La galette des Rois

This week I worked with the second graders as they continued their "That's mean!" project. To help students  understand the use of "ing", the teacher created a project in which students had to write and illustrate examples of being mean. The week before, students had read an amusing book about mean acts and drafted ideas for their own book. (For example, "Locking your sister in a dark room.") The students really enjoyed the creativity of the project and came up with some funny ideas.

On a side note, January is the time of year where the French celebrate Epiphany with a galette des rois (kings' cake). A small fève (figurine) is hidden inside the cake, and the person who finds it becomes the king/queen of the day (complete with a couronne- crown). One of my roommates brought back a small galette des rois for our floor to enjoy. I was lucky and became the "queen of the day" because the person who saw the figurine in a slice gave the piece to me because she had already won a previous time this month.

Yummy!

La Dictée

The main theme of this week was les insectes (insects) with the first graders. They learned that insects have two antenna, six legs, and three body parts: the head, thorax, and abdomen. Since the immersion program has no set curriculum per se, the students get to learn about bugs in English!

As the school year has progressed, I have observed how the first graders are being trained for their future classes. The teacher has started to include more dictée (dictation) activities in her lessons. The teacher might have the students take out their whiteboards, and then have me say aloud sight words (common words that students should easily recognize, like "I", "a", "my") or an easy sentence. The students then have to write the words or sentence on their whiteboard for us to check. During a later part of the lesson, students would practice writing new vocabulary or sentences in their English notebook. The students will complete many more dictation exercises as part of their education in the years to come.

In general, I would argue that French schools love dictées. As language assistants, we are constantly told that we are only suppose to provide oral support and activities in class, not reading or writing support. The French value a trained ear that understands the subtleties of oral expression.

In other news, snow has officially arrived in Nancy this week...

Bonne année!

Bonne année! Happy New Year!

I had a lovely Christmas break with my family and friends. I had the opportunity to go ice-skating and to see two movies- Les Misérables and Argo. I highly recommend both movies, despite interesting experiences at the theater. During my first attempt at seeing Les Misérables, the fire alarm went off about twenty minutes into the film and we had to come back the next night since the theater was not going to restart the movie. Then when I went to see Argo at a different cinema, just as the finale sequence was about to start, the movie stopped (probably due to a technical malfunction) for ten minutes, and then resumed. What luck!

I am now back in France, and working with the first graders for the next two weeks. The most exciting part of this week was actually not with the first graders, but with the second graders. The substitute teacher for the second grade teacher did not come, so the other English assistant and I stepped up and taught the second grade class on our own. I reviewed regrouping in addition problems, and the other assistant reviewed adjectives with the class. For our final activity, we read a book with animal sounds and then had the students draw and describe an animal from the book.

The sapin de Noël (Christmas tree) in Place Stanislas is still up, keeping the holiday cheer going!