Week 5 of Placement – 9th to the 13th of April
Monday 9th
CE2 – this morning I went into the class but they were not quite ready for me to begin as there was some registration issues that Madame Delaroche had to deal with. I began as usual by asking for the date and weather in English, which I write on the board and the class copy into their jotters. I think the children enjoy this challenge at the beginning of the day. I wanted to continue with classroom objects, and Madame Delaroche had a new worksheet for the class to do. It involved me reading out certain objects and saying, “Have you got a pen?”, “yes, I have” and “no, I haven’t”. I thought that this would be quite difficult to explain to the class but they seemed to understand what I was trying to say pretty quickly. They had to complete the worksheet and after this I asked them what classroom objects they did or didn’t have and they would have to reply “yes, I have” or “no, I haven’t”. The teacher then explained to me that her class and the CE1 class are going on a school trip next week and therefore this would be my last week with the class. Due to this, she was keen for me to move on to a new topic that the class have never done before, which was animals. I began with Pets and farm animals, as I thought the children would perhaps already know the English vocabulary for these. I used flashcards with pictures of animals on them to show the class, and they could have a guess at what they thought the word for the animal was in English. The class enjoyed this challenge, and as they said the animals, I wrote them on the board, in order for the children to copy the words into their jotters with the correct spelling.
CM2 – CM2 began a new topic today as well, which was actions. For example, “I wake up”, “I brush my teeth”, “I go to school”. I began by reading out all of the phrases on the worksheet to the class and they repeated them back to me. Mr Apruncule and I ensured that they were saying the phrases properly. The class were then given another worksheet that had sentences on it which asked them what they did in the morning, at midday, in the afternoon and the evening. The task was to write appropriate sentences in order to answer these questions. The children found this straight forward although some children challenged themselves by writing more than one phrase for each question.
CP – I wanted to continue with the game that I had played with the class on Friday, as I felt they were enjoying it but there was room for the children to become more familiar with hearing the vocabulary come from me instead of reading it. The children recalled the exercise well, but today I felt that it wasn’t their understanding of the game that was the problem. I could tell that the children were excitable, even with the first group. This isn’t usually the case, as it is usually the last group that are restless because they have already been working for almost an hour. Problems that I came across with the children were them throwing the small coloured blocks that I laid out, shouting over each other and generally not being on task. I tried using all of my French phrases and told the children that they would have to go back to their seats if they didn’t listen to me. Eventually Madame Girault could see that the children were not behaving, and so she came over to the group and told them firmly that if they did not behave properly then there would be no English for today. This panicked the children, as I know that they enjoy it when I come to the class, and so after this I had their attention. It was a similar situation with the next two groups, where because we had done that particular game before, they did not feel they needed to pay as much attention. I feel that now that I am nearing the end of my placement, the children are becoming more familiar with me. Perhaps due to this they are becoming more relaxed and are falling back into a type of behaviour that they would not have demonstrated in my first couple of weeks. I have ensured that I build positive relationships with the children by always greeting them and trying to have small conversations in French with them, but not to the point of them seeing me as a ‘pal’. I find that no matter how firm I am with the children I still cannot get them to behave as well as their class teacher can. Perhaps this is because I have limited French phrases that I can use in order to get their attention! This is something that I will try to work on over my last two weeks.
CM1 – The class had been doing point plotting and directions in their maths lesson earlier on in the day, therefore Madame Royer asked if I would do a similar thing with them, but in English. She had printed off worksheets for me that were about an Easter egg hunt, where there was a grid with eggs hidden in it and directions for the children to follow. For example, they had to go “south-west to the tree” or “east to the statue” and write down the correct points (e.g. 6F or 8D). In order to make this task easier for the class, I began by checking that they knew what an Easter egg hunt was. Once they understood this, I drew a compass on the board and taught them the vocabulary for North, East, South, West and so on. We went through the questions one by one and it seemed easy enough at the beginning, however we found that we had made a mistake because one of the points did not align properly. Madame Royer and I managed to figure out where we had gone wrong, and made sure the children had the right answers on their worksheet. In situations like that I realise that it is a lot easier to communicate when you and the teacher can both speak the same language. We were able to quickly figure out what had gone wrong with the task and fix it so that the children could have the right answers in their books.
Tuesday 10th
CE2 – Today I taught the class the vocabulary for wild animals, they found this fun because a lot of the words in English are similar in French. I did this by using flashcards again, and then stuck these up on the board and wrote the word in English next to it so it was clear for the children. I found that today the children did not ask me how to spell the words as much as last week, which must have meant they could read my writing on the board! This gave me a sense of achievement, as I have been practicing my French handwriting. I gave out some more worksheets for the children to fill in that encouraged them to practice their wild animals vocabulary. I think Madame Delaroche likes the class to use worksheets, as they can stick these into their jotters after they have finished them.
CM2 – We looked at a new ‘Kevin and Kate’ script today which was called, ‘The Haunted Castle’. I could tell the children found this exciting as they often read out the same scripts over and over again. The teacher asked them to read the scripts first before I did, to see if they could understand any of it. I then read out the dialogue for the class, letting them hear the correct pronunciation of every word. They tried to give the dialogue a go but they struggled with pronouncing the words ‘this’ and ‘idea’. I had to explain that it is not “i-dee” but it is “i-dee-a”. The class practiced this a few times, standing at the front of the class in groups of three at a time. After they had got the hang of the dialogue for that particular script, Mr Apruncule wanted the class to practice saying the phrases we had learnt from yesterday, such as ‘I get up’ and ‘I watch TV’. One of the children had to ask the question ‘what do you do in the morning?’ for example, and one of their friends would have to read out their answer. There were some harder questions at the bottom of the worksheet such as ‘what do you sometimes do?’ which the class found slightly harder to answer, because they had to say, ‘I sometimes read a book’. I find that the class are quite good at saying sentences in English for their year group. I think this is because their teacher takes English seriously and ensures that the children are pronouncing words properly and speaking in full sentences rather than giving one word answers.
CP – I gave the class a presentation about Scotland today. The presentation covered where Scotland is, where I live, who I live with, my primary school, Scottish food and Dundee University. As I was giving the presentation, using simple English sentences, the class teacher Madame Girault was giving the children the translation in French. She would allow the children to try and guess what I had said before giving them the answer. They found this very difficult, as because of their poorer reading skills they could not read what I had typed on the presentation, therefore were just trying to make sense of what I was saying. They had a lot of questions to ask about my presentation. They wanted to know about my family, and they found the concepts of wearing a uniform to school and living at University very strange! They did not like the idea of living away from their parents. I find introducing Scotland and our school system to the children a lot of fun, as it is interesting to see their reactions to how things are done differently. I enjoy answering their questions and seeing that they are fascinated by Scotland and what school is like there.
CM1 – Madame Royer requested that I teach the class how to tell the time, but only using the phrases, o’clock, quarter past, half past and quarter to. They would learn all the other bits in between in CM2, so there was no need for me to cover this with them yet . I began by showing them how you would draw 9:00, 9:15, 9:30 and 9:45 on an analogue clock, and they seemed to understand this. Madame Royer and I then thought it would be good if I said to the class for example, “it is quarter past 8” and they would have to write this on their whiteboards in digital time (because analogue can be difficult to read and therefore is not an accurate way for me to see if they have got the right answer or not). The children found this very difficult, and got very mixed up between quarter past, half past and quarter to. We tried to explain this to the children using different visual aids and by drawing and writing the time in different ways. Madame Royer also explained this in French, so that the children might understand it better, but a few of the children were still confused. They found writing ‘quarter to 7’ and ‘quarter to 8’ etc, the hardest, as ‘quarter to 8’ is ‘7:45’, and the children could not understand why there was a 7 and not an 8. This was very difficult for me to explain to the class and even Madame Royer was starting to find it tiresome. We agreed that with practice the class would get better and begin to get their heads around the time in English.
CE2 – I had created a worksheet for the class to complete for the topic of school uniform in school. It was a picture of me when I was their age at primary school dressed in my school uniform and there were arrows pointing to various items of clothing that I was wearing. The class had to write the correct names for the clothes in English next to the arrows, including the colour of the clothes (black shoes, red and grey tie etc). They enjoyed the photo of me when I was younger and I felt it made them more enthusiastic towards completing the task! The class teacher and I had to explain to the class that in English, we put the adjective before the noun, so it is ‘black shoes’ and not ‘shoes black’. This was confusing for the children because in French, they would do the opposite to us, and write ‘chaussures noires’. Once this was cleared up the children were able to complete the task quickly as I walked around the room to check their spelling was correct. I find this class easy to work with as they are well behaved and enthusiastic about English, but find that I need to focus more, as their class teacher does not speak any English, I have to work hard to understand what she is asking me to do. It also means that there is no translator for the children if I do not know a word in French, so sometimes I have to improvise and use actions or draw pictures for the children.
Thursday 12th
CE2 – Madame Delaroche was keen for me to teach the class a new topic, because they will not be here next week. I felt that it was perhaps too soon to move on to new vocabulary as we had not really had time to practice animals, but I understood that we had limited time left. We began looking at rooms in the house, for example, living room, bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, garage, garden, toilet etc. I had a poster which I stuck onto the board this had a picture of a house on it with the different rooms. I used this to point and ask the children what room was where. I wrote the words on the board alongside the translation for the children to copy into their jotters. They also had a worksheet to complete, which asked “where is the boy?”, and they had to write down which room of the house he was in. They found the question “where is?” difficult to understand at the beginning but I explained it to them in French as best as I could.
CM2 – today the class had an English test. This was something that Mr Apruncule had created himself, and thought it was an appropriate way of testing the children. The test was on the topic of animals and also positions, so the children would have to look at an image, and write the answer, ‘the monkey is in the car’, for example. I thought the was quite a difficult test, as the class had not done this topic for a few lessons, they might not remember the vocabulary very well. Most of the children got on with this task fine but I could see that a few of them were struggling, which I felt was understandable as these were difficult sentences to construct with no guidance. I can tell that the teacher wants to challenge the children in his class as they are the oldest, as I feel that the work they do is quite advanced, looking back at what I was learning in French in Primary 7.
CP – the class was even busier today, as the CE1 class had all been split up and put into different classes due to a teacher’s absence. This meant the classroom was very loud and I knew I would have to try hard to keep the children’s attention for the whole hour. We continued with numbers and colours by using the coloured blocks. In general, the children are all getting much faster at recalling numbers and colours, however some still need to use their fingers to count with or ask their friends for help. I did find the noise level difficult to work with but Madame Girault was in the same boat, so we both had to keep asking for quiet in the class. The class are better at responding to my demands in English now, but I feel that because I keep saying the same ones every day, they are not as effective. The children hear me say listen but it has begun to lose its meaning to the children. I will need to use different phrases to keep the children’s ears tuned in to me.
CM1 – some progress was made today in the topic of time with the class! Madame Royer had a new worksheet for the children which involved them writing the time in English in words, digital and analogue. I was apprehensive about this because yesterday, the children really struggled with the time. I understand how it can be complicated, because twenty to seven in digital time is 6:40, and if I put myself in the pupils’ shoes I would think it would be forty to six. The children found writing the time in words relatively easy, and we went over this question by question as a class. They were still getting used to writing the minutes and the hour a different in reverse to how they are used to. I thought I would consolidate this by asking them to put their books away and take out their mini whiteboards. They would use these to write down what time they think I have said in English, in digital time (this is what the children said they would prefer to do). They were getting good at quarter to/past and half past, but the worksheet had asked the children to write twenty to/past, five to/past and twenty-five to/past, so I thought I would try this as well. It was clear that some children had picked this up very quickly, as they were able to write down the digital time seconds after I had said it.Others found this much more difficult, so I made sure to do lots of examples so they could practice. When it came to drawing the hands on the analogue clock or writing the numbers in the digital clocks, the children struggled a lot more. We ran out of time before the bell for break went, so I suggested that I could go over this with the class again tomorrow, when we have more time.
Friday 13th
CE2- Today was my last day with CE2, as next week they are going on a school trip, and will miss my last day on Friday. This meant we had a lot to squeeze in to 45 minutes. I needed to finish of the topic of farm animals with the children, as there was a worksheet that we still had to do, we also needed to go over the rooms of the house again because we did not do that for very long yesterday. The children found the farm animal worksheet easy, apart from there was one word on it that I had not taught them. This was ‘cockerel’, and I explained what this was to the class so they did not get it mixed up with ‘chicken’. We moved quickly through that worksheet as I was conscious of what little time we had. I stuck the poster of the house on the board like yesterday, but decided to make the task more interactive today. I asked one of the children to come to the front of the class at a time, and I gave them a small bit of paper with a piece of furniture on it. They then had to use a magnet to stick it in the appropriate room in the house. I wanted the children to say, ‘it is in the kitchen’ or ‘it is in the bedroom’, after they had placed it on the board. They liked this activity, and I can tell that they have enjoyed the interactive activities a lot. After working on the pronunciation of the rooms a bit more, we moved on to a different activity. I decided to read the class ‘Dear Zoo’, which is a simple children’s book that I used to read when I was younger. The English in it is simple, so I thought it would be easy for the children to understand. It has animal and feelings vocabulary in it, both of which I have done with the class so it was perfect. Madame Delaroche thought this was a lovely idea for my last lesson with the children. They really enjoyed the book, as it is interactive with flaps and the children were able to shout out the animals they could see in English.
CP – Madame Girault wanted me to introduce the topic of family members to the children today, as I had spoken about that a little bit in my presentation about Scotland on Tuesday. I started by telling them what mum, dad, sister and brother was in French, as I thought this would be plenty of family members to begin with. By the end of the lesson I wanted the children to be able to tell me how many brothers or sisters they have. I gave my example in English with a clear, slow voice, so that they could hear what I was saying. I wrote the vocabulary on the board for the children to refer to, and helped them to create their sentences and be able to say them to me. I think they found this hard, as these were new sentences that they had to learn. Again, I felt that the pupils were very restless and were not as focussed as I would have liked. The teacher said that she thinks this is because there are so many of them, it is always noisy and this is not an environment where children can concentrate well. I have to try my best to get the children to be quiet and listen to one another, as it can be difficult to hear if they are pronouncing words correctly, and that they are all in the right order!
CM1 – Today Madame Royer was not here, she does not work on Fridays. Therefore, I knew I would have to tackle time with the class by myself. This was not too worrying, as I knew that the children were beginning to understand the vocabulary for this. We practiced writing the time in digital and saying it out loud. I think they prefer to write instead of speaking, as they often get their words the wrong way around. They would often say, ‘it is 5 to 25’ instead of ‘it is 25 to 5’, because of the way they say it in French. I feel that the class really enjoy my lessons because I allow them to come up to the board and write for me and it is interactive for them. From what I have observed, the children don’t get to do this much in their other subjects, which consist of a lot of textbook work.
