Plan B says the prompt at Sunday Scribblings. As a teacher I always have to have a ‘Plan B’ up my sleeve. At school we have a timetable that I try to stick to as much as possible as the children function better when they have routine but also for my own sanity. However things happen that I have no control over… take Wednesday this week for example.
My class should have had an aquafit session straight after lunch in our on-site swimming pool. About 15 minutes before the session was due to begin I had a message from the school office explaining that there was a problem with the pool so we wouldn’t be going. I knew that I would have a class of disappointed children. As a teacher you get used to the challenge of thinking on your feet and coming up with a Plan B so I went through my mental list of ‘something’s happened, what else can we do?’ standbys.
My first thought was to take them outside for a bit of extra PE but the field and playground were already timetabled to other classes. My second thought was to do some handwriting practice with them, but I decided that would be mean; handwriting isn’t really their favourite activity and would be a poor replacement for aquafit.
My third thought was to continue reading the class book (Boy by Roald Dahl) ready for their next English lesson. This proved to be a lovely calming start to the afternoon. They whinged a bit when they realised they weren’t going to the pool, but when they realised they were continuing with their book they decided this was a good replacement. We later continued the afternoon as planned with our ICT and PSHE lessons.
I’ve found that if you have to use a Plan B with children you need to make sure it’s of comparable excitement otherwise their behaviour deteriorates and you can’t really blame them!
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