Life as a Year 3 teacher in Camberley: 2017

Sunday, 18 June 2017

Summer 2017

I keep telling myself to update this blog more often, but it keeps slipping my mind! Quick recap of the last 4 months.

My visit home at Easter was fantastic as always, time spent with family and friends. Meagan and Cole's wedding social was a great time and went perfectly!

It has been another busy term at school, enjoying the topics I am teaching and have the best class ever!

Megan and Cole came to visit during May half term. We spent some days in London, Dorset and made a trip to Amsterdam! It was a great, but exhausting week! Now we are in the wind down to summer, and getting ready for next year!

Here are some pictures from our adventures!

Visiting Hickling- where my great grandparents are from!

England v. Lithuania

At Wembley Stadium

Social for the beautiful bride!

Our first attempt at Lulworth cove- poured rain all day!

The coast of England

Virginia Water

Colour Obstacle Run

London before Jack the Ripper Tour

Green Park

Out of order- Edam, Netherlands

Our second attempt at Durdle Door- much better weather!

Durdle Door

Tower of London

St Paul's Cathedral

We love Gordons.

Cheese shop- Edam, Netherlands

Our favourite snack in Amsterdam

Red Light District

Edam, Netherlands

Sunday, 19 February 2017

A half term with sunshine!

Josh and I had a change of plans for our February half term.... Malta! This ended up being such a good choice for us. We were able to book through British Airways holiday packages, with flights, hotel and all-inclusive for under 400 pounds per person! Malta is a set of islands off the coast of Italy and Northern Africa, still part of Europe. We stayed at a wonderful resort, which we had zero complaints about. The food was lovely and so was the weather! On our last day, there was not a cloud in the sky! The temperature was about 17 or 18 degrees, but felt much hotter in the sun. On a somewhat cloudy day, we took a hop on/off bus tour around the northern side of the main island. We were planning on stopping in Valetta, the main city, but there was not much to see. We ended up just riding the bus route- about 3 hours. It was the perfect holiday to lay by the pool (not many beaches), read books and play over a dozen quiddler games!

Birthday boy enjoying his cake!

View from our massive balcony!

On the bus tour

Valetta

Flying over the Alps back to London

For some more exciting news.... our school received the dreaded phone call at the start of January- OFSTED! The day was finally here. I can definetely say that the worst part was the years of stress- for something that was really quite positive. My teaching was observed 3 times and I also had a middle leaders meeting with the inspectors, to talk about my roll as a subject lead and training a new teacher. I am so happy to say that we were graded GOOD in all categories!! For people who aren't familiar with ofsted- this is great news!!! Expecially coming from a 'Requires Improvement' grading. Attached in the link, to read the report just click on - School Inspection Report.

https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection-report/provider/ELS/140349

Looking forward to another half term with my amazing class- then spending Easter at home, which I am SO excited for.

Monday, 2 January 2017

Christmas Come and Gone...

What a whirlwind December... it went by so quickly!!!

It started off with a lovely visit from my parents. We spent time at our new flat, school, Windsor, Virginia Water and introducing them to the best British TV!! It was really sad to see them go. I also had to say goodbye to my friend Demi, from Australia. We were introduced by our head teachers right at the start of our time in England and grew to be great friends.

Rehearsals for our Christmas production started and the performances were successful! We had our staff Christmas party, which was held at a hotel in Guildford. Before we knew it, it was the holidays! Josh and I spent Thursday re-doing our classrooms for the new topic. I am doing Neverland again so I still had a lot of resources from last year which helped.

Josh and I booked a trip to Prague for 4 days. It was helpful that my parents had just been there!! We left on the 23rd from Gatwick. This was the best airport experience I have ever had! There were different entertainment acts, costumes, games, bands, robots, all celebrating Christmas. We think it must be for some kind of video made by Gatwick as it was being filmed. It was amazing.

In Prague, we went to pretty much all the Christmas Markets, went to Prague castle, went on a river tour, had sushi for Christmas dinner and just happily walked around exploring town! We also went up a tower on the hill that looked like the Eiffel Tower. It gave great views of Prague central. The Old Town Square Christmas market was amazing. Chalets selling hot wine, Christmas ornaments and in the centre was a marvelous tree which looked amazing at night. We were not there very long but we did not need anymore time.

When we came back to England (on boxing day), we had Christmas on the 27th with all of Josh's family. It was really fun and I met some more of his family! Then I spent the rest of the week relaxing and going to the gym! It was a really relaxing holiday. For New Years, we bought a lot of cheese, appetizers and Buck's Fizz and had a night in. It was perfect.