The mysterious English Teacher illness

There appears to be some kinda of bug striking the English teachers in Aulnoye!

First of all it was the teacher at Stievenart last friday, which was really anoying, cos I'd planned a whole lesson on Scotland (as it was Burns night, the celebration of the Scots poet Robbie Burns, for those less culturally aware!!) I'd even found music, but as I couldn't find any CD-R's in Aulnoye, (plus I wasn't sure if the cd's would even work on the old school CD player) I'd decided the best thing to do would be to take my laptop in. So I walked the 25mins to the school, carrying my laptop, which was actually quite heavy, only to get there and find out that the teacher was ill, therefore they didn't need me, so I had to walk back again. It was only when I got back here, that I thought I could have actually done something with the class, so they didn't miss out on their english lesson.

Then this week I was at Joilot Currie, The 1st English teacher was in, so I went in her class, they were doing clothes, and as I had a picture of kids in English school uniforms, I showed it to them. They thought it was really strange, especially the fact that they wear a tie, cos not many people wear ties here! I did have to point out that it was taken in the summer, and no, the boys didn't wear shorts all year round!! So that was a good lesson.

Then I found out that the other teacher was off sick, and so I didn't have anything to do for an hour, so I sat in the staff room and planned my lesson for CE1 on Thursday. Then after break it was time for me to teach the other CE1 class, I only started teaching them 2 weeks ago, when the teacher asked if I could. I love teaching the CE1 classes cos they are the youngest classes (about 7-8 years old) and normally they wouldn't start learning english till next year, so I get to teach them specially!!! I taught them how to say 'My name is...' and then the numbers from 1-10, they picked it up really quickly. Then I taught them colours, (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple!!) (It had to be Rainbow, really!!) And yes I did then teach them 'Rainbow' and then gave them a little worksheet, where they had to colour the rainbow!!! Then to check that they had understood, I held up skittles (the sweets!!) and asked each of them, 'what colour is it?' if they got it right, they got the sweet!! So I really enjoyed that!

I wasn't sure if I should go in today, since the English teacher was ill yesterday, and I'm normally only in lessons till 3pm anyway. But since I didn't actually know if the teacher would be in or not, I thought I'd better go in just in case. So I walked in to the playground, and one of the kids comes up to me and says 'Mlle Famchon n'est pas la, elle est malade' (Miss Famchon is not here, she is ill) I almost turned round and walked back out again, but then realised that, that would look bad in front of the kids, so I went into the school, with the idea of waiting to the end of the the lunch break, then leaving. As I was standing waiting, I was thinking how anoying it was that the lessons kept being canceled, and so the children were missing out on their english lessons, when there was a perfectly cappable teacher still in the school, plus I was getting fed up of not having anything to do. Before I really knew what I was doing, I'd gone down to the headmaster's office, and was asking him, if he would like me to teach the lessons that Mlle Famchon should have been teaching, and he said OK then, starting with his class CM2 (11-12 year olds) in 5 mins!! Suddenly the 'OMG what am I doing?!' feeling came over me as I despratly tried to think of somthing to do with them!! When I walked into the classroom, said good afternoon, and none of the resoponded, I thought, Oh dear, this isn't going well!!! I asked them 'What the date was?' and finally some people responded, so that was a start. I decided to play number bingo with them, at first I only did the numbers 1-20, but then I realised that they knew higher numbers too, so I did 20-50, (and yes I did realise after i'd told them, that there were a lot of numbers between 20-50 and just choosing 9 meant it could be a long game!!) But anyway it went quite well, but then I had to think of something else to play, so decided to play Simon Says, That went well, though I did begin to run out of things to say, ended up saying, 'Simon says..........(long pause while I thought of something!!!) So obviously they knew to do it!! I mostly got people out by saying things like, Simon says...Jump up and down/wave your hands/clap your hands etc, then shouting stop!! I think they enjoyed it, and we played 2 rounds, then I had completly run out of things to do, but luckily it was the end of the lesson anyway, so that was ok!!

Not bad I thought, for only having 5 mins to plan something!!!

I went to ask the other teacher if they wanted me to do english with their class, but they had already started another subject, and so didn't need me to...so I came back here!!

Right gonna stop, and do some flashcards for my lesson on Thursday, teaching them part 2 of my colours lesson, Brown, Black, White, and Pink, and reading 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?' to them!

Becca

P.S No one has contacted me regarding plans for the Feb holiday, so it looks like I will be going home for the 1st week. Anoying, cos I would have liked to go travelling or something, but at least if I go home I can work, and so will have something to do, so it's better then being stuck here doing nothing!