School Starts

Ah, the beginning of another school year. This year I find myself in a new school where many things are different. I am in Wood Green which is in Northern London. It is a busy urban town filled with lots of shops, buses, schools, and loads of people. I arrive at school by taking a double decker red bus. My school St. Michaels Primary School is a Church of England School and has one class of each grade level. The youngest children in the school are the Reception class, these would be like our preschoolers (age 4 or 5). Then they enter Year 1 and move through the school up until Year 6. I am teaching Year 4, which is like our grade 3 (the children are 8 years old). The school is very friendly. Their aren't special teachers for art, PE, music, or library so I teach those subjects as well as all the typical subjest of math, reading, science, history. The children here must wear uniforms and were very jealous of the children at Rieck that don't have to wear them. The children wear white shirts with gray trousers. The girls can also wear a green and white checked dress. Both boys and girls wear ties and many children bring a green jumper (sweater) to wear because the mornings are usually cool. It does get warm in the afternoon, usually into the high 70s. I am sure the children at Rieck would be jealous to know lunch here is one hour long with plenty of time for play. I am learning a lot each day. As you can see though we speak the same language many words are different for example:
erasers are called rubbers in England, the word pants means underwear to the Bristish, and they call pants- trousers, the list grows almost daily. In my classroom we have created a list and posted it on the wall so we can all remember.
The above pictures are of the school and town near the school, Ms. Koutsou took these last spring.