Lundi 22.01.07 Animal antics
Today is David’s birthday. Nic and I had offered to meet him for lunch but we’re putting it off till tomorrow as he’s on top of the world today. Well, he’s on top of Montagne Pelée. Himself and Karla are two assistants who manage to get by with minimal workloads so they’re indulging in their four day weekend; if you can call getting up at 6,00 and climbing a fog-filled mountain indulgence. Nic and I gave David a DVD for his birthday. It’s no ordinary gif’ as we made it ourselves with clips and pictures from our time here. It tells the story of how he, this young Scottish lad, came to Martinique, met two lovely Irish girls and finally became converted to the Irish way of life – David, or Daithí as he’s now known, also gets turned into a Leprechaun and there’s a complementary Irish/English dictionary to help him translate what the Irish say from day to day. It was a hoot to make and we split our sides every time we watch it – I’m now waiting in my surgery gown for my twentieth round of stitches!
Actually school is a little like what I imagine surgery to be like: you prep yourself; go in for the operation; and come out either mended or ended. Today is a bit of a strain with the older years. Incidentally Madame Bois is in hospital this week for an operation and her colleagues have divided her class between them. Madame Caruge and Mr Duval have the better behaved students so even though I things go slower as there are more pupils to participate they all co-operate.
This week we’re continuing with colours and animals; pets, farm animals and wild animals. Class starts with Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes as the kids love to omit different words each time. I launch into the lesson with colours. I have coloured cut-out shapes and matching tags so we go through them and pair up the colours. I then mix up the tags as they close their eyes and I choose people to come up and re-match the words and the coloured shapes. I then go around the class asking each child to:
Show me something red (in the classroom).
I then pick up items and ask them:
What colour is it?
To which they reply:
It is red. It is red and green.
We then go through the following questions and responses:
Have you got a pet?
Have you got any animals?
R Yes, I have a dog.
What colour is it?
It is black and brown.
The dog is black and brown.
Have you got a tiger?
Q No, I haven’t.
I have a dog.
Firstly, we go through the dialogue orally and then I stick the words on the blackboard and form the sentences. I draw a line where the animal and colours should be. I get them to ask me the questions and I concoct my own answers by sticking an animal in the space and choosing two colour tags.
I also explain how useful the structure of these questions and responses are as they can be adapted to ask for, or about, most things;
Have you got any sweets? Have you got glasses? Have you got a pen?
Next the different animal cut-outs are distributed among the pupils so they have one each. I go around the classroom asking each student the above questions. They reply, affix their animal to the board, choose two relevant colour tags to describe their animal and also stick them in the sentence spaces.
The colour tags all stay in one word pool but once a student places his animal in the place of the previous one the removed creature goes to another blackboard and the student has to write the animal’s name beside it. It’s a good way to practise the alphabet but with some slower students the activity seems to drag; however, slowly, but surely, chip becomes sheep, fich evolves into fish and turtel changes back into turtle.
My younger pupils partake in un sondage, or survey. I draw a massive grid with markings on the y-axis and the eight pets along the x-axis. First off we repeat the names of the pets and then I get pupils to match the name tags to the pet. We then count to twelve and I explain plurals: one dog, two dogs; one rabbits, three rabbits; one mouse, four mice; one fish, ten fish. Finally, for our survey, I ask each student:
Have you got a pet?
Q No, I haven’t.
R Yes, I have a dog.
R Yes, I have a dog, two cats and ten fish.
If a child says they have one dog I draw a box above the animal and write 1 inside it. Likewise if the same child also has five rabbits I draw a box above Benjamin Bunny and write 5 in it. Some children take great liberties with their choice of animals. One guy ends up with two parrots, one dog, four cats, 10 fish, one hamster, one turtle, five rabbits and one mouse. At least he’s exercising his number and animal vocabulary. Another boy has one cat, four dogs and thirty fish. The lone cat must have a field-day in that house. Of course some kids don’t have conventional pets as such. A little guy has a goat and two sheep, and he tells me he had two cows but they died. They were fried sonny…
Madame Acina’s lot have 64 pets between them, with only three of the 19 kids not having any animals at all. There are only eight kids in Madame Thaly’s class today. I did hear on the radio this morning that some nearby collèges recently had a lot of sick pupils due to suspected canteen contaminations. Catherine assures me that the flu is doing the rounds here. Between the five girls and three boys present they have 22 pets but three of them don’t have any. One girl has seven hens which don’t make the survey. Maybe they’ll make dinner later…
With Madame Acina’s group we later progress onto the second part of last week’s worksheet. The following sentences appear on the worksheet for this exercise. I form the sentences on the board and we repeat them:
Have you got a pet?
Q No, I haven’t.
R Yes, I have a dog.
The worksheet contains a grid with two columns. The first column is to be filled with the name of a friend and the second column is for your friend’s pets. So, if Maleka has a cat and two dogs you fill it in as follows: MALEKA (1st column)
1 CAT _ 2 DOGS (2nd column)
Madame Thaly’s group didn’t get around to the first colouring exercise last time so we rework with colours and animals before reading through the sentences: The parrot is blue and yellow. The kids have been told to mark the word with the corresponding colours as all the visual aides will be packed up at the end of class. The kids shade in Pretty Polly, sharpen colouring pencils and soon start squawking that the animals have flown from the blackboard jungle.
I decide to head straight home after school. I reckon I can survive on spuds for lunch this once. I tidy up my photos for my Blog; it needs some pictures to jazz it up, and to make up for the lack of entries over the holidays.
Nicola returns home later in the evening. She asks if I remember the Christmas party we were invited to at Lycée Schoelcher which we didn’t attend. I distinctly remember being in Cyber Delice and deciding not to bother trekking up the hill in the midday heat. It turns out it was a surprise party for Nicola to welcome her to Martinique! One of her teachers asked her today why she didn’t go. Supposedly all her colleagues turned up. It wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t there. She wasn’t explicitly told that she had to be there or that it was for her. That one display of Martiniquan hospitality will probably not be matched. If they have farewell party for her she may not be there either!
David texts to thank us for his birthday present. He’s chuffed. We actually stick it on again to get another few laughs out of it. Fred calls around but he doesn’t seem to appreciate our Irish humour. One thing he does grasp is animals. He has to ask what I’m teaching the children this week. He tells me he likes animals too as he takes out his phone and shows me the almost undistinguishable head of a hog – in a plastic bag. He hunts. Oh dear. Deer. I get an eyeful of three fawns spread out on the grass and other more graphic pictures follow. The bollox kills animals for fun. Neither Nic nor I want to hear the gory details. It’s soon time to shut up shop and shut Fred up. I’m not an animal activist but it’s unpleasant to think about Bambi getting blasted and Thumper being bumped off. Pleasant pheasant dreams.
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