19/04/18

Today I was with Sylvie Lambert and her class CE2. Today there would be no canteen food so the pupils were supposed to have taken a packed lunch but many of them forgot it. The teacher then had to phone certain pupils parents to ask if they would take a packed lunch in for their children. This reminded me of when I was in school and if you for got your lunch the same thing would have to happen. Sylvie started off the day with a dictation lesson. She spoke out the paragraph a couple of words at a time so that the children could write it down accurately. After she had finished the paragraph she picked a few children to repeat back what they had wrote down.

After break I taught an English lesson. Sylvie had a meeting at the start of class so I took the class by myself, without her there, for the first time. I enjoyed this more as I felt no pressure from her being there. I started by sitting the children down and then asking them to take out their English books. I then asked what the date was today in English and I got the children to tell me each part of the date as I wrote it on the blackboard.

The lesson was a carrying on lesson from the previous weeks one in this class. This time the biography I gave them didn’t have my personal parts in it but rather blank spaces for them to fill in with their own details. We practiced speaking all the sentences in the biography and went over them quite a few times so that they would memorise it better. Then I asked the children to fill in the blanks in English. Sentence by sentence I wrote them on the blackboard and showed them what they would put in the blank spaces. I gave multiple examples of what to put in each space. The children also put their hands up to ask me how to spell certain words in English, especially for the animal and sport sentences. I really enjoyed doing this on the board as I got to practice my French handwriting, as it is difficult for them to read my English style handwriting. Once they had filled in their biography sheets I asked a few children to read out their whole biography to me. I thought this pulled this part of the lesson together well as they could hear and see how the biography flowed,

They then stuck a class picture underneath and circled their face and along side that they stuck a picture of the map of France and circled Orleans. This whole piece of work that they had then done of this page would be for me so that I would remember my time here with the children. I thought this was a very thoughtful gift. My lesson carried on until after lunch.

At lunchtime I went outside with the children. I played a card game with one of the girls, which involved me using my numbers and colours in French. This was fun as I got to interact with the pupils and using my French too. I also used my French during lunchtime to count down races and to count the numbers for hopscotch.

Once the children came back in from lunch we started the lesson again. On the page beside their personal biography page, I gave them the same handout as last week with my personal biography on it to stick onto this page. I then went over my biography on the blackboard, in French cursive writing, and told them to highlight each word that was personal to me. Underneath this they then each got a picture of me and stuck it along side a map of Scotland, which had a circle round Aberdeen. This would be for them to keep as a memory of me.

In the afternoon I went to Françoise Monclere’s class, CP, to help her with an art lesson. We went to the art room in the school and carried on the topic of kitchen utensils. All the children were given a sheet, which had a plate, fork, spoon, knife and chequered table mat drawn out on it. They used coloured pens and pencils to fill in and decorate their own one. While the children did this I pulled out a child at a time to help we with the hot glue gun. We were using the glue gun to stick down big polystyrene kitchen utensils onto an A2 chequered background.

During this part of the lesson I had to explain and brief the children on the safety aspect of using the hot glue gun. I told them not to touch the nozzle of the gun as it is very hot an to keep their fingers away from the glue as its drizzled onto the polystyrene as it would burn their fingers. I felt this was an important direction to give children before doing any activity that has a risk of injury.

I demonstrated how to use the hot glue gun and then gave it to the child, they then traced the glue around the shape and then I placed the shape onto the background for them to press down into place.

After break I went back to Sylvie’s class to play maths games with them. I played the same maths game as last week but with different children. This time I knew how to play the dominos game better, therefore this time round the games went much smoother. Again every time a child had the answer domino and placed it down I asked them to show me that time on the interactive clock and then listen and repeat back to me what the time is in English as well as French. I enjoy playing the maths games with the children as I get the Practice by French at the same time as teaching the children English in maths and I get to work with a smaller group of children, which is easier for communication and checking for understanding.

18/04/18

Today we were not in our French school but rather we had an end of placement meeting with Nina Huss at the ESPE centre. At the meeting we discussed; how we felt our placement went, what we had noticed that was similar and different from schools in Scotland, if we felt we had integrated well into the school team, the different lessons we got the chance to teach, how our French had progressed, what we would take form this placement back to Scotland with us, how this placement has changed our thoughts on teaching and if we had any quires about the placement.

Nina was very supportive and we thanked her at the end for organising the placement and helping us along the way, She suggested that we keep in contact with our schools for future reference and that we could even keep a close relationship by writing letters and even create pen pals when I have a class of my own.

We then went into the centre of Orléans to go to a children bookshop that Nina had recommended. We spent hours in there as the shop was full of useful French children books. They had books for basic French; numbers, colours, shapes, etc. and they even had English classics; Elmer, The Hungary Caterpillar, Fairytales, etc. I bought 4 books, which I thought would be handy to use in my classroom when teaching French once I graduate and I also thought they would be a nice memory of my placement here in France.

17/04/18

Today I was with Axelle Holef in CE1. Axelle started the day by asking the children the day of the week and what day comes before and after today’s day. She then spoke about the weather and asked the children to describe it to her.

She then started a mathematics lesson linked to a money goal of the classes. The class has a change piggy bank and each morning the children put any loose change into it and today they had reached 131€. They wrote on the blackboard as many ways as they could make the number 131 by adding and then how many ways of making 131€ using notes and coins. Axelle used hundreds, tens and unit squares to also give a visual representation of 131.

She then moved onto dictation. She wrote the sentence on the board and then discussed with the children what words in the sentence were the; preposition, adjective, noun, verb, feminine, masculine, singular or plural and the ‘determine’ word. She then read a passage and picked certain phrases out of it to analyse. The children analysed them and told Axelle whether they were feminine, masculine, singular or plural and what language rule makes them this way.

During break time a few of the pupils had to stay in for a few minutes since they had to correct their dictation. I think this is a good consequence as it teaches the children that if they do not correct themselves during class they then have to stay in during break.

After break she continued teaching about singular and plural words. She wrote lots of nouns on the board with a ‘determine’ word in front of each. The children then identified the singular and plural words.

CE1 then had a mathematics lesson. They were again adding and taking away using different sized squares that represented hundreds, tens and units. These squares had magnets on the back of them so that they could be stuck to the blackboard and moved around depending on the equation. They also looked at partitioning tens into tens and units. She used a number line above the blackboard to help explain the jumping up in tens and then units.

After lunch I taught my English lesson. This was my final class to teach my Scottish lesson to. I started of my lesson at the front of the class while Axelle set up the projector. I tested the children to see how many English phrases they already knew. I asked; how they were feeling today, how old they were, what their name was, what the full date was, what the season was and what the weather was like today. They all managed to respond to most of the questions I asked in English well.

I then started my lesson on Scotland. I did this lesson the same as all the others I had taught, getting the children to repeat each word a couple of times before moving on. When I got to the slide on tartan a few of the children told me that they owned items of clothing with the tartan pattern on them. One child even asked me where they could by tartan!

I felt this lesson went very well for my last teaching of my Scottish lesson. They were very engaged and interested about Scotland and they asked lots of questions at the end.

16/04/18

Today I was in Benjamine Duplouy’s class, CP/CE1. They started off the day by assigning the classroom helper roles. Benjamine went down the list of roles and asked who would like to do them for this week. The children put up their hands if they wanted to do the job and Benjamine picked a child to take on the role.

I think this is an important thing to do right at the start of the week so that all classroom jobs are covered before starting lessons and activities that involve using them. Assigning roles to children boosts their self-esteem, as they feel valued by the teacher as they have been picked and trusted to take on an important role for their classmates.

Since this is a composite class, whilst the CP got taught a lesson and CE1’s were given a word search to start off their day. Benjamine read out a passage to CP and then she got a few of the children to come up, one by one, and also read the passage she had just read. I thought this was a good way of testing the children reading and presentation skills.

CP then had a French lesson whereby they were discussing the sound of ‘c’ and ‘ç’ . Benjamine didn’t tell the children what specific letter/sound they were learning about at first, the children had t figure it out. ‘c’ and ‘ç’ in French can sound like a ‘s’ at times so a lot of the children were shouting out words which had a ‘s’ rather than a ‘c’ and ‘ç’. It was only once a child said a word with a ‘c’ in it that Benjamine wrote it on the board and the other children caught on what the sound for today was. The other children then came up with words that have ‘c’ in them. For example, some included; cinq, François, c’est, police and garçon. Benjamine when got the children to get their mini whiteboards out and put a tick on one side and a cross on the other side, she then shouted out words and the children had to show a tick or a cross depending on if they thought the word had a ‘c’ or ‘ç’ in it.

I went around helping CE1 with their word searches and dictionary work. The children had a list of words and they had to find them in their dictionaries and then write down the page number they found them on.

After break, CP was given a worksheet to do with the sound ‘s’ and letters ‘c’ and ‘ç’. CE1 had a lesson on adjectives and a worksheet to go with it. The compared two pictures of cows and had to match the correct sentences that described the cows using adjectives to the correct picture of the cow. Another part of the lesson involved the children looking at a picture and a connecting sentences that gave the read two options of adjectives describing the pictures, the children had to pick the correct adjective out of the two. After the worksheet, on the blackboard, Benjamine wrote up sentences and got the children to identify which word was the adjective. This gave the children more practice of what they had just done on their worksheet.

Once some of the CP children had finished their work a few of them want to try speak to me in English so wrote me messages in French and I translated them for them into English, I found this quite fun as I liked how interested they were in the language.

After lunch I went with Sylvie Lambert with Laura’s CE2s to help with her science lesson. We went out into the playground where they have a garden. In the CE2 lesson we were planting vegetables and flowers and learning how to use the garden tools and equipment correctly and safely. Before we went outside Sylvie explained on the blackboard with diagrams what we were going to do outside. I followed along so that I knew what they were doing too so that I could help and demonstrate instructions outside. The children helped Sylvie and I take all the garden equipment outside and then we both helped demonstrate how to use the tools. To start we raked the soil to turn it up and flatten it out. We then used bamboo sticks to indicate where we were going to plant each vegetable/flower. The children used metre sticks to space out the bamboo sticks along the garden. Once all the bamboo sticks were positioned in the ground we got rope that had a metal rod at ether end and placed each rod in the ground, right where each bamboo stick was, and ran the cord perpendicular, right across the garden to meet the bamboo stick at the other side. This created a grid to work with. We then started to mark out where we would plant the vegetables/flowers. We used a tool to create an indented line in the soil parallel with the robe and then deepened it with a sharper tool. I particularly helped the children with this bit, as it was trickier as the tool was big and heavy. Once we had created these valleys in the soil we took out the guide ropes and started to plant the seeds.

Firstly we planted the potatoes that they had, had in the classroom for 6 weeks now, to allow them to sprout. We used a tool that created a circular hole in the ground when you pushed it into the ground and pulled soil back up with it. The sprouted potatoes were then placed in the holes that were evenly spaced out along the line and covered over with soil. Next we planted peas. The peas were scattered across the next valley and then covered over with soil. Then we planted beans, which were planted the same as the peas.

Next along we planted lettuce, we used the same tool that was used for the potatoes for this vegetable and it was covered over in soil so that the existing leaves were seen coming out the top of the soil. Beside the lettuce we planted carrots, the seeds were scattered in the valley and then covered over in soil. In the final two valleys we plated two different flower seeds, these were scattered in the valleys and then covered over with soil also. Once all the seeds were planted we got watering cans to water all the seeds. It was a very sunny day so perfect for the seeds to start growing. The children then got lollipop sticks and labelled each one with each of the vegetables/flowers. These were then stuck into the ground at the start of each planted line.

I really enjoyed this lesson and I think the children did too as it got them outside and hands-on during the lesson. Although it was fun it also needed the children to use their mathematical skills when measuring and judging during the lesson.

13/04/18

Today I was in Françoise Monclere’s class with CP. She started off the day by asking the children what the date was. She wrote it on the board as on of the pupils recited it out. She also had a pupil writing it on the board alongside her so that they could practice writing it. She then picked a few pupils to recite the date out and then tell what day was before and after this date.

I then taught my English lesson. I did the same lesson as I did yesterday to the CP/CE1s. This time I prepared my French script better so that I could do more translating from English to French since the children in CP are so young I wanted to make sure they were understanding and following.

At the start of ‘Spot Can Count’, the book about English numbers and animals, I introduced it in French and English and then I asked the children to count from 1-10 in English for me. I thought this was a good idea so that their brains were refreshed with the numbers before starting the book where they would need to answer with these numbers. After this I taught the lesson with this book the same way as I did yesterday as I thought it worked well for the children and me. I thought this class was more difficult to control regarding behaviour as there was a few pupils during the lesson who weren’t listening as well as others and misbehaving. Because of this difference from yesterdays class, who behaved really well, I had to use the phrase “Levre la main” more, which means “put your hands up” and write a few names on the board for warnings.

I then moved onto the book ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?’. I also taught this book the same as yesterday but again with more behaviour strategies in place. I felt this class struggled more with the names of animals than yesterdays class but there was a few different children who confidently knew the names for certain animals that I was happy about. After I had finished the books, I told the class an animal in French and then asked them if they could tell me what that is in English. They managed to respond back with most but struggled with ‘bird’.

I felt this lesson didn’t go as well as the lesson the pervious day but I think it was down to the behaviour of today’s class. Because there is a language difference it is difficult for me to give proper sanction to the children, as I am not confident in the language. So I have to try my best but it doesn’t always work and the class teacher has to help and jump in for me.

After break they had singing with CP/CE1 and CE1. They sang a new song, which involved half of the children singing at one time and the other at another time. The children managed to do this well. After singing CP came back to class and they did some maths. The maths was counting involving adding tens and units. I helped a girl when counting sets of beads in tens and units and then adding them together to then figuring out which groups of beads had more altogether than others.

After lunch CP from Benjamine Duplouy’s class came through to our class and we watched and discussed how baby animals are born. I helped set up the projector for the videos. We watched the hatching of a chick and a turtle and then the birth of a horse. The children were very interested in the subject and had previous knowledge on which type of animal is the mother and father of the chick would be (a chicken and a cockerel). During the videos a few children misbehaved and I had to speak to them and give them warnings. At one point Françoise had to give a sanction to one of the boys. I was quite shocked when she proceeded to lift the boy over the table to then push him in the direction of the door. This type of hands-on punishment wouldn’t be seen in a Scottish school.

12/04/18

Today I was in Benjamine Duplouy class with CP/CE1. I started off the day with an English lesson. My lesson contained teaching of the colours, animals and numbers form 0-10. I used two books to aid the teaching. The books were all in English. One was called ‘Spot Can Count” and was about numbers and animals in English. The other book was called ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?’ and was about colours and animals in English. I really enjoyed the use of these books, as it was very visual for the children, which helped the children answer the questions I asked in English.

I started with the number and animal book. I explained in French that we were going to read this book that will help their English counting and animal knowledge. I started off reading each page of the book in English and the for the first couple of pages I also translated it into French so that the children could begin to understand what I am saying in English, thus I could remove the French translation after a couple of pages and they would understand what I am saying.

On each page I firstly asked the children the question “how many (animal) can you count in English” and for the first couple of pages I also said “Combien (animal) pouvez-vous compter en Anglais?” and I asked the children to put up their hands to answer. Once a child answered I would unfold the flaps on the pages and reveal the number answer. I would then say the number and get the children to repeat that number a couple of times to help memorisation. I then went over what the animal is called in English and got them to repeat that a couple of times also. I used the phrase “en Anglais” through out the lesson along with my English to help remind the children that they should answer in English. If at any point the children got stuck with the number in English I got the whole class to count up to that number from 1, as the children have learnt the numbers in English in an order so counting up can help the memory.

After I had finished the book I went back to the start and we went over the numbers and animals again. I asked on each page “L’animal qu’est – ce que c’est en Anglais?” after I picked a child to answer I then asked “Combien (animal)?” I think going back over and recalling the knowledge they had just learnt was important to helped to settle it in their brain.

I then moved onto the next book for my lesson. This book was about animals and colours. I explained to the children that this book was about animals and colours in English. I read the title of the book and then turned to the first double page where there were coloured stripes of each colour across the pages. I went down the stripes on the pages and went over what each colour is in English. I did this twice through. Next in the book on each page there was a picture of animal and each animal was a different colour. For each page I asked the children “what colour is the animal in English”, again for the first few pages I also translated this into French, “De quelle couleur est l’animal em Anglais?” The children put their hands up if they had the answer and after I picked a child to answer I then asked, “what animal is (colour) in English” For example “what animal is green in English” and they responded with “the frog” and again this was translated into French for the first few times, “Quel animal est (couleur) en Anglais”.

One of the last pages of the books displayed all of the animals and their colours that had been seen through out the book. I got the children to listen and repeat what I was reading. So I said “a red bird” and they repeated it back to me, and this was done for all the animals.

After the book was finished I went back to the start of the book and asked what each of the animals are called in English. On each page I said “Qu’est – ce que c’est en Anglais” which means “what is it in English”. They then put their hands up and responded with the animal’s name in English. This helped the children recall their memory of the animals we had spoken about already.

I really enjoyed teaching this lesson, it has been my favourite lesson yet that I have taught. The children all engaged really well and I think using books to teach worked very effectively, as they were colourful, interactive and visual for the learners. A lot of the children were very keen to answer which showed me they were willing in learning. My action plan is to teach this lesson again tomorrow in CP with Françoise Monclere and see if the different class has the same reactions and enthusiasm for the learning.

After my lesson Benjamine did a French lesson with the CP half of her class. On the blackboard she wrote ‘que ‘ and ‘gue’. She got the children to write these on their mini white boards, one on one side of the whiteboard and one on the other. She then shouted out French words with these sounds in them and the children had to show the side of their boards that fitted the word being shouted. For example she said “fatigue’ and the children should have shown the ‘gue’ side of their boards. She did another with ‘k’ and ‘qu’. An example was ‘kilo’ and the children should have showed the ‘k’ side. She also went over how to properly write a ‘k’ in French cursive handwriting. She then did two more with ‘er’ and ‘erre’, and ‘el’ and ‘elle’.

After break Benjamine then asked CP to spell and write down words on their boards that she dictated. The words were linked to the sounds they had just gone over. She sounded out the words and repeated them a few times for the children so that they could get an accurate go at spelling the words out.

CE1 then had a French lesson about what they are going to be when they grow up. They went over all the ways to say ‘go’ linked to a subject. This included; I’m going, you’re going, he’s going, she’s going, we’re going and they’re going. To finish these sentences they spoke about types of jobs they wanted to do, types of family names they would be called, for example grandma, and also age.

After lunch I went to Sylvie Lambert’s class with CE2 and did a group lesson on Mathematics. Specifically we did the topic of time. Sylvie explained to me how to play a domino game with a group of three children, it involved cards that had a clock face with a time on them and a different written time underneath, I had to read out the written time and then the children had to find a card that had a clock face which matched the time that was said. We started the game and I spoke the times out in French and then again in English and got the children to repeat the English. Whoever had the card to connect to the next domino had to show me the time on the interactive clock too. We played the game until the card that said ‘fin’ was placed and then the children counted how many cards they had left, whoever had the least amount of card left won. We played the game again a few times. I learnt the word for ‘to’ today when speaking about ‘to the hour’ and I was able to use it correctly when telling the time.

11/04/18

Today I was in the nursery again and I brought a new song for the classes to learn today. I taught the classes a song to do with the days of the week so that they could learn the order of the days in English.

I firstly went over the days of the week in French and translated them into English form each one, In each class they had the days of the week in French on the walls so I used this to point to when saying the English days of the week to help the children understand and follow. After I went over the French translation I went through the days only in English. I repeated this 3 or 4 times, starting by speaking slowly and building up to a normal rate.

I then sang the children the song and they listened. I did the chorus part of the lyrics and then they copied and then we moved onto the different versus and they copied. They lyrics repeat themselves but each time you change the volume of your voice or add an action. This was good as the children were just repeating the same lyrics, which meant they would memorise it better. The first time round we sang it all normally, the second time was with a whisper, the third time was speaking loudly, the fourth was with a clap and the fifth was with a stomp.

Chorus:

“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday,

7 days are in a week”

Verse 1:

“We like to sing it quietly”

Verse 2:

“We like to sing it loud”

Verse 3:

“We like to sing with a clap”

Verse 4:

“We like to sing with a stomp”

Verse 5:

“We like to sing it proud”

They found this song quite difficult so the teachers told me that they will practice and when I come in next week again we will practice this song again until they are better at it.

10/04/18

Today I was with Sylvie Lambert and CE2. She started the day with asking the children to use a noun in a sentence with the colour blue, a verb in a sentence with the colour red and an adjective in a sentence with the colour green. I thought this was a good was to start the day, similar to the starters used back in Scotland, which get the minds started up and going. Sylvie then went on to speak about word order and which order nouns, verbs and adjectives come in. After that she joined the previous teaching to the masculine, feminine and plural types of words. She created a sentence and showed how it could be written as masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural and feminine plural.

Sylvie then moved onto mathematics. The children went over some sums on the topic of money before they were given an evaluation test. I asked Sylvie about the test and she told me they are given a test when she thinks the class are good at the topic, then she judges from the results if the class is ready to move on and advance or not. She said sometimes the class is split as a result of the test and one half move on and the other half practice the specific topic at that level more.

After break I taught an English lesson. I wrote the date in English on the board and got the class to copy it into their jotters then we went over ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’ and I gave each child a hand out with the whole rhyme on it so that they could keep it and stick it in their jotters. The first few time we went over the rhyme I allowed them to look at their hand out and then I asked them to close their books and try to pronounce it from memory. Some children caught onto the English very well and were able to memorise it better than others.

I then handed out one biography to each table group. The biography contained everything I had mentioned in my Scottish lesson. The biography was about me so I highlighted all the parts that were personal to show that’s what they would change to suit their personal life. I started with “my name is…”, I practiced the sentence with them a few times and then I asked them the question “what is your name?” and they responded to the question with the answer on the handout. I then randomly asked individual children the question to check that they were all understanding and to give the children a chance to practice it, only hearing themselves. Next I did “I am … years old” and asked the class as a whole and individuals “how old are you?”. Then I did “I live in … in …” and asked the question “where do you live?”. And again I did the same thing with “my favourite colour is …” and “my favourite animal is …”. To check for understanding even more at the end of my lesson I mixed up the questions and randomly picked questions that we had gone over to ask individual children. I was impressed as most of the children understood what I was asking and knew which sentence to use to respond.

I am super happy with how this lesson went as they all were engaged because of the nature of my lesson the children always had to be prepared as they could be asked a question by me. Sylvie gave me feedback and she said she was very happy with the lesson and liked how I asked the questions to the children.

My action plan for next week with CE2 is to use the same answer sheet but without my answers so that they can copy and write their own biography using the handout again but filling in the blanks this time.

After lunch I was in the CE2 classroom but Laura Bellout was teaching. She was teaching a history lesson. The lesson was on ‘the man of tagon’ – translated from ‘l’homme de tautavel’. Laura wrote a few facts about the topic on the blackboard and the children had to write them down. They then swapped their paper with a partner for peer marking.

After their afternoon break they had singing practice. CE2 went with Laura’s CE2/CM1 class. They sang a couple of songs in French with actions. I had to give a sanction to one of the boys who were misbehaving, I told him to move and sit at the side where we would not be distracted.

09/04/18

This morning I was with Laura Bellout in CE2/CM1 and she started with a dictation lesson. The lesson was about new years resolutions. I was able to follow the dictation and translate it.

“La veille du premier Janvier, on à organisé un réveillon merneilleux pour fêter l’arrirrée de la mouvelle année”

It translated as “On the first of January, we organise an outlook for celebrating the start of the New Year”.

They then had a lesson on numbers and fractions in Mathematics. They were doing number from 0 – 9,999. The exercises in their textbooks told the written word form of the numbers and asked them to write out the numbers in digit form and visa versa. In French they put a dash between each number word, for example neuf-mille-huit-cento. In English that would be nine thousand and eighty five. They also looked at thousands, hundreds, tens and units and identified how many were in each number.

They then moved onto doing fractions. The fractions lesson was to do with fractions in time. The teacher created a time line on the board and marked the 10-minute intervals. She then explained how time could be fractioned and added fractions to the time line.

Whilst Laura taught a lesson in French I used the time to practice the French cursive writing. I enjoyed doing this at it was relaxing and was good practice for writing on the blackboard for future lessons.

After lunch I taught an English lesson to do with family. I had a work sheet for all the children with the Simpsons family tree on it. I got the children to look at the tree and then I discussed with them the English all the labels for the family members are. I wrote the English on the board and then the French translation beside them. I taught them mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter, grand-father, grand-mother, cousin, aunt and uncle. I then asked the children questions in English about the Simpson’s family tree. For example, “who is Marge’s son?” and “who is Bart’s uncle?”. The children answered in full sentences, for example “it is…” and “they are…” and I wrote their answers on the blackboard. I was impressed with how they picked up the English and I think the characters of the Simpsons helped as they engaged the children, as the Simpsons are familiar to them.

My action plan is to play a matching card game with the children later on in the week to test their knowledge on the English family.

It was Leo’s birthday today as well so we sang happy birthday to him in English and then Spanish and French too! His mum made a cake so Laura cut it up and we all got a piece to finish off the day.

06/04/18

Today the temperature in Orleans reached a high 22 degrees! A perfect day for a day of activities outside of school. The CM1’s from Laura’s class along with CM1/CM2 and CM2 classes all had a day of activities relating to health and well-being, which included nutrition, physical education and the body, CPR and how to react to accidents. The activities were scattered around the Saint-Jean-de-Braye area, around the school.

I started in the school with a group of children, learning about CPR and how to react to incidents. The children were put into 4 groups and each group was given a photo capturing an incident. The groups had to observe and write down what has happened and then write down what the next step to take would be, for example first aid. Then we spoke about phoning the emergency services and what to say in what order. The children were given a script jumbled up and they had to put it in an order that they thought sounded right to them. After we sorted them into a correct order. The teacher then used one of the children to demonstrate CPR and the recovery position. She showed the steps and then each child carried out the steps on one of the pupils she check for understanding.

I then went to the sports hall at the local secondary school, with another group, for a session of physical education and learning about the body. We were in the judo hall and there was stations set up for the pupils to do. One involved learning about your pulse and how to record it. One was about the heart and the other was about the body organs and effects on them. I helped with the pulse station, the children had to run around a set up circuit three time and then record their pulse rate. I had a stop watch so once they had done the circuit I started the stop watch for 1 minute and the children counted their pulse. This was a fun activity to do with the children and I got to join in too.

We then went to the local old peoples home. There we played a game to do with nutrition and the food groups. It was a board game and you got asked question on card to do with the topic of nutrition, depending on your answer you got to advance on the board. There was a mini game on the side, where you could earn bonus points. A piece of equipment was used where by a dart was inserted and you blew into it and it shot out in the end. You had to aim it at a target that had answers on it. I learnt that in France they have another food group than we do in Scotland. This food group involves oils. We then ate lunch outside in the sun.

After lunch we went to a community centre where the children finished off their art pictures they were doing the previous day in school to do with nutrition and sport. I helped a group stick their pained sport silhouettes onto their background. One of the children asked me for a rubber in French and I was able to understand what he was saying which I was pleased about, so I went to find a rubber for him.

They then went back to the gym at the secondary school to do basketball. A lot of the boys in my class do basketball out with school in a club so are very good at it. I got to observe at the side and it was interesting to watch what tactics they have.

I enjoyed this day at school as I got to see how the French teach their pupils about health and well-being.