Well the plans were all done immaculately ready for the mini LEA inspection which our wonderful Head had decided would be a good idea

I was due to be observed twice during the week, once on Monday, and then again on Tuesday.  So I got to school early Monday to get everything set up...

We had a meeting with the 2 inspectors at 8.30am... and were told that the inspector formerly known as A.N.Other would not be coming  so we would all only have the 1 observation by the 1 person who had turned up! This meant that I wouldn't now be inspected until the Tuesday, I was relieved, but in some way felt a bit angry and cheated too! I had psyched myself up to be watched, had everything immaculately prepared and... now it was all for nothing, ah well c'est la vie!

From there on in Monday was a nice relaxed day, I was off the hook for now and had time to make sure that nothing could go wrong for Tuesday's lesson obs.  I half thought about running through the lesson Monday, so the children were clued up for Tuesday, but decided one of them was bound to drop me in it!

The inspector was only due to see me for 1/2 an hour after play time... a time when we are normally eating our morning fruit, so I decided to switch the fruit to before play, so we could get straight down to work afterwards.  So what happens... she thinks that as I only had a 1/2 hour scheduled, she will come early!  So chaos is reigning because the children are wanting to know why they are having their fruit when they haven't been out to play yet!  And then just to really help, it is chucking it down outside, so wet playtime!  I stick a video on for them to watch, and escape for a quick coffee.

I got back and turned off the video and launched into my lesson - maths - measurement.  I had prepared a page with all the children's names on to put on to the interactive whiteboard.  Each child then needed to come up and find their name, so that I could move it to their height.  Well this didn't go too badly to start with, but they were starting to get quite fidgety, so I asked my TA to take her group outside to build with the big blocks (the rain had stopped at least!) So I just got that little lot out and launched back into whose name we still needed to do and who was the talles, shortest etc.. when a little voice said... 'My tooth's come out!' Well the TA was outside, so I had to get her a drink of water and then send her off to the office to get a little envelope to put it in, at which point I decided enough was enough and told the children we would do the last few names later.  I started to direct them to the activities I wanted them to do, but a number of them were asking to go outside with the others, so in the end we all went out, and I just thought, ah well - make of it what you will!!

At this point the 'lady with the clipboard' disappeared, and I had to wait til lunchtime for her to give me feedback.  I had my defence well prepared by the time she came back, and was able to justify my decision to let them all go out, which was fine.  She made various points about the lesson, and the annoying thing was that if she had stayed she would have seen me cover most of those points, but because she didn't, she said she could only comment on what she had actually seen, although she seemed quite satisfied with it, I felt that she had missed some of the best bits.

 

Needless to say we had a lovely relaxed rest of the week!