Flying Solo!

Well hello there lovely readers!

This week I had my first solo classes at the Lycee (sans accent - UK keyboard!) !

The long and short of my job is to work with small groups (anywhere between 2 and 7) of final year students, once every week or two, to improve their speaking and listening skills in time for their oral exam in April. There is no set programme of what I should cover, and thus I've had the dual conundrum of being told a) "You can pretty much do whatever you like," and b) "But here is an entire crateful of information, ideas, resources and suggestions for things we think you should be doing."

I prefer option A though, so other than when the teachers say, "ok with my group on Wednesday I would like you to look at the topic of immigration, because that's what we're doing in class," I just make it up.

This week's topic was (/is) Scotland. I know right? Imaginative. I've been starting each class with a little introduction of me:

"Hello, I'm Naomi. I'm 24, I have 2 parents, 1 brother, and no pets. My usual job is with small, primary school children so if I start being silly and jumping around it's because I temporarily forgot you're 17 not 7. My future career goal is to be Batman."

And then I ask each student to introduce her- or himself too, and say a little about themselves:

"Hello I am Jean-Luc Pierre Antoine, I have 17 years old and Batman does not get money to be Batman, so how you live?"

They're a pretty smart bunch.

My first couple of classes were no-goes: the timetable was only finalised on Friday afternoon, so my Monday morning classes didn't actually know they were supposed to be with me. Thus, on Monday I had 1 out of 5 classes, with a further 2 where one solitary girl turned up and looked terrified to actual death that she might have to speak English with me, alone, for an hour.

Tuesday's classes, however, were all present and accounted for. I did the introductions, and then, when the ice had been broken a little, I showed them various postcards, calendars, magnets and images of Aberdeen and Thurso. I need to give a couple of shout outs here: firstly to Kerri who had the foresight to gift me the postcards and magnet - they have been invaluable, especially the map postcard! And secondly to all my Facebook friends, especially Eleanor, who sent me photos of Aberdeen and Thurso to use in my lessons. The students love them! I've been using Google images too when these photos lead to further discussion.

In most cases, the discussions cover roughly the same things. In the Aberdeen part of the lesson we talk about granite, the ugliness of the Meston building, the frog at Duthie Park, Piper Alpha, and dolphins in the harbour.

In the Thurso part of the lesson we talk about puffins, whales and seals, vikings, brochs, surfing, dip with a nip and the old kirk. My aim is to inspire all the final year students in Francois Truffaut to DEMAND that their Scotland trip in February includes Caithness ;) I will start a rebellion!!!!

So, aye! Two days in and the students at least seem interested in the lessons! My plan is to link into the teachers' topics when asked, and otherwise to take inspiration from the 4 "notions" that the French system is based on, as well as bring in Scottish/UK culture. My list of things to cover has been informed by the things the students seem most interested in or ask questions about - some of them have already shown an interest in the link between Brittany and the UK, so I plan to talk about Celtic Britain at some point. I also want to look at Guy Fawkes after the October break, and to cover Burns Night and St Andrews and St Patrick, as those have all been mentioned so far.

Aaaaand now I:

Because there is a welcome dinner being held in my honour by the Truffaut English department in 2 hours and I need to shower and dress and then leave at least 30 minutes early because I don't know where the restaurant is and I'm me.

Je me suis perdu.

Au revoir lovelies!
Be kind to each other!
Naomi