Work experience done!

Hurrah, my work eperience is finished. And boo. I really enjoyed it and I don't want to go back to me current job now, even for only three weeks. :o(
I spent my last week in KS1, mostly Y2 and we got to go on a trip to Whipsnade Zoo. It was great. I had a group of 8 kids and a parent helper and we went around looking at the animals and classifying them according to habitat and whether they had fur, feathers or scales.
Very enjoyable - tiring - and I learnt a lot.
For instance, the kids were quite slow in writing so instead of actually getting to study the animals they spent most of their time staring at their sheets. I wondered whether it would be feasable for each group to have a camera and take a photo for discussion as a group later, which would be good ICT and also free up their time to really look at and talk about the animals. Or whether the teacher/parent helper should have the sheet and the kids decide as a group what should be written.
Also, the kids were asked to take disposable lunches (no flasks/lunchboxes) so they could be thrown away (good) but to bring them in carrier bags. This meant much juggling of clipboard and bag, three bags in my group alone broke and kids kept trying to offload their bags onto the adults and each other. disposable lunch = good, carrier bag= bad! Rucksacks or somewhere to store them = better!

I've also been practicing learning kids names. I do this by looking at their face (we have an innate ability to remember/recognise faces more strongly than anything else) and link it with an image or phrase). For instance - for Indiana I imagined her with an indiana Jones hat and whio. For Hayden - I thought of him sitting on a giant wall (okay, that's Hadriens wall, but it worked for me!), for Clara - I imagined her hugging a cow (since in my mind Clara is a good name for a cow). It really worked. You just need a couple of seconds to concentrate!
Off to my new school swap over morning tomorrow to work with the kids I'll be teaching next year. Really excited!