My classes/rugrats

I teach 6ème and 5ème SVT, which is only three hours a week for each class. I may add an English class or two next year because I feel like a bit of a slacker compared to the other teachers.

Also, I call them rugrats, and in terms of their schooling, they still have 5-6 years to go before they could go to University, but age-wise they're older than you might think! 5ème is 15-16ish, and 6ème is 14-15ish.

In 6ème I have 69 students, and in 5ème I have 88. That's pretty normal among volunteers, although some have classes of 100+....yikes.

Needless to say, classroom management was a daunting prospect before I started, but I think I've been managing pretty well... How, might you ask?

Okay. It's time to confess...

I may or may not have re-read Harry Potter during training when we were discussing classroom management and group work. So I figured, why not   get some team spirit up in this place and have a little competition?

Each class has four teams (not houses, sorry) based on the four columns of desks in the classroom. They win points for participating in class and doing well on tests. They lose points by being disruptive, cheating on tests, or deciding that they don't want to take notes that day. At the end of the year, everyone on the winning team gets a point added to their average.

It was a little hard to explain the idea at first, but once I started dishing out points for participation, they got very competitive very quickly. ;)

When I was home for Tess' wedding, I got candy for my students, a week or so after I gave it to them, they started begging for more. The new rule was this: if EVERY team has more points than Madame by the end of the year, I'll bring candy again...BUT since I already brought 69/88 pieces of candy, I started off with 69/88 points. (I had to catch up somehow!)

Just for your enjoyment, here are the team names:

6ème: Butterflies, Cats, Lions, Rabbits

5ème: Lions, Panthers, Workers (lol), and my personal favorite... Team Solidarity (hahahahhahaah)

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the little weirdos:

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Student A: Meow...meow...

Student B: Madame, it's the cats! Minus 2!

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(Going over the test)

Me: Okay, if you only wrote this part, I gave you 1 point because I'm nice.

Student A: THANK YOU Madame!!! Plus 2, you're nice!

Student B: No, only plus 1...

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Student A: Madame, we're done, right? We're hungry...

Me: I'm hungry too! But we're not finished. We have to finish this page.

Student B: Madame!!!! That's so much!!!

Student C: Minus 2 from Madame!

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This past week they've been begging me to add points to their averages...

Me: No, ce n'est pas necessaire

Students A and B: Madame! C'est NECESSAIRE!!

<< after that same class, a couple of my favorite girls were walking in the same direction as me - NOTE they're both the type that like to pretend they're sassy, but really they're super sweet >> 

Student A: Madame...I am not happy.

Student B: Yeah Madame, not nice...

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And last but certainly not least....

I took these pictures during the last tests.

The one from the back of the classroom is 5ème, and the one from the front is 6ème.

Can you spy the clown (Cedric) in 6ème who caught me taking the picture? Kid's cheesin hard. ;)

xo, c

School in BF

Hello friends!!!

It's been a while! 

In honor of the end of the trimester, I thought I'd tell y'all a bit about my classes.

First things first... Some things about the education system here don't make a lot of sense to us Americans. There's definitely room for improvement, but very little of that change can be done on the village-level -- schools have to comply with the Ministry of Education, after all. Teachers and schools do the best with the system they have (admittedly, some are more motivated and do better than others, but that's to be expected) but no matter how good your teachers are, it's really hard to succeed as a student here.

Here's the general info first, and then my next post will be specifics about MY little hooligans!

SCHOOL YEAR

The school year starts on October 1st, and as I said, we're on the trimester system. Although each trimester is weighted equally in terms of grades, the third trimester is only about a month and a half long.

GRADE LEVELS

(Apparently this is the French system, but don't quote me on that)

After primary school (and after passing the national standardized test), you start with "sixième" (6ème), which means "6th." It basically means "sixth from the end," and after 6ème, you continue to 5ème (fifth from the end), etc.

After 3ème, you take another national standardized test, which you must pass before continuing on to seconde and premiere, and the last year is called "terminale." After terminale, you take the final, big terrifying test (the BAC) and if you do well, you can go to University.

CLASSES

At my school, we have one class per grade level, but bigger schools may have a couple sections for the lower grades. At my school (and I think this is normal), 6ème and 5ème are the largest classes, and then they continue to get whittled down by pass rates as the years go on. 

Each class (grade level/section of grade level) has its own classroom, and teachers move between classrooms to teach their classes.

COURSES

In 6ème, students (at my school) have the following classes:

History/Geography

French

English (their first English class)

Math

SVT ("Science de la vie and de la terre" is biology)

In 4ème (I think!) they add physics and chemistry (one class, "PC" - physics for first half of the year, chemistry for the second)

SCHOOL DAY

Classes start at the ungodly hour of 7am. Every day, a group of students in each class sweeps the classroom before the first class...in theory... I have 6ème at 7am on Monday mornings and we never start before 7:10 because "Madame, they haven't swept yet!" 😑

Classes are 55 minutes long, but sometimes have double blocks.

"Recreation" is from 9:45-10:15, and women come to sell juice and snacks to the students (and teachers 😉).

Morning classes finish at noon, and some days (probably 2/5), afternoon classes will start at 3 and end by 5.

Stay tuned for specifics and let me know if I left anything out!

xo, c