Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Year 10 teaching French

At the beginning of this year, Pascale Hyboud-Peron and myself supported my Year 12 teaching French to a Year 8 at the local intermediate - the whole project can be seen here.
The experience was fantastic and obviously teachers at the Intermediate heard about it and its success and a few weeks ago I have been asked by a teacher if my Year 10 could teach his class.

When I spoke about it with my students they were over the moon!! they will teach in total 4 lessons (once a week). Our first task was to plan what we were going to teach and then how to teach it. I let the kids decide everything, only giving them advice when asked.

After our first lesson, we came back to our class and we reflected on our performances. The students were brilliant at that, they could actually be very critical of what they had done and they came up alone with alternatives for next time. One group of students was concerned with a Year 8 child they taught. They had 3 kids in their group, 2 were very fast and one was a bit slower and did not manage as well in remembering the lesson. My Year 10 are talented students who are, for most of them, in the accelerated class. Thus, they know the feeling of being a faster learner who is pulled back most of the time by other students. It was very good for them I think to experience for once what it feels like not to understand something very fast.
Hence as a class we discussed means of differentiation and I pointed out to them that I think that this is the hardest part of my job.

Today we had our second lesson and the Year 10 had a much better time as they had learned from their mistakes.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Christmas in August

This week is International Languages Week in NZ. So the Japanese teacher and her classes made some sushi and my classes made crepes today. A business study teacher made some South African goodies. We sold them at lunch time for the rest of the school.

I feel for Food teachers !!! I am SO tired tonight !!!!

Lunch was a success even though I am falling asleep at 7 pm :-)

After making Crêpes with all my classes today, in 2 days we are going to celebrate Christmas. I am aware that we are only in August, but it is winter, cold and wet and also because we always finish school early in December we can never study properly Christmas. So I like celebrating it in winter.

The kids responded very well to my Xmas invitation. I actually can't wait Thursday !!!!!

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Mme Lyons in a frame

This post has nothing to do with teaching French in NZ, but I have to share my happiness!!!

The year 10 Art had to paint teachers a few weeks back. Last week, the exhibition took place.

I was very pleased to see that Lydia, the girl who painted me, did a fantastic job !!!! By far the painting she made was the most beautiful.

I have of course bought it and now we need to find the perfect place at home