It took a few weeks before I actually started to teach French. I was initially told I'd be taking a small group of kids from the class I was working in (Y4, so that's a group of 8 and 9 year olds) but the lesson plans were missing and nobody knew where they were. When I eventually found them stuffed in a box which in turn was stuffed underneath a display on WW2, I quickly realised two things: a) from my linguistics perspective, knowing what I do about learning languages and language attitudes, they were appalling; and b) the kids didn't know anywhere near enough French to actually use the lesson plans.
I took it upon myself to choose a topic - food and drink - and devised my own lessons. I thought back as far as I could to when I started learning French at school and used what I could remember or observe from my old French books as a starting point. We started out discussing places in France where pupils had been before and my 8 French learners began a food pyramid in their books. I only had one lesson with my group of 8 before I ended up teaching the whole class of 30.
Now, here are a few glaring problems with teaching a language you're not particularly skilled in:
1. Pronunciation - so I'm supposed to be teaching these kids how to say all of these words and I don't really know how to pronounce them myself… fantastique.
2. Gender - is it la cerise or le cerise? Argh!
3. Grammar - I don't know how you would form that sentence so how am I supposed to teach it?! Verb conjugation websites are my best friend now.
4. Random questions - this one really is the killer... "Miiiiiiiss, how do you say 'my friend likes dogs' in French?", "Miiiiiiissssssss, what's the French for 'loom bands'?", "Miiiisssssssssss, how would I say that dinosaurs are extinct?, "Miiiiiiissssssssssssss, I want to write that I also like rabbits the most but it's not in the dictionary…" I DON'T KNOW. WHY DO YOU THINK I KNOW EVERYTHING? I'M FOOLING YOU ALL.
I quickly realised that the best way to engage kids with another language is to be practical. We did a French breakfast morning where they had to order their food in French and we served croissants (avec confiture et beurre), pains au chocolat, jus d'orange, jus de pomme et chocolat chaud. They loved it, but most importantly at least some of them remembered the key phrases we used. Some of them were also introduced to the wonders of role play in a foreign language when, for presentation afternoon, two groups of kids came up with restaurant-themed mini-plays and presented them to the parents.
This year started off fairly clumsily. I started back at school on Friday but I didn't know I'd be teaching. As it turned out, I had to improvise three lessons for three different year groups. Fabuleux. I started off with Y5, who were luckily the class I taught last year. We mainly just continued where we left off in July and I introduced them - and myself - to manger and boire in their various forms. Y6 began right from the beginning with my now infamous fruit and veg PowerPoint presentation, and Y4 did some pieces of writing using manger, boire and aimer. I've just finished planning their next lessons, which luckily for them will involve even more sentence creation. Woo! After that, I'll be bringing in my Mr Men and Little Miss books (French translations, obviously!) and we'll be attempting some very basic story writing (merci beaucoup to Mlle. Miles for help with that one!). Eventually, I'd like them to maybe create a video diary of what their school is like and what they are like to be able to send to my friend who's going to work in three French schools for a year. Or for her kids and my kids to become pen pals. Over-reaching a little? Oui, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.
Truthfully, it turns out that the best way to learn something really is to teach it. Having to teach them all of these things - and everything that involves, from marking their work to correcting their pronunciation - means that I have to learn it for myself. These kids are looking to me as 'the one who knows everything' and part of my job is to keep them believing that. I want my little Français learners to eventually leave my lessons with memories of having fun and learning in a different way to the norm... And if that means dressing up in Breton stripes and a beret, conga-ing around the classroom to J'aime les fruits, or spending hours trying to remember verb conjugations, then so be it. As… someone… once said, "go the extra mile, it's never crowded."
So, for now, you can find me creating worksheets (seriously, the selection online is terrible), updating my classes' progress charts like a proper teacher and listening to Disney songs in French.
Until la prochaine fois,
Mlle. C.
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