Witchford Village College

This was where I headed on Tuesday for my first day of work in England. A school in a wee village an hours bus ride north of Cambridge. It was an early start to catch the 6.40 a.m. bus but I survived.

An interesting school with only 3 lessons a day. Each lasting 100 minutes. This presented a good challenge as the first two classes I covered had no work set for them. Not too bad though as they were Food Tech classes. Part way through the first class with a bunch of Year 10's (15 year olds) we figured out the Resource centre was booked for them. Headed to library type place with plenty of computers. Most of them used the second half of the lesson to make progress on their current project - developing a sweet or savoury food product.

The second class were Year 8's (12 and 13 year olds) doing a compulsory rotation class. Current work was on pastry. Most students had a book with theory work in. So first I found a couple of pastry related activities. They didn't take much time though. Second I gave them ingredients for a mystery recipe. Can you guess what it was? That's right Annabel Langbein's famous Chocolate Brownie. In groups they decided what they thought they could make using the ingredients and then planned a method. After that most of them chose to do a word find in the back of their books.

After lunch I had the thrill of invigilation. It was bizarre. I think I counted 14 students in this GCSE graphics exam - 7 boys and 7 girls. We had 3 people supervising. Just a wee bit over the top don't you think. Never mind, boring as it was, at least I got paid.

So, despite there being no planned work and the extraordinarily long lessons I survived! It is worth noting that the school has recently implemented a "Calm Learning Environment" policy. I lovely beige slip can be filled out and sent off to E1 with a good student. Within minutes someone arrives to remove any disruptive students. No need to make use of this with the Year 10's but I had no hesitation in marching a couple of the Year 8's. Worked a treat. Figured that 100 minute lessons were definitely justification for putting the system to good use.