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Exploring European Countries – My Primary 6 Experience

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In our introductory lecture for ED31002, we were asked to think back to our primary school experiences of topic/project work. We discussed the types of topics that usually came up, such as The Victorians, World War 2, and a few that were more specific to different areas of Scotland.  The topic that immediately came into my mind from my primary school experience was when we had explored European countries in Primary 6. I always seem to remember this very well, it has obviously stuck with me because it was a topic that I enjoyed a lot.

My class teacher at the time liked us to work in groups for any topic work that we did. He could probably tell that we liked this too. Our task for the next few weeks would be to choose a European country as a group, and research every aspect that we possibly could about that country. This could include the food, flag, what language they speak, famous figures, famous monuments and the general culture of the country. Each group was to research a different country, as at the end of the project we would all listen to each other about what we had discovered and compare.

My group chose to research and learn more about Belgium. I think this was probably our way of not taking the easy route, which perhaps would have been France or Italy. If I remember correctly, other groups chose Spain, Greece, Ukraine and Germany (a nice mixture, I thought). After this had been established, we were then asked to focus in on a particular area….this is where the individual part came in. I chose to research sport, so this would include any famous sportsmen or women, popular sports in Belgium or if there were any stadiums that were of particular interest. Being a massive tennis fan at the time, I remember really being keen to research about Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin, two number 1 players in the world. Being able to research something that I was interested in really allowed me to become enthusiastic about the project. It also gave things a personal feel, I was going to be able to report back to my group about something I was passionate about.

In addition to the individual research that we were assigned, our teacher also gave us some other home activities to do that would bring in different areas of the curriculum. The first thing I remember being asked to do was to create a model of a famous building, monument or statue from your country of choice. This was to be done at home, using only household items where possible. This was certainly bringing a more creative streak to the topic. I chose to create a model of the Atomium (crazy, I know). Just to give you an idea of how difficult this was, here is a photo of the Atomium in Belgium.

When I got home and it came to creating my model, I seemed to regret my choice. However, I accepted the challenge and managed to create something that looked slightly similar to the Atomium using the simple household item that is tin foil. This activity definitely encouraged me to think about 3D shapes, materials and how to keep a basic structure upright! The activity stands out the most for me, firstly because of how challenging it was but also because I had never been given homework like it before. It wasn’t your usual sheet of paper with 20 sums on it.

The aim of doing these activities was to allow us to incorporate different curricular areas into the topic and to explore a culture that we had probably never considered before. After all these weeks, the models, posters and research we had created and found were not going to waste. Our teacher had organised a day for us to show what we had been working on to our families and friends. We set up different stalls in our classroom for each group, with everything on display for our parents and guardians to see. We had all made (or tried to make) special dishes from our chosen countries, using traditional ingredients (I had made Belgian chocolate cookies). I remember being very excited about this day, and it really allowed the whole topic to come together in the end. It felt like there was a goal to work towards, we had to impress our families! It was also exciting to see what my peers had been doing, and I was able to learn little bits of information from their stalls too.

Week 6 of Placement – 16th to the 20th of April

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Week 6 of Placement – 16th to the 20th of April

This week, the CE1 and CE2 classes are on a residential school trip for the week. This means that there is only around 70 pupils in the school, which is very little compared to what I was used to at my primary school in Scotland. There were a few of these pupil that were not going on the trip, who joined CM1 (Madame Royer’s class). This made her class quite full, similar to the size of a class in an average Scottish primary school. There would be other children put into the CM2 and CP classes too, so that each teacher was responsible for a few children.

CM2 – The class were learning a new aspect of English conversation, which was to ask, “Can I….?” or “Can you….?”, and reply “Yes, I can” or “No, I can’t.”. Mr Apruncule wrote some examples verbs on the board, such as to write, to read, to play, to sleep and to eat. I had to ask the class in English “Can you sleep in the class?” and they would have to give the appropriate response. Then once they got the hang of this, they were to ask each other questions, encouraging them to use the new verb vocabulary. A common mistake that the children made was that they would say “Can you to eat in class?” or “Can you to write in the class”. It was difficult to explain why we don’t say the ‘to’. This is something that I have found difficult throughout my placement as well. English is my first language and therefore all of the rules of the language come naturally to me when I speak, without needing to think. Due to this I would have never considered why we don’t say the ‘to’ in these sentences, or why ‘I’ by itself is always a capital letter. These are things that are embedded in my brain and are just facts, it is not something I have to think about when I speak or write. Therefore, explaining this to children is something I have found difficult to put into clear and simple words.

CP – at the first break Madame Girault found me in the staffroom and showed me some resources she had found for today’s lesson. She wanted me to talk to the children about Great Britain and England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, to explain the Union jack and why it looks the way it does, and to talk about The Royal Family. She gave me the appropriate flags for this and a couple of photos of The Royal Family. I thought this would be good for practicing our ‘family’ vocabulary from last week. I also considered that these are quite complicated things to explain to 6 and 7 year olds in English, so I knew I would need to check the French vocabulary before the lesson. The different groups of children found this all very interesting and I could tell they enjoyed guessing who was who in the royal family. I found it difficult to remember all the words for sister, brother, son, daughter, aunt and uncle, but I made sure to write them all down and have them in front of me when I was teaching the children. To my surprise, the children all seemed to understand the concept of each nation making up part of the Great British flag, and thought that this was a clever idea. They enjoyed hearing me talk about the royal family and seemed to find it fascinating, as they do not have this type of thing in France.

CM1 – Madame Royer wants the class to do some activities this week that test their English vocabulary knowledge, as a bit of fun, considering how difficult the children found learning the time last week. She gave me a worksheet to complete with the class, called ‘what’s in the picture?’. This had a list of objects in English beside a picture of a countryside scene. The children had to tick whether or not the object could be seen in the picture. I went through this with the class question by question, and the children had to guess some of the vocabulary that they did not already know. They found ‘leaves’ and ‘ghost’ difficult because these are not similar to the words in French, so I had to draw pictures of these on the board to give the children a clue. I asked the children ‘can you see…. In the picture?’ and they had to respond with ‘yes, you can’ or ‘no, you can’t’, as Madame Royer wanted them to speak in phrases instead of one-worded answers.

Tuesday 17th

 CM2 – today Mr Apruncule was keen for me to help the children with their pronunciation of the numbers from 1 to 100. They had obviously already covered this in class in previous years but he wanted them to practice and hear me say the numbers. I thought that their pronunciation of the numbers was very good, although they did get confused with 13 and 30, 14 and 40, 15 and 50 and so on. This is an easy mistake to make even when you speak English, so I was not surprised to hear that the children found this confusing. During the lesson Mr Apruncule had to tell the class to be quiet a lot, it is a nice day outside and I think the children were keen to get outside for break, and therefore were a bit restless. Something that I have noticed is that there is a lack of sanctions and behaviour management strategies used in the older classes. Often, the children are simply sent out of the classroom until the end of the lesson, and this happened today in my CM2 class. In my experience, teachers did not do this until I was at high-school, children in primary school would never be completely sent out of the classroom. There was always reward systems or traffic light systems in use. I find this style of behaviour management more effective as it gives children motivation to behave, whereas if they are simply asked to leave the class they might not learn from their mistake. This is relatively evident in the CM2 class, as a few of the children are repeatedly asked to leave the classroom.

CP – we continued with our work on the Royal Family, and today I introduced the Royal Family tree to the children. Madame Girault said that they have been making their own family trees in class, so they would understand the concept of a family tree. I agreed that this would be a good way to teach them the English family vocabulary whilst also teaching them a bit about British culture. I could tell yesterday that the children found the idea of a royal family strange and intriguing. This was reflected in today’s lessons, as I felt I had the children’s attention. They enjoyed guessing who was who in the family and finding out what the words for son, daughter, husband and wife are. The class teacher and I agreed that the children’s next steps would be to create a royal family tree for them to have inside their jotters. This would probably allow the information to be consolidated as well.

CM1 – Today, Madame Royer had another more fun activity for me to complete with the class. It was about Red Nose Day. I explained that this is something that happens every two years in the UK, where we raise a lot of money for charity by doing fun and silly things all day.  Madame Royer had to help me with the translation of a few phrases here, as the children were confused about what I was talking about to begin with. The worksheet that I gave to the class involved me reading out a list of everyday school rules, mixed in with Red Nose Day rules, and the children had to determine which rules were for Red Nose Day. For example, ‘You must dance in the corridor’ would be a Red Nose Day rule, and ‘You must not chew chewing-gum’ would be an everyday rule. These were complicated sentences for the children to understand, so I had to do a lot of actions at the front of the class to give the children clues as to what the rules were. They gave a lot of good guesses as well, and it was good to see that they were thinking hard about what the rule could be in English. I find that this class are always fully engaged in the activity and really want to do well in them. It helps me to enjoy the lesson even more when the children are so enthusiastic.

Thursday 19th

Today began with a trip to the theatre. We walked to Théâtre Gérard Philipe, which was very pleasant as it hit 27 degrees today! The play was about Louis XIV of France. It was done by 4 young theatre students, two of whom were playing the violin and cello, and the others were dancing and acting for the performance. Luckily for me, for most of the performance there was no talking, so it was easy for me to follow. I think the children found the play difficult to follow, as I was unsure if any of them had learnt about Louis XIV before, and knew who he was. The performers made sure to include the children in their performance, with some of them participating in the play and they brought some Star Wars into it, which the children definitely enjoyed. The play was around an hour, and after it finished we walked back to the school, just in time for the children to have lunch. I asked the children what they thought of the play and they said they had not seen a play like that before, which was the case for me too. They said it was quite strange but they liked the part where they played Star Wars, which didn’t surprise me at all!

CM1 – we went through the topic of colours today. This is a topic that the class have done before but Madame Royer wanted them to complete a Red Nose Day themed worksheet on it. The children had to draw a line from the object to its corresponding colour. I think this task was made easier because there were pictures of the objects for the children, had there not been pictures I think the children would have struggled with some of the vocabulary such as ‘a witch’s hat’ and ‘a leaf’. I felt that the children were quite tired today, but it was probably because of the heat outside, and our long walk for the trip to the theatre that morning. I realised that these children would have to work in hot conditions quite a lot, as it is only April, and the temperature can get a lot higher. If it was 27 degrees in Scotland I’m sure the pupils would be complaining that they were too hot, the pupils in France do not complain although I can tell that it makes it harder for them to concentrate.

CP –  To round up my lessons about The Royal Family tree, Madame Girault wanted the children to construct their own royal family trees. Instead of the usual set up, which is the children coming to me in three groups of 10 at a time, we worked as a whole class today. This was with the help of Madame Girault and Jessica (the classroom assistant), as the class is very big and it can be difficult to control 10 of them at a time, never mind 30. The children had photos of members of the royal family, and a sheet with boxes and names of royal family members underneath them. The task was to stick the right pictures in the right boxes. The children also had to listen to my sentences in English such as ‘this is his wife’ and ‘this is her son’, and try to work out who was who. Madame Girault could help with this by translating if the children were completely clueless. The children were sad to hear that it is my last day tomorrow, but this was almost a good thing to me, as they had clearly enjoyed my time with them.

Friday 20th

Today is my final day of placement, and I can safely say it has flown by. I have enjoyed my time at Ecole Elementaire Les Guernazelles so much, I could not have asked for a more welcoming school. I feel that in comparison to when I arrived, I am more confident in my English teaching abilities, and communicating in French. I feel a sense of achievement at how well I have got on with the staff and pupils at my school, and how well the children have come along with their English since I arrived.

CM2 – the children had constructed some sentence in English that they wanted to ask me about my time here in France. They asked, ‘is the food the same in France and Scotland?’, ‘What do you like about France?’ ‘is school the same in France and Scotland?’ and ‘what do you like about Orléans?’. I was very impressed that they came up with these questions and could ask them so well! I told the children that in France, the bread and cheese is nicer and they have snails here which we don’t have in Scotland. I said that they have longer lunch times and they have two break times instead of one, like in Scotland.

CP – I decided to read the children ‘Dear Zoo’, like I had with CE1 and CE2, as this book is very simple and easy for them to understand. It has some nice animal vocabulary in it as well which I knew the CP pupils would enjoy, as well as the interactive parts. I read the book to the children in their three separate groups, which was easier for me as they can be very noisy as a whole class. I taught the children the new animal vocabulary and they repeated after me several times. I think they found the names for the animals quite entertaining, as there was a lot of hilarity at this point! After the story, I played lotto with them, as this seemed to be their favourite game that I had played with them. To my delight, the children knew the numbers in English very well, and rarely had to ask me for help, which showed how much progress they had made over 6 weeks. I also asked them one last time for their name, age and gender in English, and again, I could see a great improvement from when I taught them this on the first week. The children were adamant that they all got a photo taken with me and Madame Girault, so at the end of the lesson Jessica took this for us, which I thought was very kind of the class.

French Handwriting

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One of the first things that I noticed when I began my placement at L’Ecole Guernazelles, was the children’s handwriting. I was so impressed with my CM1 class and how neat and sophisticated their handwriting was. I compared it to my Scottish primary 5s last year, and considered that this was very impressive for their age. I couldn’t believe the style and detail that was put into every word and how careful the children were with their writing. I have noticed that on the wall of every classroom in my school there is a big poster with the alphabet on it, and how it should look in this style of handwriting. 

This is an example of what these posters look like. I think this handwriting looks very nice and definitely helps the pupils’ writing to become more sophisticated. But I wondered if this was really necessary. In my opinion, surely making sure a child’s spelling is at a good standard before trying to get them to write in such a complicated way. I tried this style of writing myself and have found it quite difficult. Obviously it would take a lot of practice.

I have also noticed that this is the style of writing that the teachers use to write on the board all of the time. This was problematic for me at the beginning of placement because it meant that the children could not read my writing if I wrote on the board. I knew that I would have to practice this style of handwriting and implement it in my teaching. I have been trying to write in my notebook using this style and I am starting to find it easier. The children are also able to see what I have written on the board a lot easier now, and this makes my lessons flow much better, as I don’t have to stop to spell words out nearly as much anymore.

I watched a video called ‘French – Teaching Handwriting’ which is part of a series called ‘How do they do it in….?’, which explored handwriting in the French primary school. It explained that in France handwriting is taught in a formalised manner that allows children to be creative; if their handwriting is good they won’t be held back in being creative. This style of handwriting has been used for sixty years and it comes from a font called “La Ronde”. Handwriting is seen as very important in middle school, and children can be marked down if theirs is not up to scratch. This is why handwriting is taken so seriously in French schools.

  • teachfind (2007) France – Teaching Handwriting. Available at: http://archive.teachfind.com/ttv/www.teachers.tv/videos/france-teaching-handwriting.html (Accessed: 15/04/2018)

Week 5 of Placement – 9th to the 13th of April

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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.

Week 4 of Placement – 3rd -6th of April

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Tuesday 3rd

CE2 – I began the lesson the same way I usually do with asking for the date and the weather in English. The class are getting the hang of this although they seemed to get ‘it is windy’ and ‘it is cloudy’ confused. This could be because they both end the same way and they are not as recognisable as sunny and rainy. After clearing this up, I continued with the topic of items of clothing. I went over the vocabulary using flashcards with pictures of clothes on them and ensured that the class were saying the right words and pronouncing them properly. I then asked them what they were wearing and they had to respond appropriately using full sentences rather than just the vocabulary. They found this easy to do but they have a tendency to copy each other’s answers, probably because it is easier than thinking of their own! I then handed out a simple crossword for the children to do which used the vocabulary we had been learning. The class found this straight forward as all of them had come across a crossword before and knew how they worked.

CM2 – the class teacher wanted to progress from our previous lesson about school in Scotland by getting the children to write simple sentences in English on the topic. I wrote out some sentences, that I thought would be at an appropriate level of difficulty for the class to copy, on the board. For example, ‘Beth’s school is very big, with almost 600 pupils’. The teacher explained to me that it would be too confusing for the children if I wrote in the past tense, so I kept all of my sentences in the present tense. Another issue that we came across, and that I find myself coming across a lot in the school, is that the children struggle to understand my writing. In France, the children learn two ways of writing. They learn the way we would learn in Scotland, but they also learn French script. This looks very impressive but it is also complicated to do. In Scotland, I would usually write on the board without my letters joining up so that it is easier for pupils to read, but in France it is the opposite situation. I need to write with my letters joined up for them to be able to read it!

CE1 – CP were out at a school trip to the local library at the time I usually go to teach them, therefore I swapped CE1 and CP’s English times for the day so I could still see both classes that day. With CE1 I told the class about Scotland and what my education was like. I began by introducing Great Britain to the children, and telling them about Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales. They found this confusing initially as these countries obviously have different names in French. I used a map on the projector in order to point to the countries and give the class a visual clue of what I was talking about I then told them that I live in Edinburgh but go to university in Dundee and I had to show them where these were on a map of Scotland. I showed the class pictures of my primary and high schools, and explained to them what age I was when I was to these. Again, they found the thought of wearing a uniform to school very amusing!

CM1 – I began a new topic with CM1 which Madame Royer had requested I start. This was positions of objects or things, for example, the mouse is in, on, under, behind, between, or beside the bed. Firstly, I used a box and a cross drawing on the board to demonstrate these positions, by drawing a cross in a box, the sentence would be ‘the cross is in the box’ etc. The class picked this up well, however it was clear that they were getting mixed up with between, beside and behind, as they look and sound very similar. These words needed some more repetition and examples in order for the children to understand which was which. I gave out a worksheet with two different tasks on it. The first task was to locate ‘Twit’ the clown. The class had to look at the pictures on the sheet and decide whether Twit was under, in, on, behind, beside or between the table/tables. I asked them to read out these sentences, as I could tell that they were going to find the words clown and table difficult to pronounce and I would need to give them help with this. They then had to write their answers on the sheet and as I walked around the room to see how they were getting on I could see that the class were still getting confused with beside, behind and between. In order to get the children to understand the difference I asked a few of them to stand up and demonstrate these words. For example, Person A is behind Person B, or, Person A is between Person B and Person C. This definitely seemed to be easier for the class to understand.

Wednesday 4th

Today, a few of the classes have sport, which is normal for a Wednesday. Due to this I did not teach any English, but I was able to observe my CM1 classes’ lessons. I was glad to have the opportunity to do this, as the timetable that the teachers created for me requires me to be in different classes all the time, which does not leave me much time to observe. The CM1 class were doing some French dictation, which they call dictée. This is something they do daily, and spend a lot of time on. It involves the teacher reading out a passage and the children having to write down what they hear. I feel that the children do a lot of French, and not much time is left for wider curricular areas. The CM2 teacher explained to me that in general, French children find French very difficult, as compared to English, there are so many grammatical rules and different tenses that the children have to consider. He said that due to this, French exam results across the country are renowned for being poor compared with other subjects. I considered that this was probably why it is so important for the children to have a lot of French in their daily schedule. He also said that this is why the children do not have that much English in their timetable in Primary school, there is not enough time to focus on English when their French still needs work. In secondary school, the amount of English that is taught increases from 1.5 to 5 hours, due to the children’s French being better.

Thursday 5th

CE2 – Today we began a new topic which was classroom objects. I have already done this topic with CE1 therefore I felt comfortable with the vocabulary and used the same method to introduce it, which was by picking up objects and asking them what they thought they were called. I wrote the correct names on the board, and quickly realised that they had done this topic before, as they were telling me the answers from looking back in their jotters! I asked them to close their jotters so that they could at least try to remember the words for certain objects. They found pen and pencil easy but had never heard of highlighters or sellotape before. Again, I asked the class to repeat the words after me because I feel it is important that they hear the correct way to say the words a lot. I then thought it was best that before they do any speaking themselves, they should write down the vocabulary in their jotters. As I walked around the class checking their jotters, I found that a lot of them were struggling with the spelling of certain words. I think it was mainly because of the way I write on the board, which is different to how their teacher writes. Certain letters look different and this confuses the children. I had to spend a lot of time correcting spelling which also meant I had to use the French alphabet, which is getting easier as the days go by.

CP – today was focussed on revising everything I have taught the children so far. The class teacher was keen for me to consolidate this and check for their understanding before we move on to any new vocabulary. So as each group came and sat with me on the carpet, I asked each of them their names and ages. I made sure to clearly pronounce ‘what is your name?’ and ‘how old are you?’, to ensure that they understand that I was asking different questions. I noticed that a lot of the children were saying ‘am I seven’ rather than ‘I am seven’, and were getting the words muddled up. After a lot of repetition, this was sorted out. After this I asked the children to count to 10 for me. Often, they try to do this as fast as they can which means that they are not really pronouncing the words properly, so to slow them down, I held up my fingers and that was their cue to say the number. After this I held up my fingers but in a random order, which threw the children off initially but I knew that if I did this they would have to pay more attention, rather than just chanting out the numbers in the normal order. I can tell that the children are recalling the numbers a lot faster now that we have done this exercise for several days.

CM1 – We continued with positions today, so I reminded the class of the words we learnt yesterday which were on, in, under, between, behind and beside. I handed out some worksheets for the class, which I thought could be quite challenging for them. The sheet was titled ‘Where are the Pets?’, and it had different animals located in different areas of a house. This meant that even more vocabulary was introduced to the children such as cupboard, bed, chair and fridge. Before going over this, I made sure that they were comfortable with the positions vocabulary, as I did not want the class to be confused. One by one, I read out the question and asked for an answer with the children speaking in sentences, rather than just saying the name of the animal. After we had completed the worksheet as a class, Madame Royer asked the children if they had any questions for me about the vocabulary they had learnt. This then encouraged the children to ask me for the English for lots of words that they obviously knew in French, like pillow, mattress, attic, door, vase, blanket…. The list goes on! I spent a while at the front of the class translating household items for the children, until eventually they were asking me about different words like star, spider, even moustache. It was then that Madame Royer thought we should probably end the lesson, before the class got off task.

Friday 6th

CE2 – The class teacher came to tell me at the beginning of the day that she needed to phone a few people as it was an emergency. She said she would be back to the class as soon as she could but otherwise the class was under my control. This daunted me because she is always usually in the classroom with me when I am teaching, and is my translator when I need it! I also wasn’t prepared for this, but luckily, I knew what exercise the class were supposed to be doing today. Unfortunately, the pages had not been photocopied, so I asked Jessica the classroom assistant if she could do that for me. Whilst that was happening, I filled the time by asking the children for the date and the weather in English. They are definitely getting the hang of this vocabulary now, which is probably due to us going over it daily. I then ensured that the class knew the vocabulary that was needed for the worksheet they were about to do, which were things like ‘teacher’, ‘desk’ and ‘chair’. They copied these words into their jotters after repeating them after me several times. I asked them to do this individually as well because it can be hard to tell if they are all saying the words properly when they all say them at once. I can tell they are not so keen to do this but they know it is just to help them with their pronunciation. After this, the class completed the worksheet that I gave to them, it was another crossword which included the words we had learned on Wednesday as well as today. They completed this quickly but again, there was a few queries from the class about my writing on the board. For the next two weeks, my aim will be to write so that the children can read it!

CM2 – I read the class a book called ‘The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash’ in English. I was conscious that I needed to read this book slowly, as a lot of the vocabulary and sentences were very difficult. Mr Apruncule explained the meaning of the title to the class, so that they would have a small clue as to what I was talking about! I read the class the story and afterwards I could tell they were all very confused, so the teacher went over the book in French with them. They could guess most of the nouns in the book, but it was the verbs like throwing, eating and crying, that the children found difficult to translate.

 CP – I wanted to do a different activity with the children today, as we had been doing bingo for a while and I thought the children would start to find it too easy and therefore boring. I had the class in three groups as usual, and with each group I began by asking them all for their ages. I then asked them to sit ‘dans un cercle’ so that we could play the new game that I had thought of. Carrying on the theme of ‘Joe the Pirate’, I thought it would be fun to ask the children to collect “treasure”, using colourful building blocks. I asked each child one by one to find me ‘2 pieces of treasure’ or ‘7 pieces of treasure’ etc. The first group found this very easy, but the second and third group not so much. It took them a little bit longer to figure out what number I was saying to them. I can tell that the class teacher has given me groups of children in terms of ability, as the first group always seem to pick up new vocabulary and understand games well, whereas the last group need a bit more time and repetition. The next time I went around the circle, I asked the children to find me ‘one blue and two oranges’ for example. This meant that they were having to use their knowledge of English numbers and colours together, which I think they found difficult at first as it was double the amount fo words to translate. However, I think this challenging element of the game made it more engaging for them and they found it good fun whilst still practicing a lot of the vocabulary they have learnt since I have been at the school.

By the end of each week I am definitely noticing a difference in my understanding of French, even if it is just a few more phrases here and there. I feel that I don’t have to spend such a long time thinking about what someone has said to me, the words are becoming a lot more familiar. I also feel that I am very comfortable in the school now, this has been helped by the teachers and children, who have made me feel like part of the school from the very first day I got there. I am always greeted in the morning and at the end of the day by everyone, and I get the sense that the children enjoy their English time with me. When the children ask me questions I am much more able to answer them than I was on day one! This gives me a sense of achievement, and it means that I can communicate easier with the children which is important to me. I think that I am understanding the rules of the school and the way that things are done differently in France. For example, children are not allowed to ask to go to the bathroom during lessons, they must go at break times. This has been helped by the teachers, who do not hesitate to tell me all about how things work in their school and in French schools in general. Hearing their opinions about education and primary school in France is very interesting and it has encouraged me to consider how I feel about education in Scotland. I would say that there are clear aspects of primary school in France that are taken more seriously than in Scotland, like handwriting and dictation. On the other hand, in Scotland I would say we take the school image more seriously by wearing uniform.

Emmanuel Macron’s Changes to Primary Education in France

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CP, is the youngest class in the French primary school. Children in this year group are usually 6 or 7 and in my school, there is only one CP class. Something that I have recently noticed in my school is that some of the pupils from the CP class are in the CE2 class at certain times of the day. Initially, I found this confusing, as the next class up from CP is CE1, therefore I did not think this was a composite class. Why were 6/7 year olds sometimes in the same class as 8/9 year olds? I thought that my teacher, Madame Royer, would be the best person to ask as she speaks English well. When I began to ask her about this, she knew immediately what I was talking about, and I realised that this was probably quite a big issue in the school. She said that the CP class is the largest class in the school (this is also something I have noticed during my first couple of weeks), with 29 pupils. The other classes have around 20-25 pupils in them, and therefore the CP teacher can sometimes find that 29 pupils are too many to handle. This is also made worse by the fact that these children are the youngest, meaning they are harder to manage and usually do not concentrate as well. These two factors combined, means that the CP teacher has a lot of work to do, therefore the teachers in the school decided that it would be best if around 5 of the CP pupils went into the CE2 class (the smallest class in the school), whenever the CP teacher saw it as appropriate (for example, if she needed a rest from looking after 29 6 year olds!).

Madame Royer explained to me that this was really not popular with the parents of the children who spent time in 2 different classes, as they would rather their children remained in the same class all day, with children of the same age. She then told me that Emmanuel Macron (the French President) wanted there to be a maximum of 12 pupils in every CP class in poorer neighbourhoods of France, in order for the younger children to receive more teacher attention earlier on. Another change that has recently been implemented in some primary schools (particularly in Nice and Marseille) by The President, is that they are only having 4 day weeks (a whole day off on a Wednesday instead of a half day). This means that children are in school for four days, and out of school for three. In Scotland, the majority of schools are open Monday to Friday, with no half days. This is not seen as an unachievable number of days for children to be in school by Scottish teachers.

Emmanuel Macron also wants compulsory education to start at the age of three, from September 2019. This means that schools across France will require an additional 800 school staff in total. The current age for compulsory education in France is six, when children enter the CP class. The President feels that nursery in France should no longer merely be treated as ‘childcare’, but it should be educational too.

In my opinion, I think that three is too young for children to begin compulsory education. However, I do also agree that six is too old. I also feel that 12 as a maximum number of pupils for CP classes in disadvantaged areas seems like not enough. This would mean needing more teachers in every school and from my previous experience, 12 pupils seems more than manageable.

 

  • The Connexion, (2017), “Changes in Store as Children Head Back to School”
  • The Connexion, (2018) “School to Start from Age 3 in 2019”.

Week 3 of Placement – 26th – 30th of March

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Monday 26th

CE2 – I began by asking one of the pupils to write the date in English on the board. They usually know how to say the word properly but their spelling is often wrong so I have to help them with this using the French alphabet. I continued with the topic of feelings with the class, revising over the words they had learnt the week before such as happy, sad, excited, bored, angry etc. I asked them to repeat after me, and repeated this several times as the teacher said she wanted the children to learn the words orally before trying to write them down in their jotters. I felt that the children seemed quite tired, probably because it was a Monday morning. I feel that this is a flaw in my daily timetable as I see CE2 at this time every day, and often find that their energy is not as high as my other classes. This timetable was implemented by my teachers therefore I have to follow it and try my best to keep up the energy in my CE2 classes at such an early time. Next, introduced some new, more complex words to describe feelings to the class. These were confused, worried, thirsty, upset and surprised. I noticed that the children found thirsty particularly difficult to say, and this is because of the “th” sound. In French, they do not used this sound and I have realised that it is very difficult for the children to say, as well as “h”. Therefore, I had to repeat the word thirsty to the class several times. I had made a mistake in my printing out of the flashcards, meaning that some children did not get certain words. This was very confusing, and the class teacher had to go and photo copy more of certain words so that every child had 12 words on their flashcards. I had the children coming to me and talking very quickly in French which was confusing but I managed to work it out and help the children find the right flashcards.

CM2 – carrying on with the topic of wild animals, Monsieur Apruncule asked me to read out a short report about The Safari in Tanzania. Within this there were many difficult phrases and names of wild animals that he wanted me to pronounce to the class. They then took turns reading out the short paragraphs with me correcting them and explaining what the phrases mean. I then wrote the new vocabulary (zebra, antelope, baboon, lion, giraffe for example) on the board for the class to copy into their jotters. As I walked around the room to check everyone had their spelling correct, I noticed that a few children had put accents on the word elephant, as the French word for elephant is éléphant. I had to tell the class that in English we do not use accents, but I could see how the children could get mixed up as the word is spelt the same.

CP- I continued with the small groups working on learning the colours in English.  Firstly, I made sure that each child could tell me their name, age and gender for some revision and to keep up the phrases being learnt. I had new flashcards to use with the children, that had coloured objects on them (an apple, orange, banana etc).  I then asked them the question “what colour is this?”, and the children always started to reply with “an apple!” or “an orange!”. This confirmed to me that the children have not really understood what I am asking when I say, “what colour is this?”, they have just merely learnt that the correct response is to shout a colour! So, I made sure that the children knew what I was asking them before proceeding.

CM1 – We continued with the topic of food, asking “do you like?” and responding with “yes, I do” or “no, I don’t”. I began by standing at the front of the class and showing the class flashcards of food to ensure that they could remember the vocabulary we learnt from last week. We then had a quick class discussion about what foods we did like and did not like, with the children answering my questions about their favourite foods. I gave the children a worksheet to do which had a little maze that they had to follow in order to find out which characters liked which foods and then fill in the blanks accordingly. The children had an important question for me at this point, which was why do we always write a capital ‘I’ when talking about ourselves? For example, we would never write “i like bananas”, we would write “I like bananas”. However, Madame Royer explained to me that the children would never usually write a capital letter in the middle of a sentence by itself. I had never considered that the children would find this confusing and I found this very interesting. Once the class had finished this worksheet and stuck it into their English jotters, I thought it would be a fun way to end the lesson to read the children a funny book. It was called “Ketchup on your cornflakes?” The class found this very amusing, as the book asked questions such as “do you like custard on your head?” and other silly questions. The children then had to reply with “yes, I do” or “no, I don’t”, so this was an excellent way to practice the phrases we had learnt but in a new, fun way for the children. I felt that due to this they were well engaged and enjoying learningand speaking English.

CE1 – On Monday with CE1, the teacher wanted me to introduce some new vocabulary to the class, as they were finding ‘classroom instructions’ easy now that we had done it a few times in the class. I introduced the topic of ‘classroom objects’ or ‘objects de la classe’ in French. In order to do this, I began by asking “qu’est-ce que c’est?” (what is it?) whilst pointing at certain objects in the class like pens, pencils, the board, pencil cases, chairs, desks etc. I then told the class what these words are in English and wrote them on the board so that they could see the words. The class teacher wanted the children to write the vocabulary in English in their jotters, then write the word in French, and draw a small picture beside this. This took the children quite a while, but once they were all finished I suggested that we could play Simon says again, just to refresh the children’s’ memories and also to have a little bit of fun as they had just spent a while writing in their jotters. This was approved by the teacher and to my delight the children knew the classroom instructions very well. This gave me a huge sense of achievement, especially because in this class, the teacher does not speak any English therefore it is much harder for me to explain tasks and new vocabulary, as there is no translation.

Tuesday 27th

CE2 –  On Tuesday I continued with the feelings vocabulary with the CE2 class. However, to begin the lesson, the class teacher wanted me to write the date in full in English on the board, and also the days of the week. This was so that the children could copy it into their English jotters and have a copy of it to look at in the future. After this, there was a couple of extra words that I wanted the children to learn in terms of feelings. These were, proud, shy, and worried.  In order for the children to consolidate their newly learnt vocabulary from last week, the teacher and I agreed that a worksheet would be a suitable task. This worksheet had a number of facial expressions on it, with blank spaces underneath. The class’ job was to figure out what emotion each person was feeling, and write the feeling in English underneath each person. The first few feelings were easily done by the class as they were words like happy, sad and bored. However, when it came to feelings such as, nervous and excited, a lot of the class got the two mixed up. This was the same for confused and shy. I explained to the class that any of these words would be suitable as long as they matched the facial expressions of the people. I didn’t want the class to get too fixated on what the “correct” answers were, as long as they made sense.

CM2 – Carrying on from Monday, the class completed a worksheet about wild animals, where they had to look at a big picture and answer questions such as, “how many giraffes are there?” and “what animal is on the car?”.  I read out each question and went through the answers with the class, they found this task relatively easy to complete but their pronunciation usually needs adjusting. After this, the class teacher was keen to move on to a new topic. This was directions, for example, below, above, on top of, next to, near to, far from etc. We used objects that the children already know the names for like chair, lamp, bed, in order to practice these phrases. I used pictures of the objects and stuck these in certain positions on the board. For example, if the bed was below the lamp, the children would need to give the response “the bed is below the lamp”, and so on. I felt that the class found this easy and probably slightly boring, as they are very good at creating longer sentences.

CP – Before the class began on Tuesday, the class teacher came to see me to explain what she wanted me to teach the children. She said that she wanted me to combine the topics I had taught them by playing a game like ‘Guess Who?’. In this I would give each of the children in the small groups a flashcard, with a picture of a food on it. Then I would say, “it is yellow”, and if a pupil was holding a yellow food, they would lift it up. Next, I would say if the person holding my object of choice was a boy or girl, and this would eliminate more children. Then, the other children would have to guess who it was by saying “his name is….” Or “her name is….”. This seemed like a lot for the youngest children in the school to remember but the vocabulary was all things that they had learnt before. This is with the exception of the children needing to tell me their peers names by saying “his” or “her” name, instead of “my name is”. I considered that before starting the game I would need to go over this, as well as the colours in English and what a boy and a girl is.

As I began to start this lesson with the first group of CP children, I realised that this game was going to be very difficult for me to explain by myself, therefore I asked the class teacher to help me with this. Even after the children hearing what they had to do in French, I still felt that they found the task difficult and confusing, and I had to stop the game to explain vocabulary a lot with every group. This confusion then led to the children becoming disengaged in the activity, meaning that I had to tell the children to listen and sit still quite often. I find this more difficult to do with CP than the older classes, as the older classes understand my requests in English like “listen to me” and “stop”, but the CP children are not so tuned in to this. I consequently have to use a lot of actions, so when I say listen, I point to my ears, and if I ask for quiet I hold my finger up to my lips. But in order for this to be effective the children need to be looking at me, which sometimes isn’t the case with the CP children!

CE1-  the class teacher was keen for me to continue with the topic of classroom objects with the children. So, I made sure to go over the vocabulary we had learnt the day before, by pointing to objects like the board, rubbers, pencils, water bottles, and ensuring the class knew what they were called in English. I wrote the words on the board too, so that the children could see how these words are spelt. I then got the class to repeat the words after me several times, as the teacher was keen for the children to have good pronunciation of the words. Something else which all of the teachers are keen for the children to be able to do is put vocabulary into phrases and sentences. For example, if I ask, “is this a pen?” and point to a pen, instead of reply with “a pen”, the teacher wanted the children to reply with “yes, it is” or “no, it is not”. I said that this was quite difficult for the children to do at this stage, as I had been doing this kind of work with my CM1 class, who are two years older. But my teacher seemed adamant that she wanted to have the children speak in proper sentences, which I thought was fair. I then used the Simon says game that the children have gotten to know well, in order to consolidate the vocabulary for classroom objects. For example, I would say to the class “Simon says, show me your pens”, and the children would have to lift up their pens. They really enjoyed this, and I considered trying this game with other classes seeing as it has gone down so well with CE1.

Wednesday 28th

CE2- on Wednesday I wanted to start a new topic with the class, as I felt that they knew feelings very well and were ready to move on and learn new vocabulary. I spoke with the teacher about what topic she felt they would be ready to focus on, and she suggested weather. This suited me just fine as learning the weather in French when I was at school was something that I felt confident in. I proposed the question “What is the weather like today?” to the class. Obviously by asking a complex question like this in English, I am going to receive a confused response. Therefore, when I ask questions like this I make sure to use facial expressions and gestures. So, when asking these questions, I raised my arms and pointed outside. The children soon caught on, and I heard one pupil shout “Il pleut!”. They were right, it was raining, so using this, I taught the class the phrase “it is raining”. The phrase part of talking about the weather was relatively easy for the children, as you just say, “it is” and then add the weather. They grasped this concept quickly, and this made it easier to learn the rest of the vocabulary, such as sunny, snowing, windy, cold, hot, foggy and thunder and lightning. So that the children could refer to this vocabulary I asked them to write it into their jotters, first in French, then English and then draw a picture, like I had done on the board.

CM2 – The class continued learning their vocabulary for positions, which I feel they know very well and I was impressed with how well they can say the sentences, due to how complex they are. Knowing that the class find this easy, I moved on to something that I knew would engage them. This was the ‘Kevin and Kate’ scripts that the class teacher provides them with. They come up in pairs and have to act out the little scenes in English, which I can tell they really enjoy. The scrips have different names, for example, ‘It’s Halloween’ or ‘The School Photo’, and the children can choose which one they want to act out. I’ve noticed that a few of the children try to memorise the lines on the scripts, which I think is great because it means they are able to speak English without having to read it off of the paper, and I think this is advanced for 10 and 11-year-old children.

CP – I did not need to teach the pupils today, however the class teacher suggested that it might be interesting for me to sit in and watch how the class get on in a normal lesson, and I agreed. The class were doing maths, and I could tell that they had to think of numbers that you could add together to make 20. The teacher was using the smart projector, that they have in every classroom, to show the children visually what adds up to make 20. The class all seemed engaged in this exercise, but I noticed that she did not stay on the same subject for very long. She mentioned to me that this is because young children can get restless and bored and therefore they need a change of scene. In response to this, she told the class they were going to do French, which initially did not get a very enthusiastic reaction! She then explained that they were going to tell me about themselves in French (e.g. My name is, I am 6, I am boy), like what I had done with them for English, and they thought this was very exciting. Each of them took turns to stand up and introduce themselves. The class then moved on to do some more French grammar, which I actually found very helpful to listen to, as this was very basic and it refreshed my memory well. During the lesson, I noticed the teacher use a couple of behaviour management strategies, which I had not seen much of in other classes. I considered that this could be due to the high number of children in the CP class and their young age. In the first instance, she asked a boy who she felt had not been listening to her to come and take a red card from her desk, and keep it on his desk until she told him he could put it back. I considered that this was maybe the equivalent of a traffic light system. The next time, it was another boy who was not behaving and she asked him to sit at a desk at the back next to me. I did not feel that this was as affective as I could tell the boy still was not paying attention to the lesson, and had been moved from the front to the back of the room, so the teacher could not keep an eye on him as well.

Thursday 29th

CE2– on Thursday I had flashcards to use with the class which had pictures of different types of weather on them so that I could get the children to practice their pronunciation. I did this by holding up a card and asking, “what is the weather like?”, the class would have to reply with the correct phrase we had practiced the day before. I had to help the children with their pronunciation of certain words, such as thunder and lightning as this was quite a mouthful for the children.  I was conscious that the class remain seated quite a lot, and thought of a way the class could learn the weather in English in a more interactive way. I stuck the flashcards onto the board one under another, and wrote sentences like ‘it is sunny’ and ‘it is windy’ next to them, but in a different order. I then asked the children to come up one by one and draw a line to match the flashcard to the corresponding sentence. This was good as it got the children to read the sentences, instead of just hearing me say them. I also felt that the class appreciated a more interactive task. After we had discussed the weather a bit more the teacher was keen for me to move on to the topic of clothing with the class. So, to introduce the vocabulary I began pointing to items of clothing I was wearing and asking what it was. Of course, they all began shouting the words at me in French, so I wrote those on the board, and using my French knowledge, translated them into English. I went over the pronunciation of certain words like shoes and trousers, as these contain confusing sounds for French children.

CP – On Thursday with CP I continued playing the game ‘who is it?’ with the small groups of children. I was apprehensive about doing this as the class had found it very difficult and confusing on Tuesday. This then led to the children not being very engaged and once this happens I find that it is difficult to regain their attention. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the children all understood the concept of the game a lot better this time, which is what the teacher predicted would happen, she said sometimes it just takes a bit of repetition and persistence with younger children. After I had played this game with all three of the groups I got the children to fill in another ‘Joe the Pirate’ worksheet which asked, ‘what colour is my boat?’. The pupils’ task was to colour in each of the boats the correct colour and then choose a colour to write in the space. They found this easy and enjoyable.

After this I had to return home as Nina, our host, requested that we have a mid-term meeting with her to check that we were all getting on fine at our schools.

Friday 30th

CE2 – I began my lesson by asking for the date in English (which the class are getting the hang of now) and what the weather is like. I thought this would be a good thing to do daily so that the class do not forget the weather vocabulary we learned. For the final day of the week with CE2, I progressed with the topic of clothing with the class. I added a couple more important words to the list of vocabulary for the children, and these were, pyjamas and boots. These were easy enough to quickly teach the children as the French for these words is ‘pyjamas’ and ‘bottes’.  I asked the children to write the French and English words for each item of clothing and draw a little picture beside it, just like they did for the weather. I definitely found that the children were responding to my requests much faster, even though they were in English, and I find that this is the case in most classes. I think this is because they are learning what my demands mean, and are then able to respond appropriately.

CM2 – On Friday myself and two other girls in the class were going to present to the class about what school is like in Scotland. We showed the rest of the class a picture of a Scottish primary school and told the class about what times we attend school, what we wear to school and how many children there were in my school. They were shocked and fascinated to hear that my school had around 500 pupils in it, as their school is so much smaller. They were also very intrigued by the idea of wearing a uniform and asked why we had to do this. I explained that it was for identification purposes and that we think it is smarter to wear a uniform to school. The class agreed but said they preferred to wear their own clothes! I told the children that our lunch times are only an hour long, instead of 2 hours. The teacher thought that this was much better, and that two hours is too long. He said that the children always come back to school too excited after a 2-hour long lunch break.

CP – The class teacher and I had discussed at the beginning of the day that we would go over the numbers in English with the class later on. I thought to myself that this would be relatively easy for the children as I have heard some of them counting to 10 in English already. Therefore, I thought about how I could fill my time of 15 minutes that I have with each group, in order to keep the children engaged. I began by going through the numbers from 1 to 10 with the flashcards that the teacher had given me, and as I thought, the pupils found this easy. I then got the children to count backwards from 10, which they seemed to find slightly harder but not very interesting. I thought it would be a good idea to play bingo, where I would say the number out loud and the children would have to use their English listening skills to figure out what number I was saying, and tick it off their card appropriately. This definitely got the children more engaged and they really found this exercise fun. This is something I will play again with the class in order to practice numbers up to 10.

 

 

2nd Week of Placement 19th – 23rd March 2018

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Week 2 – 19th to 23rd 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 19th

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 19th 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 20th

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 21st

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 22nd

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 23rd

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.

 

1st Week of Placement 13th – 16th of March

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Tuesday 13th 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 14th 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 15th 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.

Image result for my fair lady orleans

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!

 

 

Arrival in Orléans

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Briony, Erin, Lauren, Natalie, Brooke and I, set off from Edinburgh airport early in the morning on Sunday the 11th of March. Aside from our luggage being too heavy, having to pay a significant fine and rushing through the airport to make our flight, we arrived in Paris at the Charles de Gaulle airport successfully.  We met our mini-bus driver Francois, who was holding up a sign for us, and he drove us to Orléans which took around one hour. We were all relatively quiet in the bus, probably due to tiredness and nerves of what was ahead of us. The language barrier was already becoming clear, even after 1 hour, as we had to converse with Francois about directions to Orléans. Despite this we all made it to the train station where we were met by our host Nina. Brooke and Natalie set off to Blois, which is where they are doing their teaching placements, and Nina drove us the rest of us to our accommodation at ESPE Loire Valley. She showed us to our rooms in the halls, where other French and international students stay too. We met a couple of Irish girls in the kitchen which was a relief as I knew we would be able to talk to them with no language issues. We were then left to settle in and get our bearings of the city we would be staying in for the next 6 weeks.

Image result for orleans france   Image result for orleans france

On Monday, we were shown around the town centre by Nina, who showed us the important parts of Orléans and helped us to get our bus passes sorted out for getting to our placement schools the next day. None of us speak French very well, so walking around and talking to people was a good way of easing us into speaking the language. We then went to the other teacher training centre in Orléans, where we met a woman called Claudié, who spoke to us in French which, again, was a shock to us all but I felt this helped us to recall some of the French vocabulary we would need to be using in our schools. She introduced us to the French Education system and certain aspects that were important to know about before placement. There were some important differences in the education systems of France and Scotland which I will highlight:

The main features of the French education system are:

  • The schools are mostly public
  • They are free for all
  • It is compulsory for all from ages 6 to 16.
  • They are “laïque” (secular).
  • Nursery in France is called “Maternelle” and is in ‘Cycle 1’
  • Early years is called ‘Cycle 2’, which consists of CP (age 6), CE1 (age 7) and CE2 (age 8).
  • The middle and upper stages are part of ‘Cycle 3’, which is CM1 (age 9) and CM2 (age 10/11).
  • ‘Cycle 4’ in the French system is collège which children attend from the ages of 12 to 15.
  • From 15 to 18, children attend Le Lycée.

Laïcité

This is a concept that we were introduced to by Claudie which she said was particularly important in French schools.

“Laïcité” cannot be directly translated in English. Due to this, there are difficulties for French people when trying to explain to people from other European countries, and particularly from Britain, what “Laïcite” actually means.

A law was voted in over 100 years ago in 1905, where there was the separation of the state and the church. However, the secularization of French State schools had started long before the 1905 law. In 1881 primary education in France was already free and compulsory for those aged 6 to 13 and already “laïque”, with no religious education being taught. And today, any show, by clothing, badges, speech or in writing, of religious beliefs or political opinions is strictly forbidden. This is agreed in order to avoid any religious opinion being expressed, but mainly to show that everyone is equal and we can live together and respect each other, whatever our differences are.

Today, the basic principles of “laïcite” and of the separation of Church and State are well established and understood in France. The different faiths recognise that by having this law in place, they have the freedom to practise their religion, which in France is considered a strictly private thing. It took centuries and a lot of terrible struggles to get to this point in French society.
Few countries in the world have adopted the principle of a secular state, but there are some examples: for example, Mexico, a country almost exclusively Roman Catholic, and to a certain extent, Turkey, a Muslim country. Yet some Christian groups in the United States disagree with this type of state and it is seen as controversial.

S, Writer. 2018 La France : un état laïque, French Entrée. Available at: https://www.frenchentree.com/living-in-france/culture/la-france-un-etat-laique/