Tuesday, November 16, 2010

les trois petits cochons

I woke up with a renewed sense of confidence in myself (in terms of teaching English in this unique teaching position I'm in). I need to keep in mind that what I do doesn't matter, but that I do it is important (thank you Gandhi). I have 30 minutes with these students, and I may not always have complete respect or attention from the class, but I can do my best to entertain the kids with English experiences that their regular teachers wouldn't normally give them. And that's that! (Amazing what a good night's sleep can do!)

Anyway- I was at Simon Signoret today, and much to my surprise, I didn't have my regular morning talk with Pierre... so I took advantage of the extra time and made copies for another school for next week (shh, don't tell them I used their ink for another school!!!). I met with the maternelle first (Corinne's class) and worked with a small group of students on numbers and colors. They're so adorable... I would ask them what a color was in French, then say the color in English, then ask if they could tell me the color in English, and they'd give me the color in French like they were so proud of themselves for knowing the answer haha. Oh well, I'm sure it's confusing to them on the whole. I also sang my good morning song with the whole class and they're getting pretty good at mumbling along with me.

In my CP classes, we reviewed the numbers and number songs (they're actually really good at mumbling/singing along to 1 little, 2 little, 3 little pumpkins...). Then I read the Three Little Pigs with them (trois petits cochons in French). They already knew the story, so I was hoping they'd get to focus a little more on the English. They picked up on "three" and "house," but when I'd ask if they were big or little pigs, they'd say big first... I guess I didn't think about how "big" and "pig" sound alike, so they got confused. They were cute though, especially when I couldn't think of the word for straw or chin in French to help translate a page (paille and menton, fyi).

In my CE1 classes, we did basically the same thing but had time to play telephone at the end. Telephone was one of the activities they mentioned at the in-service for helping children learn to listen and pronounce words in a foreign language. It turned out to be very entertaining... I only used very short 1-3 word phrases (seven, little pumpkin, three little pigs, five, etc.). By the end it usually ended up sounding like made up words (seenin, lilly pumd, fee pids, hive), but once I repeated a few, they got better and better at taking their time to pronounce the words and come up with something they had heard before (that was English and not gibberish). I've decided it really is a good game to play... and I could change it up.... like by showing them the picture along with telling them the word or just showing a picture and they have to come up with the vocabulary to pass along or they can find the right picture that corresponds to the thing they hear instead of having to pronounce it at the end.... the possibilities are endless:)

So, all in all, a really good day! Granted, most of my classes were missing several students because today is the last day of Ramadan.... giving me class sizes of 12-18 instead of 25-30, but... I'll just go ahead and attribute it to my fantastic lesson planning skills!

Speaking of lesson plans, I'm getting really excited for all of my Thanksgiving lessons. With this school, I'm going to explain Thanksgiving with pictures I copied from the books my mom sent and then have them make hand print turkeys to put on thank you cards to give to their parents. With Les Marendiers, I'm going to read the books I got from my mom to help explain Thanksgiving, and either have them organize pictures from the story in the right order (for the older kids) or color by numbers a turkey to review their colors in English. With the Berliet school, we're doing some of that stuff this week and next week we are making place mats (Amy's coming in to help). The mats will say Happy Thanksgiving and they'll draw thanksgiving pictures and write what they are thankful for... plus Murielle is going to take pictures of Amy and I working with the kids so that later she can put the real pictures on the place mats before she laminates them and gives them to the kids to remember the day! She's so great to work with:)

Bon mardi a tous! (Happy Tuesday to all!)

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