Today I had two very long exams and then I had teaching at the end of the day. My teaching partner, Mandie, was feeling confident about last week and was hoping it would go so well this week. We both made worksheets, and this week our topic was 'the circus' because that's their school theme this year. The kids were the most behaved they'd ever been. They were eager to participate and they were quiet. It was great. There are two reasons for this:
1) The teacher yelled at them that if they aren't good they will get three verbs tonight. I've heard her yell this before, though, so it didn't work last time. Just to clarify, though I'm not sure, I think verbs are a type of punishment homework.
2) Last week when we finished the worksheet, they got to play heads-up seven up (called "les puces" in French), and at the beginning of class they kept asking us if we would play it again. We said it depends if they're good.
Almost everyone tried to answer questions and it seemed that everyone understood the lesson. Finally! They liked the worksheet I made where I had done some of my own drawings for the vocabulary. I only made my own drawings because I don't have internet to search for images, but I think to them it seemed like I put more effort and time into their lesson that they could actually see. Maybe. At the bottom of the page, they had instructions for three drawings they had to complete, where they had to artistically show RELATIONSHIPS (sound familiar?). It wasn't quite so abstract, though. They had to draw "the mouse is next to the clown" or "the seal is under the table". At first they wouldn't draw. I took it as disrespectful or not-caring on their part, but then some students were coming up to me and saying they are bad at drawing, so what should they do? I went over to help them try their best. We walked around the room to look at the students' drawings and they started getting more and more interested in it. So much that they almost forgot about heads' up seven up . Almost. Finally one kid asked me if they could play since there were ten minutes left, and so I said to the class "Since you've been so good today and you have been quiet, we can play the game" and then said it again in French because I know they don't all understand. Then I noticed one little boy giggling and he corrected my French grammar. Because the class can't be "silente" the class can be "silencieuse". I feared this was going to happen one of these times, it was inevitable. And I knew the class would make fun of me and probably lose a little bit of respect for me as their teacher. But I was surprised. Instead they smiled and a couple of them laughed but it was more of an understanding like "see? foreign language is hard, lady." We ended the class with the game, and left. Today there was a big "Bye bye!" when we left. It seems to be going better every week.
