I'm very very very very vewy vewy vewy 'appeeee

Teacher: How are you?
Students: I'm very happy.
I'm so-so.
I'm cold!
I'm sick!
I'm fine.
I'm really happy!
I'm very very happy.
Student Z: I'm very very very very very ... vewy happy!

Today was a primaire day. I love primary school days, the children are so 'appy and enthusiastic. I met two new classes today (a CM1 and a CE1) and met up with the class that I did professions with last time.

The first class, a CM1 went fine. I hadn't really hit my stride yet. My CE2 (the class I taught professions last week) was fantastic. For today, I planned and prepared materials on Halloween (as this week is the last I'll have before Halloween... next week is vacation, hollaaaa). The tricky thing with the primaires is that they can really only learn a few words at a time. By that, I mean six is pushing it. So for today, I chose: scared (as a new option to How are you?), witch, ghost, monster, pumpkin and CANDY (or, alternatively sweets... which I think is how I will say it Thursday).

After the English class ritual of How are you?/What's your name?/What's the weather like? I reviewed the professions from last week. Then I busted out the awesome drawings I made of the aforementioned six. I've taken to trying to portray sounds with my whole body. I think it's only semi-effective in improving accents, but it's hella-effective in making kids happy. Cowboy now has a jump (like a boiiiiing) at the end. We shall see if it helps them remember on Thursday.... For with I did a scrunched up face and tried to bare my teeth a bit to show them how to make the short I sound instead of weeeetch. Pumpkin gets two jumps for its two plosive ps! Scared comes along with mimed biting of hands and exagerrated s's. In presenting the words, I tried to jump back to the prior ones fairly frequently. Otherwise, they really don't remember.



After that, I drew a super basic Halloween story. And pointed to the objects/ideas they had just learned. What's that? Yes, PumPkin! very good! I wanted to show with the story how the kids go up in costumes to get candy without resorting to explain it in French. The first week at primaire, I spoke a lot in French. From here on out, I'm trying very hard not to. This will be a lot easier once they've learned how to play the different games I'll be using.

Speaking of games....


For the CM1s today I tried the game jeu à six caisses. The students are in pairs with the same six images. One student arranges their images from 1 to 6, the other asks "Number 1, what are you?" I made mine for if we had extra time I could quiz them on numbers. How many eyes (points to eyes) does the monster have? *I* have two eyes. How many does the mooonster have?

With my CE2s (who studied professions last week), I brought together the professions vocab and some of their new words from today for a modified bingo. Each kid chose three images and then I called out different images. The first to have all three called wins! Then they can either be they one to call out professions or whatever you like. Each student got one candy corn. I would have given them more but they all only took one. Mysterious kids. They were also all super well behaved and waited until the end of class to have their one candy corn. They also each got at least one sticker. Some that responded well got even more. Whoawhoaa. Even more mysterious, the kids *liked* the candy corn. I'm glad I brought it. Haha

My last class of the day was with the CE1s. This was literally their first English class EVER. Luckily, the extremely talented teacher did the lesson that day and I was more of a prop. It was so great to watch. Unfortunately, I've got to get off the computer/leave the school now, but I'll update more on that in the future.

Coming soon... la plage. Ah, the beach.