Lesson Planning 1-2-3.

Sometimes, I think as assistants we overcomplicate things for ourselves.  I've found myself in a situation where I've been asked to prepare a lesson on whatever I want. Great I thought.  Then I sat down and really thought about what I wanted to do. Then I suddenly remembered that my aim is to get the kids to speak English, yes I'll correct things they say wrong, but #1 is confidence. I found when learning French that if someone wasn't there helping me build confidence to actually participate then I wouldn't join in. I really started joining in a lot more in my second year of University.

So, it turned out it's easy to plan a lesson, on any theme. The trick is to make it fun. If something is fun, a student is much more likely to want to contribute to the lesson. Take this morning, it was a 8:30am lesson, the kids are sleepy, I'm sleepy. Do we really want to be here talking about India or something? Probably not. In fact that was joked about by one of the students. So, the simplest lesson I could come up with was word games. I started slowly with hangman, but giving them words that they were likely not to know, so that I could explain in. (Obviously was one). But the one that got their imagination was word association. I'll definately be using that one again. Start off with a word, and see where it takes you. They were learning words like 'Nightmare' as they were trying to connect 'Night' to 'Sleep' to 'Dream'.  They were learning English, and enjoying it.

Today's lesson wasn't themed. But in the past I have done games with themes. The well known who am I game worked so well with famous women from history. The students knew people, they were asking questions and giving answers in English. Even as a first 10 minutes this works so well, as they are enjoying themselves and you sort of lose the monotony of a lesson.

Another one they enjoyed was Sherlock Holmes. I did this with a higher level, but I was inspired by the seconde's current topic of Detective Fiction. So I took in my laptop, and showed a group a clip from the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes film. Then asked them what they understood, then they watched the same clip, with French subtitles. Same question. But what was great is that they were telling me what they saw, in English, even though they may not have understood it in English. This lead to discussions about Sherlock Holmes, detectives and literature in general.

Sometimes, over complicating a lesson puts off students, we're not teachers as such. I see my job as getting the students to talk (yes sometimes that is the preparing them for the Bac exam). When given free reign, make it fun. The students will talk.

Now, a photo!

Christmas light switch on in Paris.

Noel approaching and it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

As I write this this, we are just over a month away from Christmas day and that means that Part 1 of the Year Abroad is coming quickly towards its conclusion, my train tickets home have been booked. It's going to be my first time I will have traveled internationally all alone, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Elsewhere Paris is slowly becoming the festive city that you see in all the photographs. Tonight the Champs-Elysées will see its christmas lights turned on, and that is in addition to the Christmas Market that opened last week, markets are popping up across the city rapidly (www.paris.fr/noel for those interested and reading from the Paris region). Even the McDonalds are starting to get festive with each of them getting some rather incredible lights outside. I'll write more about Christmas in the Paris area next month, but I thought it'd be nice to share a few photographs.

Elsewhere, I've finally begun to do 30 minute sessions alone on whatever I want to do with the students. Which was initially a terrifying prospect, until I just decided to teach them about things I know. So far this has included Rememberance day, Children in Need, Fireworks night and Sherlock Holmes.  I'm pleased to say these all went quite well, and so hopefully I'll be able to carry this on next week. Note to all assistants: Kids love British comedy. It goes down a storm.

Truc

I always try and label my posts with an observation, then the first paragraph of my blog explaining the title. So this time, I've gone for truc.  Truc is a word they are obsessed with over here. Absolutely everything is a truc.
Example: A 'truc qui tourne' is a turnstile.
C'est quoi, ce truc? What is that thing?
That's just 2 examples of truc I've heard in the last day or so, but everytime I go out, a new way of using truc is discovered, and it always makes me giggle. I'd say the closest translation is the word 'thing', but it's used for other stuff too. Anyway, on with the show.

Sunday was rememberance day in the UK, which I've discovered is quite different here. Today I showed a class of 2nde our commemorations. I gave them only the date and a video taken from the BBC.  I got asked questions like 'Why are they sad?'. 'Why is the queen not moving', 'What is that flower'. I gave them the answered they were looking for, and then asked if anything happens in France. The response: Not really, it's just a day off work. A good thing about this job is that I'm basically presenting British culture to a group of kids who know nothing about it, but then I try asking them if there is anything similar in France. They seem to enjoy telling me about their country (in english of course), and I quite enjoy hearing it. Differences between cultures has always interested me.

I spent Sunday at the war museum in Meaux (Musée de la Grande Guerre), for a museum that I would imagine very few people have heard of, I was really impressed. It was quite a complete collection of artifacts from the late 1800's to the armistice of 1918. It featured some information about school life back then, and a really interesting video of the lead up to the war (some of which I didn't realise until I saw things on a map). There is a war memorial on the hill given to the people by the American's and so the museum has a small section of America and the war, a nice thanks from the people of the town to the American people as a sign of gratitude.

A few other things that came out of today's lesson I did on November. The first question I asked was 'Does anything in the UK happen in November'. One student replied 'Yes, everyone grows moustaches'. Then we moved onto firework night, I asked why we do fireworks on the 5th November 'Because you turn on the christmas lights'.  (Oddly, not too far off. Oxford Street turned on their lights on the 5th November). 
We then moved onto charity as I mentioned children in need. I said a few random fundraising ideas. The bath of baked beans amused them. They didn't get it at first, then it was 'Do they eat the beans?'.  Usually once they have bathed in them no, was my response.  A sensible student replied 'That is a waste of food.' 

I leave you with that thought. A tres bientot.

Bonfire Night (But with added Frenchness, and Disney)

Bonfire night is the yearly celebration that Guy Fawks didn't succeed in his plan. So, in a sense in Britain, we celebrate failure each 5th November.

Taken from my video.

I do love the 5th November though, fireworks are great. I needed to find somewhere that did fireworks, and I did. Each year Disneyland Paris celebrate bonfire night with a special 25 minute show on Lac Disney. This is presumably something to do with the high number of British holidaymakers there at any one time. However, it got me hooked in and I really don't regret it, despite the fact the promised bonfire never happened.
It seemed that despite the fact it was clearly aimed towards a British audience (the fact announcements were in English first), it was more of a French turnout. Probably something to do with that UK half term was last week, and so now all the kids are back at school, whereas French holidays are ongoing. I hope to attach a video of some of the fireworks at some point, but my Internet is a bit too slow to upload it right now.

What else have I been up to this week?
I saw people from my Uni, which was fantastic (If you are reading this, I had a great day. Thanks! Let's do it again soon!). We had a spot of lunch, before heading to Notre Dame, which we climbed up and had great views of the city, then wandered up the Champs-Elysées, and also saw Montmartre and la défense. Such a good day was had, that we missed our stop on the metro whilst figuring out what we had managed to cram into the day.

This weekend sees armistice day here in France (and across the world obviously), I've decided to visit the local first world war museum, it's their 1st anniversary and so are offering loads of special events to celebrate. Should be interesting.

I leave you with an image I took at the top of Notre Dame.

In England, it rains all the time.

One thing we learn as kids is that stereotypes are often not true. As a British person, the stereotype of us is that we walk around with an umbrella up constantly, because it is always raining. This is false of course, in fact it doesn't actually rain that much in the UK.
Now, over here in France it has rained quite a lot, quite often an umbrella is something you won't leave without. So this week, it's been dry. Then yesterday morning it rained, I carried around an umbrella the rest of the day. Guess what? It didn't rain.

It's been a while since I last wrote a blog, and thats because I've been reasonably busy. So I've had a quieter week. It's the autumn school vacation here in France meaning we are in the middle of 2 weeks off. So this week I've been to Disneyland (again!), visited Paris and been to the Val d'Europe shopping centre.

Whilst I've not been up to much, I will take this opportunity to tell a little tale of the night busses which I have finally braved.

About a week ago I was out in Paris, but decided to head home early as I wasn't really having a great night. It was about 2:30am, so I was on night busses. I took a circular bus in the wrong direction, meaning I did a circular tour of Paris taking in Montparnasse, Musée d'Orsay, the Eiffel Tower, Champs-Elysées, Gare Saint-Lazare, Pigalle and the Gares du Nord and Est. When I got off at Est, I had missed the N141 by 10 minutes, meaning a cold and lonely 50 minute wait, outside and alone.  Ended up having a couple of random conversations before the bus turned up. It had reclining seats, and a wake up call if you told the staff where you were getting off. (4:30am). I arrived at home at 6:15am, as most were starting their day I was ending mine. I texted a friend who wanted to know when I got in, turned out they stayed out later and were tucked up in bed sleeping before I even got home. At least I got a good 20 minutes on the bus. I've never been one for sleeping whilst traveling.