Pardon My Franglais

Trip home -- worth every penny

2009-11-10T17:05:00.000-08:00

Well, there's a lot to cover about Stinkerbella's language development over the last few months and I should really be in bed...but at the rate things are going I'm just going to have to give up some sleep to do everything I want to do in a day!

To be brief, we went home to the US for a month over the summer. Stinkerbella has always been a bit of a chatterbox, even as a tiny baby, and while her first words were in English, her French became stronger and stronger after she started day care for 2 mornings a week. She had a much broader vocabulary in English, but she was able to express herself in longer, more accurate sentences in French and sometimes she'd tend to stick to French in her imaginative play unless I'd join her. She was able to switch to English without problem, but I think French came more naturally to her when playing.

In the US, she switched over to English automatically and since we've been back, there's no question that English is her mother tongue. It was a little weird to hear her speak English to me and then French to her dolls, and then it was equally weird to come back and see her struggle a bit to get back into the swing of French. Now she seems able to handle both quite easily and can code-switch without effort, which is amazing to watch.

The trip back to the US really proved to be an important step in establishing her bilingualism. Even though I worked hard at describing things in detail, singing, reading, playing, and all the things that are standard practice when raising a bilingual child, she really only heard English from me and she needed to be immersed. Plus I think it was very important to her that she hear other children.

The process was so automatic that it really seemed that she was programmed to speak English and had all the knowledge in her head, but it took a trip home to really flip the switch. I'm still waiting to see what will happen when she goes off to school, but I'm feeling a little more confident that if we can save our centimes for trips home that she'll continue to express herself well in English.

Howdy! 'Round here we speak Southern...

2009-06-14T22:21:00.000-07:00

One of my goals in 2009 was to find Stinkerbella more English-speaking friends her age, and thanks to Message we've been able to meet this goal. Many of the other families are from somewhere in the U.K., and every now and again there are little vocabulary issues that arise. I remember going through that when I first moved to Japan, but the topics were pretty different as we were all a bunch of single people in our early 20s.

Since our babies are all in the early 2s, I make a good faith effort not to confuse other people's children when I'm talking directly to them but find it a lot harder to switch around my English vocabulary than to switch to French with my French friends' children. It's funny how that works. Before moving here, I already knew what a nappy was, but lately we've been talking about welly boots, pushchairs, buggies, jumpers, and I don't know what all else.

Stinkerbella seems unfazed by the most part by all the different vocabulary, although when we sang the ABC song she said, "No, no, no! Not zed, it's ZEE!" when my friend said the last letter of the alphabet. I tried to explain that our friends used a different word than we do, just like daddy uses different words than I...so we'll see how she reacts the next time we sing.

I have a hunch, though, that out of us all, my vocabulary is the most special since I do find myself speaking "country" to my daughter. It's what comes out the most naturally, and to be perfectly honest I quite like the way my family and friends speak since it's mixed in with our cultural identity as hillbillies. Last week I said something along the lines of "Come here and let me pull up your britches" and my friend said, "Oh, so you say breeches for trousers?!" I'm sure there must be other things that she hasn't (yet) commented on.

In addition to the what must be bizarre vocab, there are the grammatically incorrect expressions that I've kept because it's just the way they are said. I try to speak correctly in front of other people's children but sometimes I get tangled up if my daughter is part of that group. When we sang the famous Sleeping Bunnies I confused myself and everyone else in the room by saying, "Now, lay down, little bunnies -- I mean, LIE down -- no, I mean, LAY down -- um..." and then just gave up and started the song. I do not have this problem when teaching since I'm in teacher mode, but it's odd how the mom mode and teacher mode can come into conflict in playgroups, especially since mom mode seems to override teacher mode more easily than vice versa. The brain is a funny thing.

In a little over a week we'll be leaving for Virginia to spend a month with my family, and I cannot wait to see the effects on her language. I'm now opening up bets to see how long it will take for her to start saying yeller when I ask her what color Big Bird is.

Introducing the family

2009-05-19T13:40:00.001-07:00

How did this little Franco-American family come about? Well, I was literally swept off my feet by my husband when we were the only unregistered singles that showed up for swing dance lessons. There was a huge crowd of people who had just shown up unexpectedly on the first day of class and the teachers herded us into another room to try to figure out a way to cope. They asked all the singles to raise their hands and we were the only two, so they put us together as partners. We clicked from the beginning, and now we're married and living in France with our bilingual toddler.

My husband is the outgoing one and picks up languages quickly. He lived in the US for 6 years, and during that time we established English as the language we communicate in. After we moved, we tried to switch to French but invariably kept switching back to English. As long as we're concentrating we can manage in French, but English is what comes most naturally. It makes sense to me to keep it as our home language since his English is still much better than my French, and it does provide more opportunities for our daughter to hear English spoken in the home.

I'm definitely more introverted than he is, but I've always loved foreign languages and been fascinated with the idea of living in another country as long as I can remember. I studied French for 4 years in college but after living in Japan, it was practically nonexistent when I met him. I really struggled to put a sentence together at first, and I won't mention what a disaster it was when I first met his family. While my French has definitely improved, there are still times when I have to really concentrate to express myself and there are plenty of nuances that are lost. Reading comprehension has always been my strongest point and listening comprehension has obviously skyrocketed, but there's always room for improvement.

Some of the key factors in deciding to relocate to France were related to bilingualism. We felt that with my background in teaching ESOL to kids, we were more obviously more likely to succeed if we lived in France and I could stay home with the kids for the first few years to get them settled in English. I already had all the resources, and it just made more sense. And heaven knows I needed to boost my French and it wasn't going to happen in the US.

So that's us in a nutshell! In the next post I'll introduce our daughter, Stinkerbella.

Back from the dead

2009-05-14T22:10:00.001-07:00

*dust, dust* It's been well over a year since I last posted here, and I think it's clear at this point that I'm just not going to manage to keep up a teaching blog! Next year I think I'm going to take a break from all the FLEX classes altogether, so my role is going to slide over to 100% Momma and 0% English teacher.

Having said that, I do have this knee-high constant companion who is running around with bobbing ponytails and repeating everything I say, so in that respect I am also very much an English teacher still. And it's here that I am blessed with the enormous rewards and satisfaction of seeing her language develop on a daily basis.

So, I'm thinking of trying to resurrect this blog and use it as a place to write about her journey towards bilingualism, and document the fun moments of her early years with respect to language development. I'd like to do some book reviews and also use this as my little space to talk about how wild it is to see my daughter communicate in a language that isn't my own. This is why I'm here, in fact -- my husband and I both wanted our children to be as fully bilingual as possible, and we felt it was much easier (and more likely to succeed) for me to be able to teach our children English while living in France than it would be for them to pick up French in the US. And for the moment it seems to be working!

Another goal is to figure out how to record her speech over time and post the snippets. Right now she is saying, "Yes, I do!" to every question with a positive answer and it totally cracks me up:

"Stinkerbella, are you hungry?" "Yes, I do!"
"Did you go to the park with Daddy today and see the ducks?" "Yes, I do!"
"Were the ducklings there, too?" "Yes, I do!"

I'd also like to record her "reading" her books, which is something I think she picked up from her older pal, Clementine. Stinkerbella quickly discovered she could put off bedtime by asking for a turn to read, so she's been pretty motivated.

That's the plan for this blog in a nutshell! If you're here, I'm guessing you're either related to us or interested in bilingual toddlers, so thanks for stopping by!

Focus on a children's book: From Head to Toe

2008-02-18T02:17:00.000-08:00

Margie gave an excellent suggestion for a tie-in activity on my earlier post about Valentine's Day activities, and I used it in my other class since it was very appropriate there, too. In general I find Eric Carle's books to be flexible and easy to use for a broad range of topics, and From Head to Toe is no exception.

The basic premise of the book is that various animals can do various things with body parts (a donkey can kick its legs and a gorilla can thump its chest, for example) and on the adjoining page there's a picture of a kid doing the same exact gesture. It's a very active book in this respect and kids are generally happy to go along with acting out the pictures. The structure is also very, very simple and repetitive so students really get the feeling they understand the entire book and can read it. The drawback to this of course is that there really isn't an exciting storyline or "punch" at the end, so the older elementary kids aren't as excited by it as some of the younger ones. They seem to like it okay, but I try to make it more challenging for them when I can.

I'm going to give an example of how I used the book this time, but am always looking for other ideas, so please leave a comment if you've used this book before!

The focus of the unit we're currently working on is jungle animal vocabulary and being able to describe what they can and can't do, so the book was also a really good fit here. I work with a small group of students ranging in abilities from just learning how to read and write to going into middle school next year, so I end up supporting the younger ones a lot when we do literacy-focused activities. Earlier in the class I divided them into groups and asked them to make a t-diagram that listed what a certain animal can and can't do -- one group did bears and one group did birds. We then got together as a whole group and created a Venn diagram to compare bears and birds. These activities went over well enough and with the exception of the kid that always tries to rush through activities so he can be the first to finish, they all seemed able to complete them accurately. You can find more graphic organizers at Everything ESL. Judie Hayne's website is a good resource.

I had intended to introduce the book by asking them to quickly brainstorm about other animals, but time was running short and this was the last class before the break so I moved right into the book. The vast majority of the class seemed to really get into it with the exception of the oldest girl who was a lot more low-key about the actions. She doesn't seem to share my willingness to look goofy, and I can't blame her for that. She's really a nice girl so I'll just chalk it up to being reserved and move on.

Anyway, we read the book together...once they understood the pattern I teased them a bit by giving the name of the animal and seeing if they could predict what they could do. I "quizzed" them afterwards about the gestures that went with specific animals. The vocab for some of the verbs was new to them so I was happy enough for them to know the name of the animal and body part and be able to do the appropriate action after just one reading.

As a culminating activity I asked them to create our own class book that's similar in pattern. The thematic stationery came in handy once again, so I used the border with jungle animals and asked them to pick an animal they liked and write what things the animal can do. I would have preferred for them to get really creative but they tended to use the words they already knew, so I'll work on that in later classes. It seemed to go over well with the exception of the youngest student, who needed a lot of support with this activity. Oh, and that same kid who wants to be the one to finish first. I'm nice about it, but I don't let him get away with it. Most of them do fairly well with bringing back work so I'll see if they remembered to finish their page over break. I like the idea of a class book but want to find a way to make it a little more interesting and challenging for the older kids next time.

ETA: Here are some ideas I found on the Eric Carle website. I liked the idea of asking students to come up with things that they didn't think anyone else could do. This might not be as appropriate in a large group of 30 students, but in small groups like mine I think this would have encouraged them to really be creative and ask for new language that they really wanted to know. I'll try it out next time.

Okay, it's your turn!

Virginia Tech -- Remembering A Teacher

2008-02-14T00:40:00.001-08:00

I was reading the Roanoke Times on-line and was really moved by this article. One of the professors who died was a French teacher, and some of her students created a French immersion program at a Blacksburg elementary school in her honor. I was recently asked if I thought Tech could recover from the shootings, and initially I thought it was a bit of a strange question -- of course they (we) would. But as I read this, I saw that even though people are moving forward it's obviously something that still affects everyone. Two of our friends were friends with Jocelyne. It was an absolutely tragic loss, among many others.

Jocelyne Couture-Nowak was a very talented, enthusiastic teacher of the sort who would come home exhausted after teaching young students but still find the time to sew a kangaroo suit to use in class. Her husband saved her teaching props and the Tech students are using them for inspiration to create their own. It's great to see the partnership between Tech and the local schools developing in this particular way. I'm thinking of contacting someone at Harding Avenue Elementary or VT Engage to see if there's anything they'd really like to have from France since it seems that they are trying to expand it to other elementary schools and are asking for more funding. I did my first ESL volunteer work at Harding, part of my student internship and also taught summer school there, so I'd love to help out if I can.

Anybody have ideas of things that might be useful for them?

(cross-posted on Pardon My French)

11 Months Later...

2008-02-13T12:55:00.000-08:00

I might be ready to dust off this blog. I officially returned to work in September, but I'm teaching so few hours (by choice) that it's really more of a hobby that I get paid for at this point. It's clear to me now that I still love teaching elementary aged students, though.

Today I was pleasantly surprised by my students' enthusiasm for a very quick Mad-Libs inspired Valentine's Day activity that I created in approximately 2 minutes. They're in CE1-CE2 and have had at least one year of English before. I try to give them little cultural tidbits every now and then without taking too much time out of the main language focus, so I talked very briefly about how children celebrate Valentine's Day back home. (I was trapped by one clever student who said, "So, where's our candy, then, huh?" Mental note to self: find the box with the Harry Potter cards and suckers and be ready for this next time).

It's not necessarily the most communicative nor most creative of activities, but it doesn't take long to do and they loved it so much that I'll do it again. The only special material I used was a book of photocopiable thematic stationery for K-3 students, which is basically a bunch of fancy themed borders for students to write in. I've used it several times and they seem to like working with it. I'm sure you can find something similar on the web or just make your own using clip art, but for me this type of book is worth the expense. I initially intended this to be a quick wrap-up at the end since they've been working on body parts and describing people, but I might try to figure out a way to expand this.

At the top of the paper, I wrote My Funny Valentine, and underneath I wrote Your ________ is like a ___________ [repeat 3 times] but that's okay, I still like you anyway. Students had to write 4 body parts of their choice in the first blank, and 4 animals in the second blank and the end result was pretty hilarious to them once they figured out what it meant. I find some French students to have a little trouble at times with the concept "of your choice" ... they want to know if they need to write in blue pen or red pen or where exactly they should write their name and such. Invariably I'll have one or two students who really get anxious about this kind of stuff but today they somehow decided it should be the 4 body parts of their friend that they really admired. Hey, whatever works, and most importantly, whatever gets them started.

They ended up asking for vocabulary they didn't know (a bonus for me), and got some alphabet pronunciation practice in as well. The kid who in an earlier post stuck Mr. Potato Head parts up his nose for laughs last year came up with "Your heart is like a tiger," which I thought was very poetic (even though it was accidental). Then they ended up sharing their poems in English all on their own without prompting, demanded extra copies so they could make more for their friends, and stayed so late I had to shoo them out of the classroom. The real bonus for me was the part when they spontaneously shared their poems, so in the end I guess it was more communicative than I had predicted.

The other teachable moment that I ran out of time for was the possibility of a Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head Valentine story. They wanted to act out a whole kissy-kissy, I love you do you love me, check the box yes or no routine, but it wasn't possible today. I might try and combine the two activities in a situation where Mr. Potato Head has to court Mrs. Potato Head in English and see what they come up with.

I have to wonder if today's success was due to my (ahem) in-depth planning or rather to the fact that the sun was shining and they were in a good mood. I'll try not to think too hard about it.

Anyway, if you have any ideas for improvement, a spin-off activity, or just a general comment I'd love to hear it. ETA: Margie had a wonderful suggestion for a tie-in activity: From Head to Toe by Eric Carle. It covers both body parts as well as animals and provides students opportunities to act out the book. I'm going to use it in our next class. It would have been better if I had read it before making Valentines, but it's still relevant and I'm sure the kids will love it. This is one of my essential books for English teaching in elementary schools.

On Maternity Leave and Thinking About A Career Change

2007-03-08T00:20:00.000-08:00

So, I haven't posted in a while even though I've had topics I'm really interesting in writing about. I just didn't have the willpower. One I may follow up on later involves some really interesting things I learned from cours particuliers during our "Tell Me A Story" lessons...it involved no preparation on my part but they really enjoyed it and I learned a lot about them, plus it covered those dreaded multiple past tenses as well as general fluency.

Another post was about the difference between the Assistant program here in France and the one in Japan. Personally, I highly recommend the JET program(me), so if anyone is looking to be an assistant as an after-uni experience, I say Go To Japan. There is a lot of cultural adjustment to be done, but it pays extremely well for the amount of work involved (or at least it did), it's well-organized, and was a fantastic experience for me. However, both of the French assistants I've met here have been absolutely miserable and one left early because she felt that the schools didn't honor their side of the contract. Just what I've heard. If you're dead set on France, then come along by all means...just be aware that what you may be asked to do isn't what you signed up for, and things may be more expensive than you expect. Maybe I'll get into more detail later on.

Finally, I've often wanted to post about the fact that I don't really enjoy my job as I feel I should. Something is missing. I feel more like an animatrice than a teacher. The resources and time spent with the kids limits what I can do with them, so the classes are just a FLEX approach and that's difficult for me. I loved ESL back home -- the kids were motivated and I saw so much real progress, plus I got to do a lot of interesting projects with them and see them using language in authentic ways. Here, I could sort of do that periodically during the English camps, but then the school decided it would be a good idea to have teachers switch groups throughout the week...so my ability to do a group project just got thrown out the window. Oh, well. One of my expat friends with a teaching degree says she feels the exact same way, so at least I'm not alone.

So, for now, at least, I'm taking a break from teaching. I feel that I'm isolated from other teachers here and had hoped to find a way of communicating/supporting/interacting with each other. It's weird.

Thinking About Thanksgiving

2006-11-04T21:25:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if I'll do a Thanksgiving lesson this year or not, but I've started looking for good children's books as a starting point for next year. After years in the elementary school I've learned to get better at selecting appropriate children's books -- there are some that are interesting but the language is just too complex, and there are other ones with appropriate language but the pictures and overall storyline are terrible -- so I thought I'd put together a list of potential ones I'm thinking about buying for the future. I do have to say, though, that I don't mind buying kids' books on Thanksgiving because I intend to keep the tradition alive for my own little one(s).

Here in France, I tend to try to find a good blend of a simple book with great illustrations once kids know how to read, and I think I've been successful in incorporating the material into lessons. They're able to start picking out words they know, talking about the pictures, and we're also working on figuring things out through context. Some of the Scholastic non-fiction books I have are just perfect for my young guys, but I'm no longer eligible for Scholastic, unfortunately.

So, here is my potential list of what I think are candidates for a good intro book on Thanksgiving for young learners. I only have seen a couple of pages, so I could be easily disappointed. I worry that the board book format will be seen as a little babyish for some, but no one has ever complained (yet). If you know anything about any of these books, please feel to let me know how you think they would do as an EFL-friendly intro to Turkey Day.

This First Thanksgiving Day by Laura Krauss Melmed
Thanksgiving Is for Giving Thanks by Margaret Sutherland
Spot's Thanksgiving by Eric Hill
My First Thanksgiving by Tomie dePaola
One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims by B.G. Hennessy

Catching Up

2006-11-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

Thanks to both of you who left helpful comments about finding the guidelines! It's nice feeling like I will be able to get a handle on what I'm doing.

This blog has fallen by the wayside with all the other events happening in my life, but I'd like to resurrect it and try to keep it going. I find myself struggling with job insecurity and lack of structure in the environment and wonder if I will be able to continue working like this for the rest of my life, or if it's time to find another career. At times I feel like I'm just not doing a very good job, or at least the job I would like to do, although sometimes the reasons for that are beyond my control. My adult students are nice, but not always motivated and I find sometimes that their expectations of what teachers are supposed to do just don't meet my teaching style. As in, some of them want someone completely grammar-focused with lots of worksheets and I don't get the idea they believe that a mix of some grammar combined with communicative-based activities will lead to progress. I've been told I need to "stick with the book and hit grammar hard" with my new batch of classes, but while some students are okay with this, others are not. I really feel like I am damned if I do, damned if I don't, not to mention the fact that I'm not a "stick with the book and pound away at grammar" kind of teacher. How to please all of the students and thus the bosses? Not an easy path to trod. Business courses are okay but I'm not passionate about teaching presentation/meeting skills for the billionth time, and I just don't have enough real courses with the young ones. On the other hand, I'm grateful I am employed, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.

When things die down, I'll post more and ask a few specific questions I've been thinking about. For now, I'd just like to know any nice things people have done for Halloween with young learners. The Toussaint holiday comes at a time that more or less makes lessons on Halloween too early or too late, so we decided to have our 'celebration' after the fact. I thought it might be nice to have something fun to come back to, but I'll let you know if that was a wise decision. I found some nice activities at FamilyFun.com that I'd like to try, although I did need to ask my mom to bring a few supplies with her when she visited.

Today I bought a copy of Meg and Mog that I'd like to use to get some good language going (I'm still working on getting those kids to understand English can be used to talk about things and is more than knowing the word for the flashcard), so if anyone has used that successfully, I'd like to know. I do know that I have too many things planned for this one class, so I'll have to rank things in order of importance. I definitely want to work in the target language (easy stuff like parts of the face/body and simple "It's/They're" sentences), so some of the craft stuff will probably have to be really quick and easy. I'm tickled to add in a little bit of culture but want to make sure there's still a language focus and not just a random craft, no matter how cute it is, that has nothing to do with what we're trying to accomplish.

I've also made up a quick mini-play that I am determined to get one class involved in...I think they are ready but it's a new step for them and my biggest challenge is to get them using English in addition to playing around with the props. Last week I wanted them to act out the story in our English Adventure unit...they enjoyed the story, they enjoyed playing with the parts of Mr. Potato Head, but I waited until the end of class and they were too scattered to really be able to do the language functions that I know they can perform. One of my gems was busy trying to stick things up his nose, so that was a distraction that I did not predict. Next time I will know and be prepared. Sheesh. On a positive note, I do see kids making progress and I'm pretty tickled with that. If only I could do this all day! I love having reasonably-sized classes and good materials, which is what is keeping me from trying to do this in an actual school. I have heard so many local horror stories from the assistants that I'm pretty put off on trying to work for the public schools.

Curriculum Question

2006-09-12T06:07:00.000-07:00

Slowly but surely I am getting more and more hours to work. Right now a lot of them are temporary customers (meaning they only purchased between 10-20 hours of lessons) but I am hopeful that the year-long classes will start before too long. Things are really up in the air at the moment...I still don't have a contract and am supposed to start classes next week (but don't have any of them confirmed so I can't plan). This, too, shall pass.

Anyway, I am seeking any kind of formal curriculum guide that the state has for each year of English in public schools. At my workplace I was told to look at the samples of textbooks that they had on the shelf and figure it out myself, but I really do want to be able to look at the official version that the teachers (should) have. I would like to think that there is an easy-access website connected to the French department of education, but somehow I have a hunch that it won't be so clear-cut. But just in case there is, and one of you reading my blog has found it, could you please point me in that direction?

I want the basic guidelines of what students are exposed to and which language skills/vocabulary/grammar points they are expected to have mastered in each year. I'm too A.R. to be comfortable with "Oh, I think they do the present perfect this year" or "Just look at the textbook." I want to know exactly what the plan is, even if I'm not in charge of delivering it all, and I want more details than the grammar points. Plus, I don't know about you, but a few of those textbooks give me chills.

Also, does anyone know if the education nationale tends to follow the European Framework in reference to language education? Are those official guidelines or just suggestions? Last year I did try to go with the flow for the most part, but now I'm really ready to figure out how the system works and how I can get it more or less in sync with what I know is effective for kids.

Thanks for any help you can provide! I'll pass on anything I find out as well.

Truth or Bluff

2006-08-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

So, I did the Summer Vacation -- oh, excuse me, I mean Holiday -- Truth or Bluff activity today with the 4eme. It came from Onestopenglish.com, which has some good material for a free internet resource and is decently organized. It's my new favorite. Has anyone signed up for a paid subscription? I wonder if it's worth asking my bosses to join.

As a warmer, it worked pretty well and I got a very good idea of their levels. I accidentally called on one of the weaker kids first -- that's the rub with a new class -- who predictably read his card, thereby defeating the purpose of the activity. I pushed him a bit, anyway, but in a joking manner so that he got enough off-the-cuff speaking time. Since he was first, I gave him a little slack but forewarned the others that if they read instead of bluffing, they would get "yet more practice." The other weaker student immediately gave it away when it was his turn, but I gave him another card, some time to think, and the second time he did brilliantly. The rest of the bluffers did an excellent job of pretending they went to Australia to visit family or on wild water adventure trips in Canada, etc. At the end when I asked them to list activities that were useful, I think most of them listed Truth or Bluff.

Another activity they found both useful and enjoyable was a version of Question Tic-Tac-Toe. I wasn't initially thrilled about it (the lessons are mostly planned and the teachers select among suggested activities) but I liked it better than some of the other suggestions. It involves a grid of 20 squares with different question starters written in them...things such as 'Why did...," How many..., " and "Who were..." Students had to get 3 squares in a row by choosing a number and asking another group a grammatically correct question using the starter. It was harder than it sounds and gave them a good review of verb tenses before school starts back up. The true goal, I believe, was to aim for trivia questions but I ended up taking it down a notch and just focusing on the basics of how to form questions. Another team had to answer the question correctly or they lost a turn, so that team also got a good review of how to make sure the tenses matched between the question and answer.

I was surprised at how long they wanted to continue playing and also at how most of them listed it as really useful. I don't see this as being a good activity for a large group, though, because they got a lot of feedback and hints from me as they were making their questions (if they didn't have any guidance it would have been a total waste of time). They actually spoke a mix of French/English so I could understand what they were trying to say and then guide them in making the questions they wanted versus the questions they were 'forced' into based on the starters. Another surprise was that the other groups were paying attention to the group trying to formulate their question in order to get tips and then be able to "steal" the square later. Huh. Who knew?

You know, though, I do feel a lot of sympathy with the classroom teachers who have groups of 30 students. It's so difficult to set up successful groupwork and be able to adequately monitor all the students. It's a situation that just sets itself up for question & answer / grammar worksheets. I'd love to hear from people who are successful at setting up effective small-group activities in large classes.

End of Vacation Blues

2006-08-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

I've been out of teacher mode for a while, but am gearing up for it next week's English camp. I'm not trying any TPR-storytelling this time because I'm not yet sure how to adapt it to a more advanced level in such a compressed time period, so nothing too terribly new and innovative this time. Just pushing English as a useful tool and trying to find meaningful, contextual activities that aren't too easy or difficult. Oh, and I will also be doing my best to make them understand that enjoyable activities can in fact improve their English. I've read in other forums that other people have the same difficulty with the more communicative techniques...well, mainly with older students, I think. Sometimes it seems like they have their expectations beaten into them and activities that don't fit the mold are seen as a little frivolous. The ones at the camp aren't quite there (yet) so maybe I can make a little headway. They are just so used to looking at success in terms of test scores, so I can hardly blame them. That's how it is.

IThere aren't any first day warm-ups listed in the lesson plans I was given, so I'm thinking about which ones I want to use. Any suggestions? I'll write about the one(s) I chose and how they went next week. I found a version of "Truth or Lie" centered around holidays, so that might be a fun and easy way to start things off. Oh, and I'm also looking for any kind of off-beat role plays that are floating around out there. For the last camp I wrote up a complicated "love pentagon" that went over well since they were right in the throes of the whole teenage couple thing. I wouldn't use it with every group, so I'm not sure if I'll dig it out this time or not.

Somewhat off topic, there seem to be several other expats around who are also frustrated with finding steady employment here. I'm not sure in which direction I'll go, but I am sure that I am not going to be able to handle successive 10-month contracts without any minimum hours. Heck, sometimes I feel like I need a support group just to get through the next month and a half of "maybe I'll have work, maybe I won't." Hang in there, everybody. Someday it's bound to get better. I'd love to know about people who have started their own language schools, but I imagine it's a total mess of red tape.

Pardon My Franglais wants to know...

2006-07-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

If anyone stumbles across my blog and has an opinion, I'm anxious to know:

How do you set goals for your lessons, and in what way to you present them to your students?
Do you think your students see games as useful and not just for fun?
How would you set up a 1 or 2 hour, once a week lesson to make it meaningful and not just "fun" for kids?

My comments are below...

English Camp!

2006-07-10T07:57:00.000-07:00

I won't post about my BTS experience -- not for today, nor in general -- because I am too exhausted and upset to be neutral. I imagine lots of people have experienced difficult classrooms ... none of the other teachers like these classes, either, but we do it because we don't want to refuse work and because we need the money. It's demoralizing.

So, I'd rather write about something positive today and stop beating myself up. Last week I taught at an English camp for teenagers...we have classes 5 hours a day, 5 days a week. This time we had 4 groups of students: 6/5eme (early middle school), 4eme (late middle), 3eme (Freshman), and a high school group. I split my time between the 6/5eme and 3eme and had a completely awesome time with the kids. Normally I am not made for teenagers, but in a one-week situation like this I always end up having fun and they do as well.

With the younger group, I experimented with TPR storytelling, and it really worked well! I'm going to write a specific post on that later on, but my initial reaction is that I'm going to pursue that further and figure out how to adapt it to once-a-week classes. On Monday as I was leading them through the first steps, most of them looked at me as if to say, "Lady, there is no way I'm going to make these silly gestures in front of my peers." By Friday they were all standing up and having fun with it...two of them started to cooperate together in order to act out the more complex gestures. I'm not sure if this will be my main method, but I'd like to incorporate it on a regular basis.

I also ended up spending less time on smaller, different activities and spent long chunks of time working towards a specific goal. If there is one thing I could change about my teaching, it would be to figure out how to adapt the little time I have once a week with the kids in order to do more things like this. One child also responded really well to the whole idea of goal-setting. On the first day after we wrote stories, acted out situations and played games, I asked the class, "So, did we do any grammar points today?" They all simultaneously said, "Nooooooooooo!" and shook their heads. "Ha!" I said. "Oh, yes, we did! Think about it." Tick, tock, tick, tock. One kid figured it out quickly and that's all it took.

On Friday, I noticed one kid in particular had stopped saying, "I don't understand what I have to do." He said, "I don't understand the goal," and he was not being critical or sarcastic. Once he got what the point of the activity was, he said, "Oh, okay!" and he literally sat on the edge of his chair and participated full-out. I just really tried to present English to them as something useful, something they can use and do fun things with. Another thing I pushed was reading for fun and during their "DEAR" time, they actually did read. (DEAR=Drop Everything and Read; I stole it from basic elementary school stuff).

For the older group, I did throw in a bit more hard-core grammar stuff, but only because they requested it. They were serious students and I tried to give them a few more complex points and then practice it in speaking. The first day we covered the Present Perfect and P.P. Continuous, primarily focusing on the P.P.C. The next day we did modals of obligation and also the difference between ed/ing adjectives. During both of my grammar presentation sections the kids looked absolutely bored to tears, but they were hanging in there. I think I spent about one half hour on the grammar and the other 4 1/2 hours were activity based, heavily focused on speaking.

The funny thing was that when I asked them to give feedback on the day, they tended to love the games and speaking activities (of course) but they all said the grammar was also extremely useful for them. Not one said that the games were useful, even if they did enjoy them. I wonder how they would have answered if I had pushed the "activity 1st/grammar 2nd" point of view like I did with the other class. It makes me want to make sure I validate games with all the others so they'll see them as constructive, not just fun.

Welcome to my "reflections on teaching" blog

2006-07-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

And thanks for stopping by! I have hard time believing anyone besides my parents would read the nonsense I write, but if you're here, I bet you're in the same boat as I am. I've been living in France for a year and a half, and before that I was working in what I considered to be (and still do) the best possible job that anyone could have: an elementary ESL teacher in scenic Virginia. I loved my job, I loved the kids, I loved the school staff...but I also loved my husband (and still do) and was ready to start our new life together in France. Since I have a teaching degree in ESL, I felt pretty confident that I would be able to transfer my career here without too much trouble, and that has turned out to be true. On the other hand, I've found my role has changed and I still need to adjust. I can't imagine I will ever stop trying to find that "perfect" lesson and improve myself as a teacher. ESL is not the same thing at all as EFL, and I'm looking for other EFL teachers out there -- France, Japan, Saudi Arabia...you name it, I want it. I also spent 2 years in Japan teaching English through the JET Program, and while I found the country and people absolutely fabulous, I think my basic teaching philosophy and that of Japan just ultimately did not match.

This blog will serve a role for me...I'd like it to be a place where I can focus on my teaching experiences here as well as reflections on the educational system, and I hope that others will be kind enough to give me feedback. That's something I crave and don't get here, not formally at least, and another thing I miss about being in my old school is the constant companionship of other people who are genuinely interesting in serving students, sharing ideas, and helping each other improve as teachers. I do have a small support group here of fantastic people who I really respect, but the more, the better. I think I went from about 30 peers to having 5-6, and it's kind of strange. I also am a constant borrower of ideas, so if you have a lesson that really goes over well or have had some kind of epiphany, please don't hesitate to let me know!

More to come...

Resources

2006-07-06T19:55:00.002-07:00

Coming Soon . . .

Other Bilingual Families

2006-07-06T19:55:00.001-07:00

Coming Soon . . .

About Us

2006-07-06T19:55:00.000-07:00

Some days I wake up and wonder how I got here. Oh, that's right, it was that brown-eyed Frenchman I met at swing dance lessons who literally swept me off my feet. Born and raised in small town Virginia, I still miss those Blue Ridge Mountains... but am adapting to French life with my 2-year-old daughter and anxiety-ridden, American-sized cat.