Feb 2008

Surveys
When children are confident with question and answer forms give them some kind of survey sheet and 5-10 minutes to interrogate as many children as possible. If applicable bring the answers together to get the results for the whole class.

Coloriages/Information Gap
Children work in pairs; each has the same sheet but with different information. For example child A's sheet may tell him that Anna is 12, but he needs to know how old Megan is. He asks child B how old Megan is and tells child B how old Anna is. Alternatively both children are given the same sheet and instructions to fill in different details which they must then give to their partner, for example child A colours the giraffe, monkey and dog, and child B the cat, fish and penguin and must then tell their partner how to colour their other animals so eventually both sheets should look identical.

Who am I?
All members of the class have a sheet with a number of children on and certain information about them i.e. what fruits they like, what sports they like, what colour eyes/hair they have. In groups/pairs or as a class one child chooses a character and has to describe him/her to the rest of the class who try to guess who he is.

Tell me about yourself
Children work in pairs and have an "English conversation" about their family, their favourite sports etc, then come back together as a class and ask various children what they found out about their partner.

With many of these activities I have girls v. boys or two teams and every time I hear them speaking French between themselves they lose a point. Good English gains them points!

Sketches
If children are learning language for a particular "situation de communication" i.e. "Going through customs", when they are confident with all the structures get them to produce little 'sketches' in pairs or groups and present them to the class.

True/False
Children come up to the board one at a time and say a fact about themselves, e.g. "I've got brown hair and blue eyes", they then hold up True/False cards and say "True or False?". The first child to put up his hand with the right answer (and the correct version if it was false!) gets the next turn.

Songs
I have used: "The Good Morning Song" (Good morning, Good morning, Good morning to you. Good morning, Good morning and how are you?)
"The Goodbye Song" (Goodbye everyone, Goodbye everyone, Goodbye everyone. It's time to say goodbye)
"The Alphabet"
"Apples and Bananas" (I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas. I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas. Repeated with different fruits)
"Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes"
"Colours" (Red and yellow, blue and green, blue and green, blue and green. Red and yellow, blue and green, purple, orange and pink)
"The Weather Song" (What's the weather? What's the weather? What's the weather everyone? Is it windy? Is it cloudy? Is there rain or is there sun?)
Chant for days of the week
"The Animals Went in Two by Two"

"Oh Christmas Tree!"
"We Wish you a merry christmas!"

"Hello, Goodbye", The Beatles

Books
Read a book together; spend several lessons beforehand building up all the vocabulary and structures necessary for them to be able to read it with you/to you, e.g. "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", "Where's Spot?"

(forgot this one earlier).

Ok so lessons in both my schools regularly (as in normally) start at least 5 minutes late in the morning/after both recreation/after lunch, so lets say these children are loosing 1 hour and 40 minutes a week (the teachers of course GAINING this time in coffee break). Although VERY VERY frequently its nearer 10 minutes and sometimes 15. And this is the time the bell goes, I'm not even gonna think about the time it then takes for the children to get in and settled, but, put it this way, at least one of my classes misses about a third of their allocated English time every week.

So anyway almost every day there is this big "oh which teachers are on duty today?" thing where the lucky ones sat up in the warm staffroom then crack all these hilarious (err not) jokes about what time the bell will go (as in moaning about those who do it on time...not, as you might think, those who decide breaktime should be longer).

This Friday morning the bell went at 9 o clock. On the dot. As it should be no?

You would not believe the bitching that breaktime; apparently it was "not even 9 o clock" but seriously if it wasn't it was like one minute off and that doesn't even begin to make up for the wasted time every other day of the school year.

• sigh*

Oh and they try to blame me because the headteacher is like "oh they have allocated time for English so we can't have too long a break". THEY HAVE ALLOCATED TIME FOR SCHOOOOOOOOL! And seriously like an hour and a half for lunch is ENOUGH.

I do wonder how these teachers would cope in a different job/different country ... maybe they should go on strike over these on-time starts eh? ;-)

Ok. Rant over.

Mardi Gras! I don't think they do "pancake day" here although being so close to "chandeleur" there seemed to be a bit of confusion (with teachers and children when I spoke about it today and of course when I mentioned them I had to hear all about what every child likes on his crepes. They also mentioned beignets and merveilles de carnaval (like dougnuts) to be eaten today, oh and one of the CE1 classes turned up all in fancy dress for the carnival I guess...darth vader, faries etc! Cute!

This really bizarre and totally bad thing happened today and I can't really understand it...I've hard on SO many occassions from different people how competitive it is to get into teaching over here and yet they seem to have a MAJOR lack of supply teachers. It has become the norm over winter to have 5 or 6 children from another class sat at the back of the room because their own teacher is off ill and there is no "remplacement", so today I get 6 seven year olds rock up halfway through a lesson. It turns out some other teacher in a DIFFERENT school had ended up with 50 children to look after and, supposedly, teach by herself, so the "inspectrice" shows up at my school halfway through these childrens lesson, disrupts this class and sends the teacher off to the other school and the pupils are split between all our classes. It's so nuts, like I don't think this would ever happen at home...Perigueux isn't *that* small a place; they darn well need more supply teachers!

But I am pleased because I got my copy of the class photo today...not a good photo of me (DOUBLECHIN!) but the kids look cute and its a wicked souvenir. Teaching has gone better this week; have made an extra effort to be very well prepared and to go in with a smile as I did at the beginning and has worked out pretty well. Also started "Hello, Goodbye" (Beatles) which they're going to do in choir for their concert on the 24th June. All my classes now start with "How are you?" (song for CE1/CE2 and in the middle of teaching CM1/CM2 a range of different responses rather than "I'm very well thank you), Quick fire questions (Whats your name/nationality etc etc etc), "Whats the date?", and "Whats the weather today?" (with song for CE1/CE2)

Ooo and latest exciting travel update: about to get booked up for Arcachon at the end of April. Will have 7 nights there in a caravan with Cathy, Eddie, Hari, Catherine and whoever else rocks up. Should be cooooool! I will just be happy to be beside the seaside (fingers crossed for good weather) and really hoping to get to La Rochelle and Biarritz from there.

Have had a superproductive day. Have actually, for once, got everything done which I planned to on waking up and by 20.30. This never happens! It's usually about now that I start writing the to-do list for the next day. I guess thats what you get for waking up in the MORNING on a Sunday rather than LUNCHTIME. (Getting up at "midi" 3 days a week and 6.45 the others was just not working...)

So yeah this morn I read my new little librio guide to French literary movement from the medieval ages to the 19th Century. Its a fantastic little book...like very very very concise but brilliant for putting everything in context, getting me back in the litterature mindset. Then I finished off my lesson planning: Sports this week. Gonna do it with all levels I think and varying degrees of difficulty etc etc but it meant the first, "vocab introducing" lesson was easy to plan. I wrote my blog entry about vocabulary in lessons and stuff...had been meaning to get all my ideas down somewhere together for a while. Then it was to the laverie, did some washing and started on my new grammar book while waiting. This afternoon I spent hours and hours looking at careers stuff. Mostly the different teacher training options, deciding which one to go for (EBITT GTP i think, he he he Employment Based Initial Teacher Training Graduate Teacher Programme, although its very competetive so will apply for PGCEs too) and where I want to do it (probably the Bristol/Bath area although tricky as want to try and keep my plans roughly in-line with Joe's). Also looked at jobs in a few other areas, namely BBC, Comenius/CILT and the Civil Service Faststream (Diplomatic service/European Fast Stream). Could all be cool if the right thing came up but we shall see!

And then decided it was treat-time so I pulled on my hoody and hat, grabbed my keys and 5euros and ran round the corner (in the wind and rain) to the err "Tunisian" (read Kebab shop) and got me some dinner! mmmm!

Ooo yeah other news is that Mum and Dad have booked another Dordogne break for the Spring and got a car booked too so we can do all the places I can't get to sans voiture, so that'll be awesome.

Monday morning will soon be here. 3 weeks till the hols. The countdown has kinda started now.

Flashcards

-Good old listen and look, repeat. Hold up flashcards one at a time or stick them on the board and point. On average about 9 words seems to work best.
-As above, point to 1 flascard, say, repeat, then flascards 1&2, then 1&2&3, then 1&2&3&4 and so on.
-Blindlearning. Have all flashcards on board, go through them all several times in order then take down/cover up flashcard 1 and get the kids to say it then go through the rest, then take down 1&2 they have to say both, go through the rest and so on untill they say all the words in order without seeing any of the flashcards.
-When saying/repeating words use different voices/intonations which they have to copy. Really helps keep their attention. Loudly and quietly works great; whispering so softly they can only just hear you means they really have to listen and doing it loudly means the shy ones aren't scared.
-Ask the class/individuals "What's this?" and hold up flashcard
-As above but with part of it covered with black card (so they only see part of the picture)
-Look at child A in the classroom, hold up a flashcard and whisper "What's this?" followed by the name of child B who is sat elsewhere. They have to listen out for their name (because you won't be looking at them) and tell you what it is.
-Give each child a flashcard/a set of mini flashcards. I say a word and if they have that thing they have to hold it up.
-Have all flashcards on board, ask the children to "close your eyes", then remove one (two? three?!) cards and ask tthem "What's missing?".
-Get two children (one from each team) to come up to the front, make a big deal out of this and get them to turn around and shut their eyes. Distribute flashcards to some of the children in class and get one of them to stand up. Get two at front to open eyes and race to say the name of that flashcard which is being held up.

Other ways

-Introduce each word with an action
-Introduce words with a song

Games

-Get class into two teams. One at a time a member of each time comes up, you say a word and the first person to touch the flashcard/draw the item/act the gesture/write the word gets a point for his team.
-Bingo!
-Charades
-Noughts and crosses. On the board draw a noughts and crosses board and fill the squares with numbers, letters, flashcards etc, in order to get a nought or cross for their team the child has to say the item which is in the square he wants; make sure each child can only get one go, so the others have to do it "for the team".
-Hangman
-Memory game/"Pairs"; they have to say the words when they turn the cards over and try and find ones that match in order to win a point against their partner (either two pictures which are the same/go together, or the word and the picture)
-Dictee. I say a word they have to write it down or draw a picture which corresponds with it.
-Simon Says

Writing

-Try to make sure that my CE2/CM1/CM2 classes always have a list of the words we have learnt as a record of what we have done. Normally I do this by asking them to copy all the words in English from the board and then, next to each they can either draw an illustration or write the word in French if they prefer.