A typical day...

Quite recently, several friends outside of teaching have questioned whether I am actually as busy outside of "school working hours" (imagine 9-3:30) as I say I am. I've watched several bloggers do this exercise recently, and in light of the above friends comments, I've decided to log my day for you.

6:15 The first alarm goes off. There's no way I can get out of bed, so I hit snooze.
By 6:45 I have alarms going off on my phone and my radio, so I drag myself out of bed.
7:40 I'm out the door. Running late this morning, I'm normally out by 7:30. This causes me a dilemma; I'm late, so do I take the car? Mentally, I tot up what needs doing this morning. I can afford to walk.
7:55 I arrive at school. A quick chat with our morning cleaners while I boot my laptop up. I need to prepare for the morning, so I send my worksheets to print and collect them while I go and get the resources for maths - Except I can't find what I need! Make a mental note to ask my TA to have a look while I register children.
8:20 A discussion between myself and my manager takes place about the state of our cloakroom. We decide to veto it this morning and reorganize it. She's on morning duty, so she's going to hold the kids outside while my class sort themselves out, and then let hers in.
8:45 We let the children in and sort the cloakroom.

I should just be walking into school now, right? I mean, I work 9-3:30?!

8:50 Registration. I'm fairly easy with my kids, they can have a quiet chat, or read while I take my register.
9:00 Maths. I suddenly remember I haven't sent my TA to find that additional equipment, so I quickly adjust the lesson plan to take that into account. Meanwhile, one of my children points out that the interactive whiteboard has suddenly dimmed. I call our IT Tech, who stands on a table distracting the children from my lesson while he pokes and prods and declares that the bulb is going and he'll order a new one.
9:40 "Miss Ward, the whiteboard's gone off!" . My heart literally sinks. Another visit from our IT tech, who confirms there is nothing he can do. He'll order a new bulb, but I'm potentially looking at a week without it.

Take a breath!

10:00 Literacy. By now I've sourced an A-Frame whiteboard from another classroom, but they're not happy about it - Neither am I! All my resources for this lesson are interactive, but we get through enough. I'm not happy with the lesson, but what else can I do?
11:00 Breaktime. I dash over to our snack bar, who do the most delicious home-made biscuit bars and pull the resources together for my science.
11:15 Science. I only teach half my class for science, the rest join another class, so we get a lot done and I feel they get more out of it. This week we're analysing what goes into soil, and I'm pleased to see that their understanding progresses from "it's brown and squishy" to describing the elements that make up soil. A good lesson.

12:15 Lunchtime. I have some training this lunch to do with Clicker 6, which is a powerful writing support tool that I don't use enough. The training is brief and recaps most of what I already know, but I get some time to sit with the trainer and work out some bugs that I'd been having with the program not behaving the way I expected it to. I eat my lunch while we're training.

1:15 Afternoon registration. Again, I'm fairly laid back here but I do stop a couple of noisy boys from causing too much ruckus at my bookshelf. I'm considering if that bookshelf is really the best idea, it causes a lot of drama in the classroom.
1:30 It's our house assembly, and I take my house group and discuss their attendance and how important it is. I need some sort of reward for attendance, I might look into stickers.
1:45 Friday morning is our sharing assembly and we need to prepare for this - My partner teacher isn't in class tomorrow afternoon and I have my NQT release time on a Thursday afternoon, so this slot is our only chance. We talk to the children about what they need to do, and they sort themselves into groups to share work and plan what they want to say.
3:00 We come back together and recap what we're doing for sharing assembly. Then we need to tidy up to get ready to go home.
3:20 We let the children out. I have a chat with some parents and then prepare for the staff meeting.

Hometime! Oh.. wait.

3:30 Staff meeting. We've finalised the first draft of our new numeracy policy and we spent some time analysing it, then looking at the new writing target policy that needs to come in.
5:00 Staff meeting breaks, and I meet with my partner teacher to go over the lessons for tomorrow. Literacy isn't planned, so that needs doing.
5:20 I leave school, because senior staff want to leave and lock up. I dump the planning onto my stick and walk home. Damn, I forgot to grab my marking.

5:35 I get home. It was a cold walk, I forgot to change my shoes and my feet feel the cold first. Spent the walk catching up with Twitter and texting a few friends. I have some downtime, stick some toast in and check things on my home computer.

6:00 Time to settle to work I put How I Met Your Mother on for background, and thankfully it's an episode I've seen before. I need to concentrate, but I hate working in silence. I spend an hour tinkering with the Literacy plan, moving a lesson and sourcing some resources to fill tomorrow, and then planning a lesson for Thursday. It's my first NQT lesson observation and I want it to go well. I haven't done the interactive whiteboard file for that yet, but most of tomorrow is at least there and still in the back of my mind is that I don't have my IWB, meaning that I'll need to do the whiteboard file for my partner teacher and something else for my own class. What did we do before interactive white boards?

7:00. Planning is finished. I have a huge pile of books to mark; it's Big Write so the marking isn't even easy. I normally do them at the weekend but this weekend I went to visit family and it got put off; I'm paying the price for that now, just like I'll pay the price for not grabbing my marking before I left school. I learned quickly that you really need to stay on top of that stuff, or you drown in it.

7:40 Two Big Write books marked and I stop to make dinner; If I don't stop now, I'll have to cook during Great British Bake Off, and it's one of the few shows on TV I genuinely make time to watch. So at this point, I'm calling it a night on the work.

I left the house exactly 12 hours ago. It's been a long day with large amounts of ICT-related drama in it. But this is a normal day for me. Hope it's been enlightening.

I'm exhausted!