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| A view from the top floor of the Maison des Americans which we lovingly refer to as "The Tower" |
The students at Deauville and Saint Arnoult are also preparing to sing songs in English at the end of the year spectacle. There will be lots and lots of practice and repetition of songs in class before the big show.
With the end of the year, comes the end of our English lessons. We are given a curriculum guideline at the beginning of the year to follow, and this last period we have includes a lot of review. Since we have less material for the end of the year, we will be starting to conduct some story based lessons where classes will work with one story over the course of many lessons to review English and build their confidence from having completed an entire story in English.
The role of TAs in Deauville will be changing next year, but I thought I'd go ahead and give some of my favorite lesson plan ideas that could potentially be incorporated into next year's teaching.
1. I love using the whiteboard to tell stories. I usually take a story they recognize—like Goldielocks—and then change details along the way, such as the bears to penguins and the porridge to ice cream. The kids love it, because it's entertaining and its a great way to review vocabulary and keep everyone in English.
2. The "question hat" has become a part of our routines for the CE2 classes and up. It is literally just a hat with some lamented questions in it that students draw from and answer. Now they also pose their question to another student of their choosing. It's a quick and easy way to get everyone speaking in class. The students beg me before class to let them choose a question when I pull out the hat.
3. I love ending each class with a song. We usually work on one song over several weeks, and usually only learn the chorus. I only do this the last couple minutes of class, but the repetition over the weeks is typically enough for them to learn it. We start out just listening to the song, and then I have them sing it line by line repeating after me, and eventually we just sing with the song. My goal is that somewhere down the line years from now, one of my students will visit an English--speaking country and impress everyone by singing along with "Ring of Fire" and thank me for bringing some Cash into their lives.
4. Total Physical Response (TPR) is one of the most successful strategies I have used as a teacher. From preschool to high school, it is difficult to sit in those desks for so many hours and TPR lets students get up and move and make a kinesthetic connection to the vocabulary. If it is possible to use TPR with the vocabulary, we do it. To start, I call out the vocabulary term and act it out and the students repeat. Eventually, I just call out the term and they repeat it and act it out to show they recognize it, and finally, I let them quiz each other. Sometimes we also have competitions to see who knows the most.
Ultimately with lesson plans and activities you need to know your classes and students. Some activities work really well with one group of kids and totally flop with another. As teachers, we need to be prepared to be flexible and adjust instruction to fit the students' learning needs. My best advice is to differentiate your teaching, it may seem like more effort, but your students will be more engaged and learn so much more, which benefits them and you in the end.
Happy Planning!
