Second Year Teaching Placement: Day FIve

C'est finalement la fin de la semaine! Today was a great day, I was finally able to teach my first French class. I was a little nervous because I'm not a fluent French speaker let alone needing to teach in it. But all was well in the end, I played several activities with the students to get them a little excited about learning and used unconventional approaches such as Hangman and Bingo.

I almost forgot to mention, first period was our Prac so I was sent to the Special Education teacher Eric so he could discuss IEPs with me. I was kind of familiar with how IEPs work because I created one in 2nd year but it was really nice to see a real one. He showed me one for a girl who recently had a brain tumour removed and how teachers could accommodate her and what not. For the most part, this school has very few serious IEP reports and many are not formally diagnosed, just a few learning disabilities.

For my lesson, I began the class with a small mindfulness activity where we had to go on a walk around the track and practice living in the moment free of stress. All the students listened and did as I asked so that was incredibly nice, and when we got back to the class I began with an activity. It was a matching game where the students had to match the image to the text and they did that. I didn't know that for "concentration" (which was what this activity was called) you're supposed to flip them over and only turn one over at a time. But next time I know to add more demonstration when trying to explain new activities and concepts. Next I had the students ask each other interview questions from the textbook and walked around the classroom listening to their answers. Then I asked one person from each table to answer each question after I read it to them. That worked surprisingly since they were so darn obedient. Next I played Bingo with them which was so fun. It was a "find someone who likes to ..." and they had to write the name down, and the first 3 people were the winners. This made it a small competition and the students were really into it which was nice and encouraging. Next I had them turn to "Le football" in the textbook and read them the entire story then told them to read it in their groups. After I had 5 volunteers (that I kind of chose and some who volunteered) read the text out loud to practice their pronunciation and public speaking skills. Since there was still a bit of time I had them answer some questions and took them up. Finally, I could tell that the mood was a bit lower since it was "boring work" so I played Hangman with them which I think made everyone super excited. At first no one wanted to participate so I had to sort of volun-tell them but then they became more comfortable and participated themselves which was so so encouraging to see. Since there was some time left at the end I let them work on their restaurant assignment that Amélie assigned or interview questions if they wanted. So I stayed with a group and helped them practice their restaurant prep then I walked to another group to practice interview questions with them which is basically chatting but that was so fun.

Today was a good day, and I'm glad I got to end the week in this way.

Until next time!

Suzy