First off I'd like to give a big shout out to my awesome Mumma, whose birthday is this week! Happy Birthday!!

It's been a hectic week and I haven't had time to come on here and update all of you on how things are going on this here island nation, so I thought it being Saturday night and me not being out with my friends I ought to update you all.

These past two weeks I have been working with the Drama Club again on a competition that was held today, the National Literature Festival's book trailer competition. It was the first year that the drama club was able to send two teams and I'm proud to say that our teams got second runner up for My Sister's Keeper and Gold for Emily of Emerald Hill. I recorded them on my iPhone and have posted the videos of their performances on youtube, I will put the links at the bottom of this post.

Work has been hectic and with everything being thrown at my it's been sink or swim. I would characterise my current state as treading water in the storm. There is lots of marking, what with me having 160 secondary two literature students alone and you can imagine how many pages of essays that makes whenever I assign anything.

This week we had Catherine Lim, a noted Singaporean author come to the school and discuss her work. Our lesson study group, which is a group of teachers who take on a research project each year to examine different teaching strategies or other pedagogical methodologies in a group, has been working on ways of teaching students Irony and Catherine Lim uses a lot of irony in her work. I really suggest some of her short stories to teachers interested in teaching irony.

It was great to have her at the school and many students were enthusiastically inspired by her and her experience as a writer. She also gave me some awesome tips that I've been putting into use with my students that when phrasing HOW irony works it is helpful to use "yet" or "the very." This works like a charm teachers! My hint of the day.

On the social side of things I am making more friends and spending more time with the ones I have, when I have it which isn't often. I am going tomorrow night with a group of ex pat teachers to see Harry Potter which I am excited for. Also I am planning a trip possibly to Hong Kong for the break in September with my friend Iain who taught there for 15 years as well as a possible trip to the UK over the Christmas holiday to see my Grandmother and visit London.

So in short, things are good, I am feeling much more secure in my place in the world now that I'm teaching and my students make me laugh every day so it's a joy to go in to work, even when they are naughty. Enjoy these videos of my drama kids, I'm so proud of them!!

Emily of Emerald Hill (a Singaporean play that I am currently teaching to my sec 2 students, this performance won the gold. I sadly missed the first couple of seconds when recording, but you can still see the great work they put in)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8YlJ0GMxFU


My Sister's Keeper (this is a book you probably have heard of, or the movie. About a girl whose family wants her to donate her kidney to her sister. This performance won second runner up)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nMkDa7iFZc