February 23, 2010

This week we covered members of the family, activities, days of the week, and animals. Though it had been two weeks since our last meeting, the kids still remembered a bit of what they learned last time which was very good. Unfortunately, one of our students has moved. This leaves us with only four girls to teach.

Joseph started off with teaching members of the family. He did a good job of covering the vocab. After going over the words a few times, the girls were able to answer questions on how to say family members in french. He also pointed out the similarity of french and english words and assured them that french is easy. I think this makes the students more comfortable with the french language.

Mike then taught activities in french and introduced verbs such as aimer(to like) and jouer(to play). The students were able to say what they enjoyed doing in french like swiming or coloring. He also showed them how to say the days of the week.

Hillary and I taught animals together. We hid beenie babies throughout the classroom. The girls worked in pairs to try and find the animals on their lists. I think they had fun doing this. After they finished finding animals, they sat down, and we showed them pictures of animals and the the word for them in french. We quized them to see if they could name the animal in french, and surprisingly, despite how quickly we had covered the vocab(we were running out of time), they were able to say the names of the animals. I was very impressed.

I think this week was a success. I enjoyed teaching, and I really think the kids are learning from this.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

For the first day of class, we started with the alphabet and went over it several times, so the students could hear how letters are pronounced in french. After that, we went over introductions such as "Bonjour", and "Je m'appelle ____". The students colored and wrote these phrases on the cover of their alphabet books. They also learned colors and were able to say their favorite one. We went over the words for hands and feet so the students could play a game of Twister using a bit of the french vocabulary they just learned.

The students were very well behaved. Several of them seemed like they were getting the hang of it. However, I felt there were times they started to get bored. I hope my group and I can come up with ways to keep them interested, because I want the students to enjoy our time together. I don't want them to feel that they're just stuck at school for another hour. For the next class, I would like to discuss with my fellow group members step by step how we will be teaching. I thought transitioning from the different topics we were teaching was somewhat unorganized.

Overall, I'd say we're off to a good start. I look forward to next week.