coldel

Cragus was totally my favourite! Here is mine...not a touch on Cragus but tried my best!

You can work normal hours and still afford one, be lucky at work and live at home with no commitments! I tend to not look at my outgoings in terms of the house/bills/etc. per month and think about how much a year I could save living at home/being single etc. could net me - I could have a GTR on the drive next to my Lambo if I add it all up I am sure haha

Spend every penny you got on lottery tickets...

When I joined the school I worked at, the head of maths said 'the worst teachers are the ones that leave 3:30 every day, they are also the ones most likely to fail their students' - its quite a harsh line to take, but there are elements of truth in it. I think back to some of my best classes I gave, the ones where the students engaged and those less capable stepped up a level, they were not the classes where I got them working from text books. I went to Ghana once for a month to teach maths to underprivileged children (classrooms were outdoors, concrete jobbies!), I was taking a maths class and could see the kids were bored (although appreciative) so I stopped and taught them some Japanese language (as I had lived in Japan for a while previous). Japanese is a very 'singy' type language and they loved it, they literally were singing along (even learning numbers is great, 1-2-3-4-5 is effectively itchy knee sun yon go which you can do actions to!). So after 20 mins or so back to maths and we learnt how to calculate angles by singing. They suddenly flew as learners, it was amazing. I guess in terms of what I learnt, is that anyone can do anything if they are engaged and supported. You just need to find that hook, not all kids perform when given text books to work from.

I kind of have to be a little direct in this, but really until you have been a teacher, its really one of those things that is so hard for those who haven't to understand or grasp whats involved. I remember as a student genuinely believing that teachers got the holidays we got and that they started and finished class when we did. Then as a teacher, especially a new teacher as I was, collating information for the syllabus, learning what needs to be taught for the year, spreading that across the terms, collating individual materials, tailoring them to myself and my style and then rehearsing the lesson a number of times. Doing this for all 20 lessons a week I had to give. Then of course as a qualified football coach I stepped in for the after school clubs that ran three times a week for different age groups. I was also involved in a couple of school trips out you are obliged to contribute time to setting up and then attending. I also was a teaching assistant for other teachers, so spare time was spent in their classes. I was also covering form classes for teachers where I had to prepare interesting stuff to entertain kids and engage them with learning...I haven't even mentioned the actual time spent teaching in class yet...seriously the list just goes on and on, until you have been there its really hard to grasp just how much time it takes. I was on just over £1k a month after tax deductions as a new teacher just for reference . Peer marking has its benefits but I know myself and many other teachers know its limits and it implications. In maths, especially in secondary school where I taught, method has to be marked, its not a case of shouting out the answer and its either right or wrong. Pupils cannot properly mark method. It had its uses in a minority of cases but generally I did 90% of marking. Personally I also think over use of peer marking is lazy teaching - effectively you are taking the learning element away from them i.e. you are not teaching them in the class time you have an instead doing your marking for you. But hey that's just a personal view and not a slight on anyone else who disagrees. Its a shame RTBiscuit isnt here, he has been a teacher for years and could really shed light on the life of a teacher much better than I could.

Its pronounced Chris-mas by the way...

I meant in terms of learning at school - I don't remember being taught the structure of language, but then my school was one of the worst in the south east. When I was living in France, the ability of even very young children to understand how language is constructed and the rules behind it all just seemed head and shoulders above kids in the UK.

As above if you are putting the cars out there on the cheap you will attract a certain type of customer i.e. many of the ones looking to make a few quid and chancers. They are probably making an assumption you need shot of them quick and they might be able to get themselves a very cheap car. Price it slightly above what you want for it, but not so high that it puts people off, then negotiate to that price. Also put in the ad that sensible offers only accepted. If you get low offers just reply 'no thanks' then ignore further communication from them don't even bother getting into an email conversation about whether your price is right or not - you are there to sell not debate your pricing with someone who has no intention of paying the price you want.

The actual definition of an acronym is an abbreviation of a number of words using the first letters, which is pronounceable (there is no rule about it being a verb or the like it just must be pronounceable). NASA qualifies on as an acronym based on that agreed definition. To abbreviate is part of the process of creating an acronym and an initialism - it is not a definition of either one or the other. I guess we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one mate!

Well you might want to write to Oxford Dictionaries and point out their error https://en.oxforddic...inition/acronym An acronym simply has to be an abbreviation using the initials of other words and be pronounceable, it does not have to be an actual word in the English language. If its not pronounceable it is an initialism. An 'abbreviation' is a noun and means to shorted something, it doesn't actually define a specific type of acronym/initialism. HSBC and NASA are both abbreviations, but one is an acronym and the other an initialism.

...Mary Poppins 2

...so was Deckard a replicant or not

I thought the first film was fantastic, watching it as a kid it just blew you away - the drizzly weather neon lit scenery, the way it turned the perceived bad guys into the more human good ones, made you rethink why Ford was doing what he did. It was also one of those first films to put the future as something other than shiny lovely tech (like we saw with something like Star Trek) and more gritty and actually something you feared rather than looked forwards to.

Oh god yea formal and informal, French! I wonder how much I offended the French people by simply using the word 'Tu' instead of 'Vous' until I realised what I was doing

Yes she picked up Italian well whilst living there (well she pick up Neapolitan actually!) but learnt how to construct language and why we say what we do, so when it came to learning French and Spanish she picked them up lightning quick using those skills. This skill of language construction 'appears' to be less important in the UK compared to living on the continent, happy to be proven wrong though.

Noooooooooooooo

My wife speaks a number of languages, her understanding of grammar is so much better than mine simply because you learn not only another language but also how language is created and used - I find actually that Brits miss out on learning the construction of language as well as say our European counterparts because English is so important as a business language. I went to an utterly dreadful school as a kid, English class involved having a book thrown at us and told to read it in silence for an hour whilst the teacher disappeared off for cups of tea. I had to learn English when I left school

An acronym is defined as being an abbreviation. I always use NASA as an example of an acronym as that's what the English Dictionary uses

Shot two there Chirag is a case of 'right, stand there, and do not move a muscle!' Great photos. Inspired me to look back, I havent taken any for ages. Sold my Canon SLR (one of the old 350Ds!) and bought a mirrorless Samsung.

And that is a very outdated and non engaging way of teaching. Pupils are much more engaged when they are not sat copying stuff out of a book. Marking often isn't right or wrong, it's also about method you have to grade not just put a tick or a cross. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

For those of you who get hit by bad weather over Christmas...it can happen to anyone...

Stock filters are usually paper, K&N is a metal mesh with reusable material you can clean.

No I get that, what I mean is when you lay down vinyl wrap even if you treat and paint the spot, if you do not rub it down and flatten it in line with the rest of the roof the slight raising of the paintwork will be obvious under the wrap.

... err I still say its pronounced Christmas

I had the same motivation but found I spent much less time teaching children and a lot of time doing other stuff. As mentioned up top, all weekend preparing materials, marking, etc. I found little fun sitting indoors on a warm Saturday afternoon for 6 hours preparing lessons and missing out on time over the park with my new born son and wife. Additionally I am an excellent trainer in my job (have travelled the world running training events) but that in no way prepares you for being a trainer for a bunch of kids, its a whole new ball game and give them an inch and they will do their best to wreck your carefully planned lesson!