whole lot more than I already knew.

Thursday and Friday night I met up with some friends before they were to leave on Saturday morning. Thursday night we went out to The Shakespeare Hotel for dinner and Friday night to Pancakes on the Rocks. I had been there one time before but this time we went with a group of 15!
This place has some amazing food. I had the Strawberry Stack this time. Buttermilk pancakes with Strawberries and ice cream! I was too hungry to take a picture but here are some pictures from that night...

AJ, Dani, Me and Janelle waiting for the bus.


This shows some of the pancakes. We were all too hungry to wait for everyone.


Kevin, Andrea, Me and Melissa. They are from Wisconsin. Got a reason to visit that state now!

Last Friday at school was Jeans for Genes Day. It was a day set aside for everyone to wear jeans to school to support Gene research. Every student and staff member wore jeans to school and donated a gold coin ($1 or $2) into a bucket. We ended up raising over $600.00 just from the students alone. It was such a great cause and I was happy to be apart of it.
Here is a picture of my school I took the same day.

This is Rozelle Public School. It has been here for over 100 years. One of the first schools in Sydney, Australia. It is a fantastic school and I absolutely love the old buildings!


This is my classroom from the back of it.


This is the other half of my classroom. It is a good size!


This is a common thing in all classrooms. Circle Time. It is a time for students to share and chat with each other. It helps build them up and teaches them patience, respect and how to share the voice space. It is a favorite time for most of the kids.

I recently went to The Power House Museum. It was filled with tons and tons of things to look at. From a very interesting clock called the Strasburg clock, to outer space stuff, old bikes, cars and carriages to hands on science and technology things to odd floats and trains.
It was a huge museum of 4 levels. Quite a few interesting things to look at. To see them all be sure to go to my Picasa website and look at the pictures and videos.

Here are two pictures from my time at The Power House Museum.

A real MOON ROCK!!!
It was well protected inside this pyramid. It was quite shiny and very cool to look at!

I also found this very uncomfortable old bike. I am not sure how people used to ride these things, it is not fun to sit on at all! And very hard to balance on as well! Props to those of you who can ride these old things!

My friend Melissa (my boss) and her mother are coming to Sydney in 2 and a half weeks! We are planning a trip to Cairns to go to The Great Barrier Reef! I cannot wait to get back up there and see it again!

I'm going to another concert tomorrow night at the Sydney Opera House called Pulse! It includes all Sydney Primary Schools and their students who will be performing via singing, dancing, acting and speaking. I can't wait to see what all the students from the city have put together!

I'm also going to another concert next week where the organ inside the opera house will be played. For those of you who don't know. This organ is absolutely gorgeous and it is only played twice a year! I can't wait to hear it.

Most of my friends that I met here have left and gone back to the U.S. to start school. I'm just over halfway done with my time here and I can't believe how much I've seen and done! I am having such a great time here and the experiences I am getting are beyond my wildest dreams. I hope the rest of my time doesn't go by too fast!

School is still going fantastic and I am finally starting to teach lessons! The first one I taught yesterday was a spelling lesson. The students have new spelling words each week. For their activity, I had them each create acrostic poems out of their spelling words. Each student wrote a minimum of 2. They all turned out so well! I made sure to have time at the end of the lesson to allow them to share with one another.

I will be teaching more and more now. It took up until now to start teaching due to the fact that I was so sick and then Holiday came up! My mentor teacher, Carlie, is great about including me in classroom ideas and using me to help the students. I am enjoying my students more each day and am still learning so much about this school. The staff is still great and they are so much fun to work with!