Great Expectations

This fortnight is parent observation fortnight. Oh joy. This means the kids parents can come into the classrooms, spy on us, intimidate us, make the kids feel nervous and that you can hear them nattering away to each other.

Today was my first one. Three mothers of my 6 year olds who, decided to play at being shy and wouldn't join in the sodding song - which they've done a billion times before. The parents got to watch me jumping, hopping and trying to bully the kids into joining in, instead. Lessons are hard to predict. Sometimes you get it spot on. Most of the time with kids lessons you plan too much or too little. Today what I'd planned went a bit too fast. But I managed to improvise. Phew....

The parents gave good feedback. Except for one comment: the children should be doing more conversation. Oh how we laughed. Let's have a reality check here, shall we? They can manage to ask each other simple questions (what's your name? what's this? etc) - they are hardly likely, on 60 minutes of English a week, aged 6, to be having full on conversations in English, are they?

Some parents really do expect too much. Oh well.