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.

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 !!!!!

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

French Teachers in NZ

I am very lucky as a French teacher in New Zealand as our network ( French teacher network) is well developped.


We have a website where we can find all sorts of resources and where we can find the latest news e.g. a new change in NCEA - by the time we finish reading this post, approximatively 23 changes would have occurred to NCEA French!!

If it was not for French.ac.nz it would be very hard for me to keep up with all that. The website is done in such a way that it is one stop shop. I do not need to waste my precious time looking for details, everything is under the same roof. From resources for my Year 10 to practice assessment, I will always find something useful.

Who create all those resources?? it is us, us French teachers. We can easily upload resources we have made for others to enjoy in the country. It is as easy to also share a link of a website we find useful.

Each week, French teachers in NZ receive by email a newsletter in which they can find the latest resources and ideas which have been uploaded.

It helps to keep an eye on what is new and on how other teachers teach French in the whole country. I am the only French teacher at school and sometimes one can feel alone, but not anymore with French.ac.nz

Pascale Hyboud-Peron is the website administrator and is doing a fantastic job with it. I hope that she realises how much her work helps teachers in NZ . French teachers from other countries should have a look at it and see what can be achieved

Teacher of NCEA

I teach NCEA….I am ashamed of what I do but it is the truth I am a NCEA teacher !!!

When I go to a party, which is not often enough !!!, and that I meet new people, they ask me the question that everybody asks when you meet someone “what’s your job?”. So far I have been lying to this question, too ashamed to admit what I actually do. I look straight and answer with my thick accent “ I teach French!”.

Do I ?? Do I really teach French???

I would say that 70% of the time I do. Unfortunately during the remaining 30% of my teaching time I teach NCEA.

Let’s start for the beginning: I teach geeks,I know I should not use that word but it is true, they are geeks and they only want to get Excellence at NCEA, a Merit being a failure. And knowing that NCEA French requires students to know and use weird grammar structures that French native speakers would never use I have to teach kids tips on how to introduce those structures onto their writing.

NCEA is not about communication, it is not about if you can share opinions or understand other people’s ideas. It is about creating sentences with some “pourtant, mais, cependant, où, qui, que, dont etc….” (however, but, where, who, which etc..).

I have a Belgian student in my class this year who is a French native speaker. I had to teach her how to pass the exams as she was not writing the required structures. She was failing although she speaks fluently French. Thank god I was here to tell her to produce strange sentences that nobody would say !!!!

In NZ we are SO lucky to have a very good curriculum, but at the same time we have NCEA which does not allow us to actually teach the curriculum. Because my students want an Excellence, I actually spend time in class teaching them how to pass the exam. If I don’t they will fail for sure. If a French native speaker cannot achieve, how can a kiwi pass???!!!!

So yes I teach NCEA

Pam Hook changed my life

Last week I was lucky enough to participate to a 2 day PD with Pam Hook and Julie Mills about SOLO taxonomy.

Sometimes you go to a PD and while the presenter makes his show, you think to yourself “right mate, what you say is very good but I don’t want to end up with 18 cats because my husband left me after I spend 10 hours to do one of your activity!!!!”

It’s true it happens heaps. You go to a course and it was a waste of money and a waste of your precious time. I become very tight with my time as it seems to run away from me.

Last week was not like that at all. Sometimes you meet someone who transforms your life, and this person for me is Pam Hook. Not only she has transformed my life but she has also transformed my students’ life.

My year 9 are working on “clothes and description”. After this fantastic PD, this week they wrote a piece or work on their uniform. They had to first describe their uniform, say why they like it or not (explain), imagine their ideal uniform and explain why they chose each item (e.g. mon uniforme idéal aurait un pantalon car c’est confortable). I gave them “serait” and “aurait” (would be and would have) as it is a Year 12 grammar structure. I was very impressed by the quality of their work.

What was the best thing about this activity is that the kids could express what they wanted, they were not stopped in one year. I mean that the time when they had to wait to be in Year 12 to do/learn something interesting is over. They used their brain and they produced something of an extraordinary quality

Teacher's job

For the last week, my Year 10 and I have been studying French school system.

After the first “I want to go to school in France coz they don’t have uniform”, we actually start to look a bit deeper. We looked at the value of education here and in France, chances given and respect that teachers have or do not have. The usual thing.

The class I teach is mainly made out of students coming from an accelerate class. They are very nice, clever and mature students....but very lazy.

I told them that when I was in high school ( I am French you see, nothing is perfect !!!), I was working very hard every night although homework was not compulsory. And here came their surprising comments. Students told me that if they were lazy it was our fault (teachers’ faults of course) because we were not asking enough of them. Kids said that in one hour lesson, they only actually work 15 minutes max. As for homework, they cannot be bothered because it is too easy and they can do it in 20 minutes, so it is not the point to waste time.

My reactions to those comments are first that as teachers we obviously need to cater for those kids, and be sure that the work which is set is challenging enough to be rewarding and engaging and second I find very strange that we still haven’t managed to teach our students to be independent.

I remember that when I was 17 (3 year sago !!!) my German teacher was crap. It didn’t matter to me because I knew how to work independently, and so I worked every night in order to speak German very well.

In conclusion, we are not doing a very good job: not only we don’t manage to engage students but also we are not capable of teaching our kids how to be independent learners.