surprise!!!

What a surprise….

Today during a lesson with my year 12/13 we had a very interesting and surprising conversation.

I found a French text from a very old book at the back of a cupboard. The text was dated from 1972 (well before I was born!!!) and was about Education.

The author was arguing that schools should prepare students for their future life and that students should learn what they need and what they feel like learning to prepare them for their future instead of being taught what teachers think what students should know. As I said the text is more than 35 years old.

The whole class then started to discuss the text. One thing leading to another, the students started to criticise the way they are taught and said a few things which surprised me.

First, they admitted that they would rather being lectured. They reckon that they need to simply being told the knowledge and they complained about the lack of notes given by the teachers.

Second, they think that at the beginning of the year, each student should be put into a group according their learning style. Thus, all the visual learners would work together and would only make visual activities-and so on for the other type of learners. They think it would be best for them as they reckon that they are wasting their time doing activities that aren’t of their learning style e.g. during a lesson, a teacher usually tries to cater for all type of learners by proposing different activities; if you are not a visual learner, you will not learn by doing activities that are targeted to kinaesthetic learners.

They also criticised group work when they are asked to go through exam results together into groups. They would rather want to have the teacher going through the right answers.

At last they also complained about the fact that there isn’t enough “current affairs analysis”. They would like to be more in touch with the world and with what’s going on.

I thought it was very interesting to know what they really want from school and now I need to digest all the information they gave me to adapt my teaching to their needs.

shocking !!!!!!!!!!!

Shocking works


This week I twitted what I was doing with my year 12 French class. Tonitheisen asked me to elaborate, which I did, but I thought (sometimes it happens) “well, why not blogging about this activity!!!??”

The last topic of the year is “Sex, drugs and alcohol”...actually it is “Give advice”, but I have noticed that if I say to the students that we are going to study “sex and drugs” they are very engaged and work very hard :-)

Revenons à nos moutons.

Last year, at the NZALT conference in Wellington, I have learnt this wonderful activity.

After teaching the students how to give advice (si j’étais toi, à ta place, il est recommandé de etc..) I put them into groups. I give a picture to each group. They have 7 minutes to write (spelling does not matter) a story explaining what has just happened to the people on the photo and give an advice.



Of course I gave them pix which are very shocking. I want them to be inspired and I want to present them with an opportunity to give an advice.
At the end of the 7 minutes, each group has to tell their story and their advice without showing the picture. The other groups try to understand what their story is about.

In the lesson, each group end up having several photos. I try to keep the pace very fast to keep them engaged and excited.

Xtranormal

Extra Normal ???

On Saturday , I discovered Xtranormal, but I can not remember how ( post pregnancy brain- at least this is my excuse!!!). You can make 3d movies. It is very easy to create a short movie. Of course it is not perfect, I think they are speaking too fast but it is free and I think it could be very good in a Language class.

It took my 15 minutes to create the movie. I will check if it is blocked at school, if not I could use it with year 9 in 2 weeks after the exams.

Langsem 2009

langsem 2009

View more presentations from florencelyons.

detentions!!!!!!!!

During lunch time I went for a walk ( yes I actually left school during school hours!!) with a teacher who used to work in the science dept and now works as a relief teacher. She is very tall, scary and she is very talented working with difficult kids. It is always amazing to see all the hard gangsta ( you see I use hip words??) kids behave so well when she teaches and they learn so much with her.

Get to the point Florence!!!

During our walk she said that she was very amazed how students use very bad language in class and that they do not respond to detentions. It is true that students will get detentions after detentions and will not change their behaviour. My friend reckons that something is missing in the pastoral sector at school.

I was actually thinking about what she said during our HOD meeting ( ooops!!). I think it is not so much that we should invent means of torture to make kids change their behaviour, I think that they are not getting out of school what they should.

Usually the kids misbehaving are kids not achieving...what about if we were proposing things at school that could interest them instead of asking to produce complex texts in English when their level of language is very low. If John likes horse riding and is passionate about it, why not proposing a course about horses. I am sure that John would then not misbehave anymore and stop swearing at teachers.

It is time to rethink about what the word EDUCATION means really in practice.

French Speech Competition 2009

Pourquoi ne pas les frapper tant qu’on y est ??!!!

Yesterday was a very good day. It was again French Competition day at Waikato University (thanks to the Alliance Française).

I took 3 year 12 and 3 year 11 students. Off we go in the van with Mrs Lyons behind the driving wheel. After few “ OMG we are going to die!!!”, we arrived safely at Uni.

We were warmly welcomed by Ruth Bourchier and Dr. Jennings, like always and everything went smoothly. I had to judge 24 students of Year 11 with the help of another French teacher from Hamilton.

Students had to produce a speech of roughly one minute and had to answer 2 questions (all in French of course).
Teachers had to pick the 3 best students of each year. It was very hard as all the kids made immense efforts, but we finally managed to pick three.

So far so good.

When I went to my 6 students who had already done their speech, they asked if they won. I had to tell then no (unfortunately!) but what hurt me the most it is when they wanted to know their grade. After checking their grade on a sheet, I realised that monsters teachers had given grades like 7/20 or 8/20.

Let’s be clear here. It was not an exam at all, it was not NCEA, it was a competition for students to meet other kids from other schools who study French, it was a day where students can be proud of their achievements, it was a perfect day for students to have their confidence boosted. Instead I have to tell my students now that they got crap grades!! I am so angry as I don’t understand why a teacher with a heart would do that.

My colleague and I (both judges of year 11) gave 20/20 to the first winner, 19/20 to the second and 18/20 to the third. As for the other 21 students in our group they all have been given between 15 and 17.

When a child that I had judged asked what was her grade I told her 16/20. She was so happy !!! She said to me “ wouah!! It is only 2 points from the third”. She couldn’t see that almost all the students had similar grades. For her, yesterday was a positive and wonderful experience and she can not wait next year to enter again the competition.

I don’t understand why teachers would do that to students! Kids have been very hurt… actually they haven’t because I lied to them and told them they got 15 !!!!

news podcasting

So simple so effective

My year 9 French are learning how to describe people (physical appearance and clothes). And I have to admit they have never been very excited to be tested on it because they don’t find it very relevant I suppose.

Because this year, the Board of Trustees bought us 16 notebooks,I decided the kids could start podcasting. I wasn’t sure if they would like the activity…..suspense..very intense……



I put the students in a front of a virtual newspaper article using fodey where they could read in French that a teacher from our school had disappeared and that everybody was looking for him/her everywhere.

Their task was to produce a radio announcement describing the teacher of their choice.

I was amazed by the amount of work the students tackled. They were very engaged, excited, they wanted to know more vocabulary of a year 11’s level. I was so happy!!!!

We had some News Jingles to the podcast and Voilà !!!!

Mission accomplished!!! Kids produced some work of a very good quality and enjoyed working hard