Status Report

Il fait beau.

That's actually a flashcard I made for one of my French classes. I got to teach them about the weather.

And that's about what my week has been like, to be honest. Il fait beau.

I have been digging the challenge so far of introducing French as an Additional Language to students who are also English language learners themselves. There's a really interesting dynamic within the classroom. All of my students have never experienced French language learning before entering this particular class, so the class starts from the basics. Alphabet. Pronunciation. Basic vocabulary. We haven't even really covered the parts of a sentence yet...I get to introduce verb conjugation (just...verbs in general, present tense of regular ER verbs) after March Break, and we're anticipating that it might take the entire two weeks post-MB to do so.

But there's another snag. Since all of my students are English language learners, there is already a language barrier because I speak English. So I have been trying to speak French in the classroom so they can get as much modified input as possible, but there is a great challenge in attempting to explain exercises to them. If I speak French even at a very slow pace to explain something, they grow even more confused...mainly because they've never really received any input in French whatsoever before the semester started. If I speak English to them to explain an activity, sometimes I get the same confused expression. It is an exercise in scaffolded communication, and I absolutely and genuinely dig the challenge.

If I can teach these guys French, I think I can teach anyone French.

And now, at 10pm on the Sunday night before Week 2, I marvel at how, once again, practicum seems to be moving at the speed of light.

This week, I'm going to poke my nose in on (hopefully) some kind of extracurricular activity so I can get involved with the school community. I also need to plan and create a culminating task with a carefully-scaffolded rubric in plain and simple language. I need to grab at the challenge of planning a unit on Haiti for the grade 10 class (which is in a world of its own, let me tell you - I don't get to take over that class fully until after March Break). And lastly, I need to pull myself into the here and now so I can plan a lesson that my curriculum instructor will observe and "evaluate" on Tuesday morning.

But yes, to sum up...I'm not only surviving practicum, but I seem to be thriving. The challenge of teaching an additional language is interesting and exhilarating. Not to mention that I am teaching the language to a class full of people who seem to actually want to learn.

Il fait beau indeed.