Its coursework deadline time at the moment at school: all final drafts to be in this Tuesday (then the countless phonecalls to parents of the kids who don't do this). So I've been marking first, second and third drafts to get them back to kids so they can keep working at them. I have a new class as there is a lot of staff sickness in our department and they are going to be my biggest nightmare coursework wise, they are lazy, talkative and many of them find English hard. I had one girl hand in an essay that was half a page long! My class of special need kids in the same year group would never have dared to do that, and would have been ashamed if they had so little to say! From this little mini rant you can see that this is a stressful time of the year.
As I've been so busy - I have a day of marking ahead - I've barely managed to squeeze in any reading time, or had time to get out in the glorious sunshine we suddenly have. One and a half more weeks of school and then its the holidays, I'll still be marking for hours everyday, but will be ensuring I'm out in the garden and whizzing through books too.
This morning I finished The Viceroy of Ouidah by Bruce Chatwin. This 101 page story is set in Benin, about a family from Brazil who travel to Africa and make their fortune from slavery. The novella focuses on various members of the family and their fall, across several generations. I liked bits of this but found that I often had read a page or so and didn't know which family member they were now talking about.
Once the marking is done and I've been to the library I'll be starting Love and Summer by William Trevor, and I have a Neil Gaiman short story: 'Snow, Glass, Apples' to read, a retelling of the Snow White story, hopefully a great way to start off the Once Upon a Time IV Challenge :D
1 comment:
I've a stack of papers waiting for me to grade them myself. I hate teaching in spring.
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