The cold snap ended and we returned to peaks of low-twenties as this week progressed. On his way out, Calum suggested a lesson plan which led to one of the most successful and engaging week of classes I’ve had in a while. And it was something as simple as Noughts and Crosses, but brilliantly adapted with enough scope to keep twenty-something kids occupied for three-quarters of an hour and enough variation between lessons that I wasn’t bored by the end of the week.

I split the class into two teams and drew a Noughts-and-Crosses board up with a word in each square. The teams had to ask me questions such that my answer was the word in the square they wanted. I actually started splitting it up so that each team was using a different set of words but on the same board (words in blue for one team, red for the other). The centre square (long since recognised as the key to an easy victory) was usually a verb like sing or dance; not difficult words, but I would purposefully get the answer wrong until one person was prepared to actually sing or dance (while a teammate asked, ‘What is he/she doing?’). If they tried to do a cop-out by drawing or writing the object or concept on a piece of paper then ask, ‘Teacher, what is this?’ I would say, ‘It’s a piece of paper,’ or ‘It’s a drawing.’ Highly frustrating for them; hilarious for me.

We seem to end up in Essen far too frequently these days, but Kieran was down from Fuhai again, so sure enough come Friday evening we were greeting Daniel, the owner, on our way in. This meal was followed by the film Unfriended back at home, set almost entirely on a teenager’s laptop screen switching between Skype and Facebook. An interesting watch; let’s put it that way. Saturday and Sunday quickly turned into a weekend of horror, with Kieran and I getting through the entire Insidious trilogy pretty much back-to-back.

Tom and Kieran were suffering from colds, and one of them must have passed it onto me; come Monday I could barely get out of bed and had to call in sick. Despite this start to the week I was much better on Tuesday and taught (*ahem*) the last couple of Noughts-and-Crosses lessons.

—TJC

Featured image: Tom enjoying the breath of Summer (rain. It’s rain).