Working Days and Sunshine

Monday the start of the week - Day 6 the end of the cycle confused or what !! This 6 day thing still throws me you'd think I'd get used to it but not yet.

Thats said the work the kids are doing on their first project is coming to an end soon, the boxes will all be made and and they will be moving on to do their final evaluation.
They still don't realize the work they are going to need to do on the next project and it is going to come as a shock I think, when they realize how much work will be involved not just on the manufacture, but on the folio - with assessement in the MYP based around the design cycle to get good marks they are going to have to do exceptional work in 5 areas Investigation, Design, Planning, Manufacture and Evaluation. When up to now they have been doing fairly average work.
There are some exceptional cases though. One grade 8 boy brought in a much larger than usual box design in a metalic finish (Kitchen foil - roughed and painted to give a distressed look)complete with a magnetic catch and inside a system designed to hold a pack of card in place on 4 sides. It is these rare moments that bring home how you as a teacher have reached into and ignited design and the use of technology above and beyond the run of the mill work that some pupils will expect to get outstanding marks and then feel disappointed when it doesn't - rewarding creativity. As creativity, problem solving and critical thinking are the ways to gain success.

I took my washing in today - you just needed to know that, but what was nice was everything was carried out in Spanish.. OK it was simple in the extreme but it felt good to be able to at least feel like I was taking part - though I also went into a shop to buy a sewing kit thats wasn't as successful I did leave with my sewing kit but also had a shop full of assistants rolling around the floor as I tried to explain what I needed! (So still some work to be done).

My parting image tonight is Removals the Bogota Way... Its simple you just load everything onto the back of a pick up as I passed it looked incredibly unsafe and adding that settee was going to be very interesting bearing in mind the road conditions around Bogota.