So I leave for France in two weeks. I haven't moved home yet, I haven't made a list yet, I haven't made any piles yet, I haven't packed anything yet, I haven't even really been studying my French yet. And yet somehow I am still relatively calm about this entire endeavor. It's been a rather relaxing first week of nothingness. I have no work, no class, no nothing. Katie and I work out in the morning, I sit in on a class to observe and then I just generally chill out.
The only thing that does have me worried is my placement in France. For some reason these silly French people decided that I would be good working with the 6-11 age range. I thought that was great... until I spent some time with a few 6-11 year olds this week. Do you have any idea how scattered a 6 year old brain is? How short their attention span is? How little knowledge they have of their own mother tongue, let alone a foreign language?! Suddenly all of my carefully pondered lessons plan ideas went flying out the window at mach 3. I know that French school is more structured and disciplined than the average American school and that a lot more is generally expected of the students, at least academically. And I know that I can be the cool foreign teacher who only sees them once a week, but still I saw glimpses of future panic attacks as I realized I wasn't in college anymore and now I had to bring it on down to a whole new level. This is going to be reeeeeealy interesting. Luckily my old 1st grade teacher agreed to let me come observe and chill in her class one day so I can learn more about that general age group and see a real pro at work with kids. That should help.
Other than that I've been talking to quite a few past and present assistants online. One lives near me and we're getting together for lunch next week!! Jared's also taking the GRE next week (I'm sure he would like me to insert somber music here, but he'll do fine) so I get to hang out in Dayton for a bit... maybe do some last minute shopping (blast French women and their tiny bodies! Clothing in France doesn't seem to fit me!!). And that's about it. See you next time, which will probably be as I start to pack and realize just how incredibly unprepared I am for all of this!
4 comments:
If you're going to be working in primaire, than the best advice I can give you is to change activities every 5-7 minutes. As you said, their attention spans are short, so you need to constantly be changing things up so that they don't get distracted.
This is how I generally ran my classes:
5 min taking roll & going over the date
5 min reviewing what was done in the previous lesson
5 min introducing new vocab
5 min doing an activity that uses new vocab
5-10 min having them do pair work using new vocab
5 min doing 2nd activity using new vocab
5-10min sing a song or play game related to new vocab
Hope that helps!
yes, i too am worried about the little kids, but i think their cuteness makes up for any rowdiness and stress they cause. i tried to teach my 7 year old nephew french last weekend, and failed miserably, so hopefully it's easier the other way around!
Yeah, the 6-year-olds can be tough (although cute). But I find the 8 to 11-year-olds a lot of fun. They're old enough to know how they're suppose to behave in class but young enough to want to impress you. I've never taught French kids that age, but the same probably still applies.
At least you've actually been planning lessons and observing. I haven't been to a High School since I graduated 7 years ago! I'm sure you'll do really well. You're probably more prepared than you think.
Post a Comment