Topics this week:

From memory: the German au pairs are on the Science chapter. This is very good for them as they have absolutely no interest in science, and no curiosity about it either. I was exactly the same at their age but I find it astounding anyway, especially as these are well-educated girls and you would expect them to take a bit of interest in something so significant to the future. I have taught a number of English language classes the rudiments of the greenhouse effect, drawing a diagram on the board, and they have all gawped, because they knew nothing whatever about it - also astonishing. A Thai lady asked me a couple of months ago why the carbon dioxide doesn't escape into space, and this is the first time I have even had a good question about it! You think something is common knowledge and they it turns out it isn't, at all. The advanced ones like grammar. This week they did more advanced conditionals, for example, with inversion.

Science is often scary - for example, Headline in Guardian 8 May: No longer as simple as GATC. Scientists give genetic alphabet a two-letter twist. New code created in lab in replicated by organism. DNA challenged as perfect molecule says US team.  When I showed this to my daughter she said: This is terrifying! and read all the science part very closely, frowning worriedly.

So I showed this to the German girls and they went: uh.

The Maybury group did a reading on caffeine and its effects in order to clarify the grammar of used to, be used to, get used to, which they found difficult to understand, and now I am going to go over narrative tenses with them and they are all going to write about something from their childhoods.

The Level 2s started with a QI quiz and then talked about installation art, they had a listening on the good qualities it has and then they discussed it mainly from the sceptical point of view. Most of them did not know much about art, so it was good for them. An effort to open their minds. then we did verbs of the senses and then we did preparation for writing a report.

The Tuesday group did a reading on teaching a chimp to talk, and their grammar is present perfect simple and continuous. The afternoon was spent on exercises about preparing for an interview. We rehearsed small talk and making a good impression. Next week: tackling interview questions.

Bellfields did target setting, plus a reading on a con-man, and a listening, and lots of phrasal verbs, and that went quite well. Next week : question tags

Anyway: all this planning and changing from book to book and topic to topic is terribly tiring, and I feel I would like to focus on just one thing for a while. I am hoping to get out somewhere this weekend. Apart from that it will be half term soon, and I desperately need it. And the inspectors have STILL  not come!