Making it fun

This week has been a hard one to get through. I have caught one of the inevitable bugs that float around a school, and on top of that I worked at my parents business over the weekend so they could have some time off. That meant of course that I got no time off of my own to rest and get rid of that cold. My HOD is one of those people who will always encourage you to take time off and look after yourself rather than coming in and struggling through the day, yet still I feel guilty for every sick day I take. Especially when you set the reliever instructions and they fail to follow them through.

Being sick makes everything I do doubly hard. I have been realising that over the past week that most of the work I have been doing has been boring me. If it is boring me then how must the students been feeling? So this week I have made it my aim to make every class as fun as I can. I admit that there are times when you must do the hard yards of things that aren't exactly fun, but that doesn't have to be all the time.

So this week I have been playing games, which has made this cold bearable to teach through. With my Year 10's we designed and played our own Hunger Games. Now those people who have read The Hunger Games may have reacted in shock at that statement, but we made it like ripper rugby or flag football, they had ripper tags on their hips and when that was ripped off they were effectively dead. It was a lot of fun. We set up the gym into our own arena, put out hoops for their starting positions and changed the rules as we went like in the real Hunger Games. Half the class were eliminated in the first minute and when they died they were allowed to come back as Muttations and so everyone had a second life. We got through 3 rounds, and then we finished early and they all put a hand in to helping clean up and put the gym back into shape.

My Yr 11 class have just started working on short stories/ creative writing. They are a limited class so I am having to take everything very slowly and repeat a lot of stuff. So this past week has been about writing fun stories. I have put editing and crafting details on the backburner as something we will focus on next week, but for now it is all about ideas. coming up with characters, mixing and matching plots. But I have also found I have had to introduce a veto person, making sure all their ideas have some kind of filter put on them.

I have put into effect my skills at photoshop and have had some fun with my tutor group too. I have photoshopped their heads onto famous people or characters bodies. This has resulted in much hilarity and entertainment. I made sure they were all okay with their photos before I put them up, but even my most serious students loves the photo of him as Michael Jackson.

I need more fun ideas so if you have any then comment below :)