Teaching Terminale!

So for the final part of my assistantship in Lille, I was working with students in Terminale. They were mainly aged between 17 and 18 (although some were 19) and they were preparing for their BAC exams.

Most of the time I was given groups of 5-3 students and I had to do mock oral exams, so they had to present a 'notion' that they had worked on to me and I had to give them feedback.

 I always asked the students if they wanted to have a couple of minutes to prepare and after their preparation (reading notes) they had to present their work to me.

The majority were incredibly nervous, even though I told them so many times that I wasn't marking them or going to tell the teacher, but overall I was sooo impressed with them and always encouraged them.

Other groups still had to do proper lessons. I tried to incorporate the 'mock exams' into these classes as much as possible so that I could work out which areas they needed to improve. The problems varied but were mainly pronunciation, sentence structure and giving genders to random objects like tables (The table was nice, she was wooden and brown - obviously they weren't doing lessons on tables but this was the only example I could think of).

Other than the mock exam parts of the lessons, I tried to get them to do mind maps of the notions so that we could prepare potential exam questions together. For example, for the notion of progress I had them mind map everything that they knew about progress such as new technology, medicine, science, politics etc. etc.) and then we went through them together. After, I gave them a sheet with a question on like 'Is progress always positive?' and 2 columns with titles 'yes' and 'no'. We then as a class used the board to write our arguments for each column and then the students had to summarize and present their overall ideas to me.

These lessons worked incredibly well and most of the students told me they found it very helpful.

If anyone is looking for ideas of lesson plans or things to do with students in terminale in preparation for their exams, do not hesitate to ask me!

Sorry this post is so short, I will be doing longer posts again soon.

Thank you for reading!

Emily

Travelling to Bruges!

After Christmas, I was really feeling the back to work blues and so my friend, Jen, and I immediately booked a weekend away in Bruges.

We went from Lille Europe via train to Bruges. We had to stop at Courtrai but overall the journey was not a problem, taking around 2 hours.

As soon as we arrived we had lunch, which of course included some Belgian beer...

It was cherry flavoured.

...And then we went sight seeing, meaning we walked around aimlessly all day and ended up in Zara.

The canal

Me and Jen in front of a random canal

The 'Grand Place'

Another view of 'Grand Place'

After the travelling and walking we headed back to our Hotel which was literally a 2 second walk from Grand Place, down a street. I knew I would need a lie down so I attempted to have a nap but I couldn't and we decided to get ready to go out.

By the time we were ready (Literally 10:00pm) we had to run all over the city centre to find a cash-point and a restaurant that was a) open b) looked appetising c) would let us come in. We eventually found one and they quickly seated us and took our orders.

Escargots

Half a Lobster in garlic butter

I tried escargot for the first time for my starter, they weren't in their shells and so I thought the waiter had given me the wrong thing, but as it turned out, the black mushroom looking things were the snails. I was grossed out but they literally just tasted of garlic.

After that we came upon a very loud bar/ club and unintentionally ended up staying until 4am because the music was too good.

Me and Jen in the bar/club toilets

The next morning/ afternoon, we got up and checked out before walking all around Bruges again. We finally had a Belgian waffle for breakfast and it was insanely delicious but very very sickly.

Belgian waffle with nutella

The rest of the day we spent walking around Bruges, the sky was blue and beautiful, we were so lucky. Then, we got the train back to Courtrai and then Lille at around 4pm, which was again, a smooth journey.

There were beautiful monuments scattered all over the city

INFO FOR IF YOU'RE THINKING OF GOING TO BRUGES:

-We definitely went for the perfect amount of time, any more than 2-3 days may get boring as Bruges is quite small.

-The weather can be a bit crazy at times, one second the sky was blue and the next it started hail stoning and they were like golf balls.

-As expected, food and drinks were generally pretty expensive so don't go thinking you'll not spend a lot.

-Everywhere we went they spoke French and English as well as many others- for those who worry about languages.

-There was a small street just off Grand Place, next to the post office that had lots of chocolate shops, I would strongly suggest going because we got tasters!!

-There are not a lot of cash machines around, we managed to find a BNP Paribas that was open late close to Grand Place, but be aware.

- The horse and carriages literally do not care where you are, we were nearly ran over many many times.

-Bruges is a beautiful place, if you're considering going I would say GO FOR IT!!

Updates from France

Its been a while since I've given any updates on life in France, so I thought I would try to cover everything that has been happening in Lille...

Life after the Paris Attacks

By now, everyone will know about the horrific events that took place in Paris. I was at a friends when I heard and hurried back to my flat to watch the BBC news coverage, it was so scary because nobody knew when or where it would end.

The next day, we (British Council assistants) received an email to give us general information and advice on how to stay safe, as the terror threat was, and still is, very very high. Especially in Lille, as you must travel through Lille to get to Paris from Brussels (which shortly after the Paris attacks went into lock down) and vice versa. The general advice was to stay indoors, avoid public transport and the city centre, be aware of everything around you and make sure your school knew where you were.

I stayed indoors for the whole weekend, apart from one trip to the shop to stock up on food. I had expected to see people looking sad or scared but instead I saw a group of young men out jogging and laughing, one of them was just in swim shorts and it was raining. Very strange.

The schools were open on the Monday but the gates had to be closed at all times, usually they were wide open throughout the day, and we were told that if the students wanted to talk about the attacks, then they could and should. Most of my classes that week were discussing how they all felt and what they thought of it all.

 I was very surprised at how open minded they all were, because there had been some awful messages all over the internet about muslims and not letting refugees into Britain, Whereas here were 15 year old students who live near Calais, where the refugees are, and very close to Paris, saying 'we must stay strong', 'it is nothing to do with religion' and 'the refugees are running from terror, why should we deny them safety? what did they do?'.

We had a minutes silence at school and then I just happened to be passing Republique Beaux-Arts on my lunch break when I saw a huge crowd of people standing around a memorial for the Paris victims and I joined them in a minute of applause. 

In the weeks following the attacks, the security around Lille city centre has definitely increased. You now have to have your bags checked in a lot of shops, sometimes with a metal detector, especially in the shopping centre Euralille, which was (falsely) rumoured to be a target. There are also a lot more armed police on the streets and in train stations, which actually makes me feel worse.

The Lead up to Christmas

The Christmas decorations in Lille were put up in mid-November, which was so exciting and they are so pretty! Most main streets have their own welcome signs and set of lights.

The Christmas market is very cute and the food and drink isn't expensive at all like I had expected. The stalls are full of home made things such as Christmas decorations, wines, foods and clothes. There is also the big wheel which gives a great view of Lille city centre.

There is also a snow machine next to the Christmas tree sometimes

 I've also visited Arras Christmas market, it takes about half an hour on the train from Lille and the market is lovely. It is bigger than Lille's and has an ice rink which is great. I also tried maroilles cheese on chips which was very strange, it tasted like a very odd garlic sauce. Apparently it is very smelly (delicious).

Vin Chaud

Other than these things, I've just been working, eating and drinking- its a hard life.

 Thankyou for reading :)

Starting Teaching...

After my last blog post, it was the school 'half term' which lasted 2 weeks and so, due to lack of money to do anything, I decided to go home. I spent 10 days catching up with friends and family before returning to Lille to begin working properly.

So far, I work around 10 hours a week, the teachers are trying to get me 2 more hours so that I will be doing the full 12 hours that I am allowed to do. I am teaching (assisting) the 'Seconde' classes who are around 15 years old.

Here are some of the main events of the past 2 weeks of teaching:

• Some days, I start work at 8am and so I go for the bus at 25 past 7, so that I can arrive and have plenty of time to climb up all of the stairs to the 4th floor and not be sweating and panting like mad. As I leave this early (and as it is winter time and therefore dark more than it is light), I have seen such beautiful sunrises, it almost makes getting up so early worth it.

• I woke up last Friday to a very annoying buzzing and immediately knew that it was a mosquito. I pulled the duvet up so that just my face was peeking and felt something tickle my face so I smacked it and hurried to turn on the light, only to see that there was a squashed mosquito on my pillow and MY blood that it had been feasting on. I woke up later on with a lovely bite ON MY EYELID and so looked like Quasimodo until I got some cream. -Thankfully it didn't swell up properly until after my classes.

• My first ever lesson, I was given half of the class to go through a sheet about Jamie Oliver, I had no idea what to do and the class were laughing and talking, completely ignoring me. One student started reading out in a silly voice and I was so stressed out I didn't even call him out on it because I was scared he would say it was his real voice.....Since then, it has become a lot easier. I actually enjoy the lessons now that I've stopped taking it personally when they would rather chat to their friend than do the work that I have set them.

• A lot of my classes struggle with my accent, so I end up talking very slow and trying to sound posh, but even then one teacher told me that the students had finished my lesson and been convinced that I was Australian!?!?!

• I was asked to play a game with the students where 2 students were suspects in a murder investigation and had to be each others alibis while the rest of the class were detectives and asked questions, but I got the game wrong and had half the class be detectives asking the other half questions. My 'wrong' version actually worked a lot better than when I tried to play the real game and the students had so much more fun coming up with their own imaginary stories. Their English is amazing, I was walking around each small group to help them with vocabulary and sentence structure and overheard one girl saying 'I was his bodyguard, I heard him shout and so I broke down the door and found him on the floor, he was blue because he wasn't breathing! I hadn't heard anything, but I looked around and couldn't see any evidence of a break in so I felt his pulse and he was dead..'.

• I had a class of 11 students who wanted to move the tables into a U shape so that I could stand at the top and help them with work, but there was one student in my class who is 12 but has been moved up a few grades because he is very intelligent. The class were all picking on him, so he did not want to sit with the rest of the class in the U shape and he sat alone. I tried to compensate for not being good enough at French to tell them to pack it in and so was being overly nice to him for the whole lesson.  Another group of students in this class instead of wanting to talk about their 'ideal school' were cutting up each others pencil cases. Ah, teenagers..

• Whenever I run out of activities, or more often when the class is refusing to take part and I can't think of anything else to do, I turn to tongue twisters. I write something like 'The big bug bit the little beetle but the little beetle bit the big bug back' on the board and each student has a go. They really enjoy it and even after the lessons I hear them telling their friends in the corridor. HOWEVER.. normally the class will then demand that I have a go at a French tongue twister and although I've done the same one several times, I still find it hard: 'Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches?  Archi-sèches ?' 

• Each class that I have for the first time, I ask 'does anyone have any questions for me? About England? Or my life?' and some classes straight away have their hands up 'How long are you in France for?', 'Where are you from?', 'Do you gave a boyfriend?' etc. etc. - although one student said 'a little boy' instead of boyfriend because in French it is 'petit copain' or 'petit ami' which literally translates to little friend. Anyway, the more common response to my question is complete silence, they all stare and shake their heads whispering 'elle a dit quoi?' (what did she say?) , 'je ne comprends rien' (I don't understand) or simply...'Non' (no).

Other than teaching, I haven't been up to much, I've been attending a group called 'Franglish' each Tuesday, where you sit and talk to a French partner for 7 minutes in English and 7 minutes in French and then swap partners. It is interesting, but I find myself having the same conversations over and over in terrible French until I've had a couple of drinks...

The Christmas market is finally being set up and so I'm very excited for that opening very soon! Only 6 weeks to go till Christmas!

Paris! (Day 1- travelling)

Bonjour !

I haven't blogged in soooo long because I have just got back from Paris! I went with my boyfriend and we stayed with his sister for 6 nights, it's been great and I am gutted to be back!

My next holiday will be Florida which is in about 3 weeks... but I am going to do a few posts about Paris over the next few days and also giving some advice for anyone who is looking to go.

Day One

So to get to Paris, we used the Eurostar. This was both of our first times on the Eurostar train, although I have been through the tunnel in the car before.

We got 2 return tickets from Durham to Paris (obviously stopping at London) for £99 each, which is very good.

I would definitely recommend going via Eurostar as I have flown before but can barely remember and my boyfriend has been to Paris a few times and says he much preferred going by train. The security is very quick and easy and with there being a stop at London along the way, it splits up the journey (around 5/6 hours) and seems to go a lot faster. Also, the Eurostar stops directly in in centre of Paris at Gare du Nord, so we just had to hop on a metro to Place d'Italie when we got there and didn't need to get transfers or anything like that.

All in all, using the Eurostar turned out to be quicker than flying because going to the airport you have to be there early anyway, go through security, hang around in the departure lounge, board the plane, wait for take-off and then finally after 1.5 hours flying, land, go through to get bags, then eventually transfer to Paris.

Anyway, as I said we had to go to Place d'Italie, which is where my boyfriend's sister lives. This was a great area as it was very handy for the metro and close to lots of popular places, but also not touristy whatsoever, which was great.

It did have a few bars which were small and nice too, but we didn't really spend much time around there.

We went to a bar and a Vietnamese restaurant close by called Song Huong and all of us had this:

(Beef with tomato rice, an egg and salad)

It was amazing!!

We basically just went to bed after this, we were so tired and were going to have a big day the next day (I will post about that later today or tomorrow..)

I hope that this post has been helpful, I will be posting more exciting Paris related things very soon!

If anyone has any questions, don't hesitate to ask :)

My Year Abroad

At the end of April, I received this in an email, FINALLY confirming my offer of an assistantship in France. The region I chose was Lille (North) and I chose secondary school children, who I will be assisting in learning English!!

The next step in the process is sending off for a ICPC (International Child Protection Certificate) to confirm that I have no criminal records etc and obviously this involves having (not so) stunning passport-like pictures taken. After that, I will be finding out which school I should be going to!! Scary stuff.

I set up this blog for during my year abroad and so I just wanted to briefly outline where I am at with the applications and everything. Fingers crossed that everything runs smoothly until then!!

Emily X