Feeling Much Better!

Having "vented my spleen" a bit yesterday, I'm now feeling much better! Thanks to Chris and Mark who were both concerned for me and phoned - it's much appreciated!

I finished off making my English lesson plans yesterday - they were a bit more detailed than really necessary but that's OK. I felt good that I had some idea of what I'll be doing.

It was great to see the children at SISP today. They were quite excited and reasonably happy to be back. Many were wearing their new clothes, the ones given them by the school, and looked very gay and colourful. (That's "gay" in it's original sense, Mark!) And I was very pleased to be given a space in the teachers' cupboard in which I can keep my bag or materials for class. I have finally arrived!

I've had some brainwaves about what to teach the IT classes. It stems from having bought a little camera for the SISP kids to use. One project for them could be to reproduce the exploded diagram of the camera's controls and sockets. Another project could be for English - to produce a mini personal profile. Then to take photos, get the kids to cut and re-size them and put the photos and profiles together. This could lead to talk of how a digital camera works and the making of a pinhole camera. It could also help me remember all the kids' names!

But first, the exploded diagram needs a 3-D drawing of the camera, and the kids know nothing about perspective so that's what I introduced at today's IT class. Using a blackboard is quite difficult without a long straight edge for drawing the construction lines and vanishing points, but that's what I had to do. Then I got the kids to do the same with MSPaint and it was a doddle. Very successful!

I can continue this with single vanishing point and double vanishing point drawings. If nothing else, colouring in something like a house drawn in perspective, keeping all the construction lines as boundaries for the coloured blocks, can produce some very spectacular images!