End of School Year

End of the School Year

The end of the school year is quickly approaching! At this point, we have around six and a half weeks of school left until we go home.

We are preparing to celebrate Family Day, where the kids and their families come to have fun, eat, and do activities. This year the theme is pirates, and the kids are going to be able to go on a treasure hunt. There will also be a face painting station where a fellow American and I will paint the kids’ faces with nautical themes, like putting on an eye patch and drawing a shark, and a gross motor activity where the kids will be able to move around and jump.

With the after-school activities, I am doing two days of craft activity where we will make things like paper bracelets, liquid chalk, and birdfeeders, one day of “Cirque” where the students are able to play with things found in the circus (for example, they will learn to juggle, balance a stick on their hand, spin a plate on a stick, and slackline). I then have a cooking activity where we make recipes!  

In terms of teaching, I am mostly preparing the older students to take their English evaluations that are required by France. These evaluations range from spelling to understanding classroom instructions to reading to memorizing a short poem in English. With the younger maternelle kids, we are learning about food vocabulary, and we have a song that they will learn. We will also play a lot of flashcard games that they like and bingo. At the end of the year we will have a breakfast and they will be able to use a lot of the vocabulary that we learned!

Thanks for reading!

Springtime in Deauville

It’s been a particularly wet and cold winter here in Deauville, more so than years in the past, so it has been very nice to have the sun come out recently. The first really nice day that we’ve had here since about November (where it’s been sunny and not too cold) was last Wednesday, and I celebrated it by going to the beach and spending time outdoors. I’m very excited for more days like that to come and for summer to finally get here!

With the kids, we’ve been learning about springtime by singing songs like “The Eensy Weensy Spider” and “Mr. Sun,” as well as some songs that have springtime animals in them like butterflies, ladybugs, bluebirds, frogs, etc. We practice our weather every day and it’s been nice to have the kids finally be able to say “it’s sunny and warm” rather than “it’s cloudy and cold!”

Another springtime lesson that I’ve done with the kids is prepositions with Easter eggs. Each student has an Easter egg that they made, and I (or another student) can tell them where to put the egg. For example, I can say “put the egg on your head” or “put the egg between your pencil case and your hand.” It’s a fun game and they get really into it, and you can use a lot of vocabulary when playing, like body parts and school materials.

Since it’s springtime, another thing that we’ve been learning about is The Very Hungry Caterpillar and all the different types of food that are in that story. We play flashcard games, like where I’ll scatter the flashcards of food around the room and say “point to the strawberries,” or hand them out to the students and ask them to raise it up if they have it, or put all of the flashcards on the board and have them memorize them and then have them close their eyes and take one away. Then they have to say what’s missing. The book is fairly popular in France as well and most of the children are already familiar with the story, and they like when I read to them, so it’s very fun.

Thanks for reading! Until next time!

Free Time for TAs

Outside of teaching, the TAs have a little bit of free time. I have Wednesdays off, and we all have the weekends off. We also have four two-week breaks during the year where we don’t teach and can relax and travel.

During the first break, all three of us went to Prague and Budapest. During the winter break my parents came and visited Deauville and I also visited some relatives in England. This past break in February, I went to Dublin, then came back to Deauville and met my family who visited again (my siblings couldn’t come the first time because their passports weren’t valid for three months after the intended date of departure), and then went skiing with another one of the TAs. Next break, we’re all going to go to Greece. Two weeks (the length of each break) is a good amount of time to go somewhere, and it’s pretty easy to get to the Paris airport with trains and public transportation!

The Basilica in Lisieux

Giant's Causeway in Ireland

Cliffs of Moher in Ireland

My family & me in Rouen

Prague

During the weekends, sometimes we’ll go to nearby cities like Le Havre, Honfleur, Bayeux, Lisieux, and Caen. I like to take walks, read, color, and watch Netflix, too. A significant amount of time is also spent trying to figure out plans for when we return to the States—applying for jobs and grad school and making big decisions!

Thanks for reading!  

Lesson Plans

As we approach our 3^rd break, it’s a good time to reflect on how teaching has been going and how lesson plans have been working out. In this blog post, I’m going to be writing about a great class that I had recently. The CM1 and CM2 class (4^th and 5^th grade) at St. Arnoult is always a delightful group of kids. They are energetic, enthusiastic, and fun.

We started off the class doing our rituals. For this, we have flashcards that represent different questions (like “what’s your name,” “how are you,” and “where do you live”). The kids raise their hand and say the question, and once they get the question right they can come up to the front of the class and ask their peers to answer it. This usually takes 5-10 minutes. After we did our rituals, the kids had the floor to ask me any questions they had about schools in America. They were very curious about it, and we discussed differences between the US and France, like how in some schools in America and England the students wear uniforms, the different names of each grade level, and what happens at graduation. The class was especially interested to hear about the tradition of throwing your cap up when you graduate!

After that, the teacher for the class had found a short video of what elementary school is like in England, so we watched that. In it, they talked about what time different things start during the school day, what classes they take, and what recess and lunch are like. When it was finished, we reviewed a little of what happened in the video and then learned the poem “Come in Please” with motions. It goes like this:

Come in Please  

1, 2, 3, 4

Come in please

and shut the door.

5, 6, 7, 8,

It’s time for school,

You’re very late.

9, 10, 9, 10

Don’t be late

for school again!

 

After that, we reviewed school materials like a backpack, pencil, pen, notebook, glue, etc. We played a game where I put the flashcards on the board, they closed their eyes, and then I removed one and mixed up the remaining flashcards. They then had to figure out which flashcard was missing.

At this point, class was almost over, but they really wanted to do Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, so we did that. They then requested we do the Hokey Pokey, so we got in a circle in the room and did that too! They really enjoyed being silly and shaking their arms, legs, hair, and tongue, and it was super fun. Plus, the whole song was in English, so they got to practice their vocabulary! The class period was a hoot and I think that they learned a lot.

Until next time!

Extracurricular Activities

Hello! Today I’m going to be talking a little about extracurricular activities as a TA.

                

During school times, there are no organized activities, but when the students have recess, we are able to hang out and play with them. The students typically always have a game of soccer going on, and it’s common to also have a game of catch or some version of hide and seek. The kids also play with jump ropes a lot, practicing going fast and doing crossovers. They also like to play “l’horloge” where one person stands in the middle, swinging a jump rope from one end in a circle close to the ground, and the other students stand around them in a circle and jump over it when it comes to them.

                

This trimester, I’m leading some after-school extracurricular activities that should be really fun. The theme for this section of activities, or APEs, is books. On Mondays, I help lead a Recipe Book activity with the CMs (4^th and 5^th graders) and we will be compiling a list of recipes and making them. Some recipes we are going to be making include ants on a log, fruit salad, a regular salad, an energy bar, and banana pops.

               

The rest of the days (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays) I lead a puppets activity, where we will be reading or listening to different fairy tales such as Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and Goldilocks. After we read the stories, we will make puppets for the different characters and then put on a little play with them. I’m doing this activity with CPs, CE1s, and CE2s (1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rdgraders). The first week, we decorated a cardboard theater for the plays.

              

Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful day!

Christmastime in France

Hello again!

This month I’m going to be talking about everything Christmas!

The first weekend in December in France, there is always a telethon for funding research for genetic diseases. So instead of our normal Friday afternoon doing our APEs (after-school activities) and garderie (homework help and watching the kids until their parents pick them up) we took them to the APE room and they had their snacks from 4-4:30, then we took some of the kids to the high school/middle school to watch the mayor light up the Christmas lights in the city.

As we started walking to the school, it hailed and the sky was orange which was pretty surreal. Because it was so cold, we went quickly, but once we were there we stood around for a bit. Then, the mayor took a torch and lit up a bigger flame and at the same time all of the Christmas lights in the city turned on, and that was pretty cool. In Place Morny, by our house, there is a nice setup with trees in the center and Christmas lights radiating out from the center. After the lights were lit up, we went into a room in the school and did garderie until 6 when it was over.

As far as Christmas lesson plans go, so far in most of my classes (all ages) we have been listening to and learning the song “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” The kids love to sing along and dance to the song! With the younger kids, we have been learning and practicing Christmas vocabulary. With the older kids, we’re going to be writing letters to Santa and have been learning Christmas and toy vocabulary, as well as English and American Christmas traditions.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go to Strasbourg, France and visit my host mom from when I studied abroad there in college. We went to the Christmas market and I got to see her 5-week old granddaughter. It was a magical time, with lots of little vendors and Christmas lights all over. In the cathedral, there was a humongous nativity scene which was super cool to see. To top it all off, on Sunday morning, it snowed!

Ornaments at the market 

Christmas tree in a square in Strasbourg

Strasbourg Cathedral in the snow

My family is coming to visit over the break, and I am getting excited to welcome them to the house and Deauville! We found some Christmas decorations in the closet under the stairs, including Christmas lights, a Christmas tree, and some ornaments, so we have a little corner of Christmas that always looks so cheerful!

Until next time!

Denise

A Day in the Life

Hi, to everyone reading this blog! I hope you’re having a fantastic day!

                

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Denise, and I’m currently a TA in Deauville, teaching English to French kiddos aged 3-10 years old. In this blog post I’m going to be talking about a typical day in the life of a Deauville TA, or at least my own typical day. Actually, this is going to be more of an overview of my week, so let’s all get pumped for that!

The "Maison des Americains," our home

                

My schedule is pretty complicated, so it depends on the day what I’ll do. I’ll try to be as clear as I can be, though! If I have classes in the morning (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays) I’ll wake up at 8 to get ready, and leave our house in Deauville at around 8:45 to get to the school in St. Arnoult, which is a town about 7 minutes away by car, and set up for classes starting at 9. I teach the MS class (preschool) and then the combined GS/CP class (kindergarten and 1^st grade) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, splitting the GS/CP class into two different 30-minute classes on Thursday. For example, I will take the GS kids and teach them a 30 minute lesson, then the CPs. I also teach the combined CM1/CM2 class (4^th and 5^th grade) on Thursday morning.

Place Morny, near our house

A lot of the classes are combined, because there aren’t a lot of people who go to that school. There are only 4 classrooms for an entire school of kids younger than preschool to 5^th grade at St. Arnoult, and there are only two main teachers at Tourgéville, the other school where I teach. It makes for an interesting vibe in each class; there are many different levels that you cater to, all at the same time.

I don’t have morning classes on Monday, but we typically have a meeting with us three Americans and our director to talk about how everything is going from 10:30 to 11:30. On Wednesday I have no class, which can be a nice break to catch up on sleep and lesson planning and other errands I might need to run. This Wednesday I got to go to the Humane Society in the next-door town and walk dogs with one of the other Americans, and had a blast. I am looking forward to getting my dog time in by going there a lot in the future!

                

So, after the morning is over, I go to the school in Deauville for lunchtime, which starts at 11:45. Let me just talk about the school lunches that they serve here. They are amazing. First, they serve an appetizer-type thing. Sometimes it’s soup, sometimes it’s a salad, sometimes it’s something else, but every day it’s good. Then, they serve sliced baguette, and then they serve a meat and a side. After that, they usually serve a fruit or another type of dessert. Sometimes they serve a little cheese and bread before the dessert. Everything they serve is made very well and is delicious.

               

In the actual cafeteria, it’s very much unlike an American cafeteria, or at least the cafeterias I grew up with. There are tables with six people at each table. There are actual, real-life place settings for each person, with a plate, fork, knife, spoon, and glass. Food is brought to each table individually in separate dishes with enough food for six people, and there are pitchers of water at each table. The animateurs (that includes me and the other Americans, as well as many other people) sit at the tables with the kids and eat with and supervise them during this time. The younger kids at school have recess and then they eat, but I eat with the bigger kids, who switch with them and eat first and then have their recess.

               

I leave at a little after 1PM each day to go teach, and at this point the kids have finished lunch and are still playing so I don’t get to be there for the whole recess. I take the car to Tourgéville if it’s a Monday or Tuesday and to St. Arnoult if it’s a Thursday or Friday. I start teaching at 1:30 at both of them. On Mondays and Tuesdays, I teach a combined CE2/CM1/CM2 class (3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th graders), then a combined CP/CE1 class (1^st and 2^nd graders), and then a MS/GS class (preschool and kindergarteners). On Thursday afternoons, I teach a combined CE1/CE2 class (2^nd and 3^rd graders), and on Fridays I teach that same class but divided into two different groups (30 minutes for each group), and then I take either the CM1s or the CM2s and teach, but the grade I take alternates week by week.

              

The kids I teach are super energetic (sometimes scary energetic) and a lot of them are very motivated to learn English, which encourages me and raises my spirits. English lessons are 45 minutes long for the older kids and 30 minutes for the younger ones, and time can definitely fly by if I have planned my lesson well and they’re interested in it.

                

After class time is over, I lead after-school activities, or APEs as they call them here, at the school in Deauville, starting at 4. On Mondays and Tuesdays it’s kind of a rush to get back to the school, because I finish teaching at 3:45 at Tourgéville. The activities are led by the animateurs. The kids have signed up for which activity they want to do, depending on which activity is available for their grade level. I lead a Craft activity with CMs, Board Games with the CEs, an activity about Art Vocabulary with CMs, and then an American Folk Dance activity with the CPs throughout the week. These activities can be super fun, but they also have their challenges. I think the kids for sure enjoy them!

                

After the activities (APEs) are done at 5, the animateurs have garderie. This is a time where the kids are allowed to play outside for a little bit, and then we go inside and help them with their homework. Usually they have reading, spelling, or math to do. They can go back outside after their homework is done, but recently since the time changed, it has been too cold and dark to go back out, and so we play games inside.

                

Deauville Beach

At 6, the Americans are finished with garderie and go home. At this point, I am usually pretty exhausted, so I start getting dinner ready, change into more comfortable clothes, and chill out and plan lessons or do some other activity (recently I’ve been on a kick of listening to podcasts. If you have any good recommendations, please let me know!) until I write in my journal and then go to bed. I try to go to sleep by 9:30, but a lot of days that doesn’t happen. Then it starts over again!

               

I hope this has been informative for you and that it gives you at least a little sense of what it’s like to be an English TA in Deauville! There is so much more to say about specific events and stories, things that have happened, and our travels over our recent fall break, but I think I’ll save those for a later entry. So stay posted!

                

I appreciate you and wish you all the best! Goodbye for now!