Week 2 – 19^th to 23^rd of March

My daily timetable:

	CP	CE1	CE2	CM1	CM2
8:45-9:30			x
9:30-10:00					x
BREAK
10:30-11:30	x
LUNCH
13:30-14:45				X
BREAK
15:00-15:30		x

 

Monday 19^th

CE1 – I began the day in CE1, where the class teacher wanted me to recap the vocabulary we had gone over the week before such as “I have black hair” and “I have blue eyes”. Before this I went over the date and how to say this in English (Lundi, 19 Mars is Monday the 19^th of March). I then used flashcards again to hold up to the children and they would repeat back to me what they could see on the card, for example if I held up a picture of a boy with black hair they would need to say, “I have black hair”. I find that flashcards are very useful to use as it means I do not need to speak in order to communicate with the children. By holding up a flashcard, they know what I am asking them and therefore we do not waste any time with potential language barrier issues.I did this with the class for around 10 minutes, but I quickly needed to change the activity as I could tell the class were beginning to get restless. I then got the children to write down the new vocabulary they had learned by labelling a picture of a face in English. I drew a picture of a face on the board and labelled it for the children so that they knew where to put the right words. We repeated the words a few times as a class, and then I rubbed out the words on the board to make the task more challenging that just having the children copy from the board. I have observed in each class that the children all have jotters for each subject, which they usually stick worksheets into, rather than writing in them directly. This is quite similar to schools in Scotland but we would probably write directly into the jotters rather than using worksheets all the time.

CM2 – I then quickly had to move on to help the CM2 class (the oldest class in the school), where I started with some general questions for the class such as “how are you?” and “what did you do at the weekend?”. The class gave me their best answers, but I noticed that once one of them had given an answer such as “I am fine thank you”, the others after this would tend to copy the sentence instead of thinking of a different one. Therefore I told the children that they had to think of different things to say, to keep them on their toes.  I then started to read out a story in English to the children called ‘Monkey Puzzle’. I thought that this had some difficult vocabulary in it for the class’ level of English, so I had to point at the pictures in the book a lot and speak much slower than I usually would, so that it was not too fast for the children to understand. A lot of them already knew the words monkey, butterfly, elephant and snake… but frog, bat and caterpillar were all new to them!

CP – After the break, I went into the CP class to carry on with the work I did with them the week before. It was the same set up, where I had 10 children at a time on the carpet with me, and this repeated 3 times. I had a worksheet for the children to complete and it said; “Hello! My name is Joe the Pirate. What is your name?”. We spoke a little bit about what a pirate was as some of the children were unsure of this. It was a challenge to get the children to pronounce pirate properly, as they were all saying “peerot”. They then wrote their names on the worksheet and we practiced asking each other the questions and giving responses a lot of times. I realised whilst doing this that children of this younger age really learn well with a lot of repetition being used. Worksheets are heavily used by all of the teachers, which they fill out and then stick into their jotters.

CE1 – I found my biggest challenge of the day was towards the end of the day when I went to go and work with the CE1 class. The teacher for this class did not speak any English, and I had found that in the other classes it was very helpful having the teacher speak English as they are able to translate if there is any confusion. Therefore, I knew that this would be more challenging and my communication would need to be very clear. The teacher requested that I teach the class some classroom instructions in English such as; “Stand up!” “Sit down!” and “Pay attention”. After repeating these instructions and using my knowledge of French to help translate to the children, they were able to follow my instructions pretty well. I therefore thought a good way to consolidate this newly learnt language would be to play ‘Simon says’ with the children. This was an excellent way to interact with them without using any French and also practicing their new vocabulary.

I felt that I had a very successful day and that I had got to know each of the classes even better having been in each one that day. I feel positive about the rest of the week as the teachers are very helpful with planning ahead and keeping me ready with lots of work to do with the children. I also feel that compared to last week my French has already improved and I am able to communicate easier with the staff and pupils.

Tuesday 20^th

On Tuesday Briony and I did not get our usual number 7 bus to Petite Merie, but instead took the tram A to Fleury Les Aubrais, to Condorcet Middle School. We had been asked by one of the English teachers there to come in and talk to her class about Scotland and how life is there. I was apprehensive about this as this what not the age group of school children that I was used to communicating with, and reflecting on my past experience of high school, I realised that it is not always easy with older children. We arrived at the school before the pupils and met Sophie, who told us what the plan was for that class. We would be helping the class with their work on William Shakespeare, where they had to create a timeline of his life. I considered that this seemed like a very difficult task for a group of fourteen year olds learning English. Reflecting on my own French education, I didn’t think I had ever had to do something as difficult as that. When the class arrived, Briony and I introduced ourselves and then Madame Charbonnier gave the class the instructions they needed to complete their task on William Shakespeare. I noticed that she spoke to the class in English the entire time, and they were expected to talk to each other in English throughout the class, not just the teacher. Again, I compared this to my own education and concluded that the way that English is taught in French schools is perhaps taken slightly more seriously than French in Scottish schools.

We helped the pupils with sentence structure and putting words in the correct order, as apparently this can be confusing for students learning English. Before we left, we showed the class picture of Dundee and the University, our home towns, things that are traditionally Scottish (haggis, kilts, dancing) and played the National Anthem for them. They seemed very intrigued by all of these things, and we explained that we find their schools and traditions interesting too!

Wednesday 21^st

On Wednesday, I was told by the CE2 and CM2 teachers that I would not need to go to their classes in the morning like usual, as their classes both do sport on a Wednesday morning. Therefore, I spent the morning with my own class, CM1. Before break the class were correcting their French dictation and reading a couple of chapters of their class novel, meaning I did not do much work with the class at this time. This gave me a chance to write up some of my blog and reflect on the past few days, as I do not get much of a chance to sit still throughout the day. After break, two girls in the CM1 class had created a Power-point Presentation about the history of Edinburgh that they wanted to present to myself and the class. I found it quite hard to follow, as the girls had put a lot of information into the presentation and it was in French. I also learned some things that I didn’t know about the history of Edinburgh, which is slightly embarrassing considering this is where I live. After the girls had finished their presentation, Madame Royer asked me to come to the front of the class to answer any questions that the children had about Edinburgh. They asked about the food, weather, if there are any rivers, and they asked what the houses are like in Edinburgh. I then showed them pictures of my Primary school and High school, to show them what the uniform is like in Scotland (as they do not have uniforms in French schools). They found this fascinating and strange that we have to wear uniforms all the way through school. It felt good to be able to show them some of the Scottish culture and give them an idea of where I am from.

Thursday 22^nd

CE2 – I began the day following my usual daily timetable, by starting at CE2 from 8:45 to 9:30am. Before the children entered the class, the teacher explained to me that she wants the children to be able to say the date in English every day, “apprendre par cœur”. This is the French equivalent of saying “off by heart”.  Taking this on, I said that at the start of every day we can talk about the date and this will help the children to practice saying the days of the week, months and numbers. We then continued with practicing our facial features vocabulary such as, ears, eyes, nose, mouth etc.  They consolidated their knowledge by filling out a worksheet, they managed to do this very quickly which confirmed to me that they know the vocabulary well. After doing this I thought it would be fun to play a game of ‘Guess Who?’ with the class, where they have to describe one of their peers and everyone else guesses who they are describing. This was a difficult concept to explain to the class in English therefore their teacher explained to them what the game involved. The class definitely enjoyed this game and going forward I think I will use a more interactive approach to learning, like playing games or singing songs, as this is more enjoyable for the pupils.

CM2 –  With CM2 on Thursday we continued with script reading and role playing in English. I read out two more ‘Kevin and Kate’ scripts for the class to hear how it should sound, and they then took it in turns to act out the scenes in English. This works well as I can interrupt them if they are not pronouncing certain words properly and help them with use of volume and expression, the more advanced aspects of speaking a language. We then went over some of the vocabulary they had heard on Monday when I read ‘Monkey Puzzle’ to them. This included animals like, a butterfly, monkey, caterpillar, elephant, bat and frog. I thought that these were quite complex words to be learning for their age, therefore I used the pictures to help me portray what word went with what animal.

I only spend 30 minutes with the oldest class in the school daily, therefore I find it difficult to fit all of the content that I wanted to teach the children into that space of time. However, as they are older and therefore have more English knowledge, they can pick up the vocabulary quicker and don’t need as much time for repetition as younger pupils do.

CP –  We moved on to a new topic, as I felt that the children in this age group had practiced saying their name, age and gender a lot. I would practice this at the start of every lesson but I could tell that the children were beginning to get bored because of how easy they were finding the ‘introducing myself’ topic. So, on Thursday, I introduced the colours to the class. Again, I had the children in 3 groups of 9 or 10 at the back of the classroom with me. There is another blackboard and carpet area at the back of the class which the teacher lets me use in the hour that I spend in her class. I often find that the younger children get restless whilst sitting on the carpet, therefore when I am teaching them my energy has to be high and I should be enthusiastic. With each group, I began by asking each of them their name and age, to check that they could remember how to say this. I then used flashcards with the colours on them to introduce the new vocabulary. Once we had gone over this a few times, I began to ask the children “what colour is this?” whilst pointing to a coloured object. The pupils would then have to raise their hand and tell me in English what colour it was. I noticed that the children found it hard to distinguish between green and grey, and felt more comfortable pronouncing colours like pink and black.

I really enjoy teaching the children in small groups like this, without the teacher’s assistance, as it gives me a chance to have small conversations with the children and get them used to me being in charge. However, I feel that this method would probably work best with younger children instead of the older classes as their vocabulary is more advanced, therefore it is more difficult for me with the language barrier as well.

CM1 – On Thursday I continued with the topic of food with the CM1 class. I used flashcards with pictures of food on them to hold up to the class and say “is it a …..?” and they reply with “yes,it is” or “no, it isn’t”.

They found this relatively easy as it was just revision from what we had done on Monday. I was also conscious that this did not really help the children to learn the food vocabulary, as I was saying the words and they had the aid of a photo as well to know what the food was. We moved on and I started to ask the children a new question which was “do you like…..?”. They had to respond with “Yes, I like it” or “no, I don’t like it”. They had already learned about saying their likes and dislikes but not within the topic of food so this was semi new for them. I began with the class sitting in their seats and answering my question of “do you like?”, but I felt I needed to get the class to interact a bit more and I wanted the children to practice pronouncing their newly learnt words. So, I asked for a volunteer to come up to the front and take a flashcard. They then had to ask a peer “do you like potatoes?” for example, and their friend had to reply, “yes I do” or “no I don’t”. The children definitely enjoyed this better and my teacher confirmed this by saying that the children clearly liked the exercise. In the future I will consider this method when deciding what activities to do with the children as I felt that when they were more active they were more enthusiastic about speaking English and perhaps less shy.

 I used this as a starter for the class by reading it out and letting them hear how the conversation should sound. The children then read the conversation out in their best English and I could correct them with their pronunciation if need be. 

 

 

 

 

Friday 23^rd

CE2 – On Friday I began my class with a discussion about the date, reminding the children about Friday, March and the number 23. I asked one of the children to write this on the board for me and we came across a language problem as this was happening. I began to spell the word Friday for her in the English alphabet, which of course made no sense to her. Therefore, I had to switch to the French alphabet which I found quite confusing but we managed eventually. I introduced a new topic to class which was feelings. To my surprise when I began to go through the vocabulary, the children already knew quite a few of the words, in particular ‘happy’ and ‘sad’. I had printed out flashcards for each of the pupils to have to stick into their jotters, which on one side had a picture of a face with an expression, and on the other side had the word to describe how that person was feeling. We looked at words such as, happy, sad, excited, bored, angry, frightened, hungry and upset. The teacher thought that this was a good amount of words to start the children off with the topic of feelings. Once I had read out the words a few times and asked the children to repeat after me, I began to ask individual children the question “how are you?”. I received a few blank faces by asking this, so then I asked “ça va?” and there was a large noise of recognition made from the children. Now that they knew what I was asking, the class could respond with things like “I am happy” or “I am bored” etc.  For the next lesson, I think I will introduce a song in English to the class as I think they will enjoy this and it’s a better way for them to learn the vocabulary.

CP – I continued with the topic of colours again in smaller groups of 10. I felt that today the children were more restless, perhaps due to it being Friday and they were feeling tired. However, I found this quite difficult to manage. Usually I do not find behaviour management to be much of an issue but when I cannot speak their language I find it hard to portray what I want to say to the children. I can tell that the children find it difficult to sit still on the carpet for a long time and this means that they start to wander around instead. I need to keep up my energy and change the task frequently to keep the children on task and entertained. They seem to enjoy the game where I say, “what colour is this?” and they shout the colour of what I am pointing at. They have also become very good at saying their name and age in English, but I will continue to ask these questions so that they do not forget.

 

Tuesday 13^th of March 2018 – Day 1

On Tuesday, I had my first day of placement at my assigned Primary School, École Les Guernazelles in the South of Orléans in France. I was picked up from the halls of residence and driven to the school by Nina, our guide, alongside Briony, as our schools were both quite far away from where we stay and we needed some guidance on our first day. I would need to get the bus by myself after today.

(this is the CM1 classroom).

When I arrived at the school, Nina and I met the head-teacher, who is also the teacher for CE1 (this is the French equivalent of primary 2/3). She greeted us in French and explained that she could not speak English. This was daunting to me as I then wondered if any of the other teachers would be able to speak English, as my French was poor. The school is also in quite a remote area, and is therefore smaller than what I have experienced before. I also thought this might mean that the teachers English would not be good. I was preparing myself for a day of pointing at the dictionary and feeling very lost. Nina said goodbye to me and I began to feel apprehensive as my only known source of translation had just left me. The head teacher then took me to my classroom where I was met by Madame Royer, the CM1 teacher (Primary 4/5 in Scotland). She welcomed me into the classroom and let me have a seat at the back of the classroom and observe the class for a little while just to settle in. Luckily Madame Royer can speak English, so this made it easy for us to communicate initially. As I sat at the back of the class observing I found myself feeling quite lost as everything was being said in French, however I liked the challenge of trying to work out what was being said. The children were doing French dictation, which meant Madame Royer would read out a sentence in French and the children would write it down as they heard it. During maths, the children were looking at measuring. I noticed that the class were all given the same level of work as each other, there was no differentiation. This is quite different to primary schools in Scotland, where differentiation is frequently used in maths. They were working from a textbook, working on questions and then discussing the answers as a class. Some of the children would go up to the board and write down their peers’ answers. The children had a break at 10 o’clock, and during this, another teacher spoke to me about helping out with English in her class after break time. She also spoke English well. I went with her to introduce myself to her class (CE2, primary 3/4 in Scotland). The pupils had to try and ask me questions in English and understand my response. I found that this helped my understanding of French a little bit as they were talking in French to each other and to the teacher. Throughout the day I went around the other classes CP, CE2 and CM2 (there are only 5 classes in the school) and introduced myself. It was daunting having to stand up in front of 20 French pupils at a time and have them speak en Francais!

Before getting to the school I was expecting to find that there would be a language barrier between myself and the teachers and pupils of the school. This was true to a certain extent, but I felt I could communicate well enough with the teachers in order to plan my schedule for the next 6 weeks. I felt very lucky that most of the teachers could speak English well. I was also surprised at how calm I was throughout the day, despite there being an obvious language barrier. I thought that I might get frustrated by this but I felt I took it in my stride and tried to communicate as well as I could. Overall, I think that my first day at my placement school went well, and that I made a good first impression to the pupils and teachers. I felt that they were happy I was there and that I would be helpful for the children’s acquisition of English. Throughout the day I learned a few more important French phrases that can be used as greetings or in the classroom and this will help me to create bonds with the children and get integrated into the school better. I also noticed certain aspects of the school that I thought were different to how things are in Scotland. For example, the pupils do not wear uniform and the teachers’ dress code is also very casual. In addition to this, the children take off their shoes at the cloakroom area and put on slippers to wear around the classroom and the rest of the school. Throughout the day, the children have 3 breaks, unlike 2 in Scotland. They have their first break at 10am for around 15 minutes, then they have lunch at 11:30am for two hours which is a lot longer than the children in Scotland have for lunch. In addition to this, there is then another 15 minute break at 2:45pm, before the children finish school at 3:45pm (around half an hour later than Scottish primary schools). Comparing my placement last year to my first impressions of this placement, I also felt that the pupils were very well behaved and the teacher did not need to discipline them as much.

As I get further on in my placement, my aim is to get better at speaking French in order to make it easier to communicate with the teachers and pupils in my school. I also hope to improve the pupils’ understanding of English and Scotland’s culture, by showing them our traditions and sights to see.

Wednesday 14^th of March 2018

I was not feeling as apprehensive about this day compared to Tuesday, as I now knew what my teachers and pupils were like and how to get to the school by transport, and felt I had had a good first day the day before. However, my first hurdle of the day occurred earlier than I thought it would. Our host Nina assured me that the only bus I needed to get was the number seven, the entire way to my placement. But on Wednesday morning my bus stopped 3 stops early and I had to converse with the bus driver in my best French about why the bus had stopped. After a lot of confusion and gesturing between myself and the bus driver, I found the right bus and was on my way to school. When I got to school I made sure to say “je suis perdu!” to my teacher so she knew why I was late.

In France Zone B, the children are only in school for half a day, which means that they would leave at 11:30am. Due to this, I did not have much time at the school on Wednesday, and so just observed the CE1 class doing their maths work. During this I noticed that the teachers often get their pupils to interact with the white board, either by drawing or writing on it. The children work mainly out of textbooks from what I observed, and have certain jotters for the different subjects they learn. In cycle 2 (CP, CE1, CE2), the children are expected to be taught 10 hours of French per week, 5 hours of Mathematics and 1.5 hours of English. I have also observed that these are the three main subjects that children learn daily in the class, and there is not as much teaching of creative subjects or sciences. Sciences are introduced into the curriculum in Cycle 3 (CM1, CM2) as well as social subjects.

Since the four of us all had half days at our schools, we took the rest of the day to explore the centre of Orléans some more.

Thursday 15^th of March 2018

On Thursday morning, I was invited to go along with the school to observe the orchestra rehearsal for the production of My Fair Lady, which is showing later on in March in Orléans. As a school, we walked 30 minutes to a small building where there was a stage inside, and lots of seats laid out for us to sit and watch the rehearsal take place. During the walk, I felt pretty frustrated, as usually I would take this time to talk to the pupils and get to know them a bit more, but with my limited use of French I felt I could not have much conversation at all. However during the rehearsal, the conductor was making references to My Fair Lady in English, and this meant I could translate for my class which made me feel slightly more necessary.

Due to the class being out of school in the morning, Madame Royer was keen for the children to work quietly on their French and maths work for the rest of the day, meaning that I would just observe the lessons. This gave me time to make some notes about French vocabulary and learn some new phrases that I heard being used in the classroom that I may need to use later on.

Friday 16th of March

The first class I was teaching in on Friday was CE2, where I was teaching the children how to say their hair and eye colour. This was definitely challenging, but I stood at the front of the class and used what little French I had to try to communicate with the children. I realised the importance of using hand gestures, actions and repetition when teaching because we cannot use much of the same language. I also taught the children how to say the days of the week in English, with the use of flashcards and again, a lot of repetition.

After the short morning break I then went into the CP class, where I had the children in groups of 10 at a time, and their teacher wanted me to help them with saying their name, age and if they are a girl or a boy in English. This was definitely the most challenging teaching I had done that week, as the class teacher was not there to translate to the children if I needed her to. Therefore, I had practiced some small French phrases that I thought I might need to say to the children. For example, “Vous les dites?” (you say it?), “et toi?” (and you?). During my teaching I used a lot of hand gestures and pointing, I also wrote the sentences that the children were learning on the board so that they could read it.  I spent around 20 minutes with each group, and to my surprise, by the end of the 20 minutes, the children had got to grips with their new English phrases. This definitely gave me a sense of achievement and I felt proud that I had managed to communicate with the younger children so well.

Towards the end of the day I was asked by the CM2 teacher to read out some English comic strips that the children had been practicing, so that they could hear how to correctly pronounce each individual word the characters were saying. They then acted out the scenes in English as best as they could, and I helped them to say the words properly. I could tell that the children found this helpful, which finally gave me a feeling of being useful, as at the beginning of the week I was worried that my lack of French speaking would make me a bit of a hindrance for the teachers.

Over the past few days I realised that in order to get your message across to the children, the most important things to have are a loud, clear voice and perseverance. I feel that it’s not really about the words that you use when it comes to teaching a language, as I managed to teach the different ages of children some basic English using barely any French at all. At the end of the week I felt a real sense of achievement, as I never thought I would be able to help the children learn so much in such a short space of time. I am looking forward to teaching the different ages of children more English as the weeks go on, but I am also concerned that I will therefore need to learn more French, and this would take practice!