Awaiting the german invasion - Jeudi, 18.01.07

Jeudi 18.01.07 Awaiting the german invasion

Poor Nicola was up at 5,00 only to check her timetable a while later and find out she’s not due in for another five hours. I try not to make too much noise but I reckon that Arlette has already set the precedent, with our recommended daily decibel intake probably matching that of a miners. Anyway between Nic’s whirring fan and stash of Air France earplugs I’m sure she can stifle the sound of me mashing bananas.

I’m tempting fate by eating fig-pommes since the mosquitoes love the way they mingle in your blood. However, man can’t live on banana-jaune alone; desert bananas are sweet and tasty - just as I am to the mosquitoes and mosquito men such as John ‘my good neighbour husband’. He has been out of the picture lately as he was in Paris over Christmas to see his child and play in some concert-cafés. Or so he tells me at the bus-stop later in the day when I’m lugging home some overpriced groceries from Mercure; bag of spuds, packet of choc-chip biscuits, ten slices of gouda cheese and six eggs for €14 – the cheese, at €4.60, was only €1 less than the sack of potatoes. I spy John across the street wearing his trademark army camouflage cap. He also notices me and he crosses over to greet me with a greasy cheek kiss. He asks me about my holidays and I indulge in telling him about my fabulous Christmas before coming back to earth with my tales about what I’m teaching my pupils at the moment:

I was supposed to meet with Jossylene today but she, once again, got distracted. This time it was a project on Germany which she was glued to – literally. Two primary schools in Martinique, one in Schoelcher and another in Lamentin, will be the first two primary schools on the island to take on German as a foreign language and to mark the occasion children from schools in the circonscription have been producing posters and presentations on Germany for the inaugural launch this weekend. German is overtaking Spanish in the language acquisition rates here. English is still on top.

For the remainder of the week I’m still concentrating on animals and time. I use the clock exercise to break-up our animal antic. I’ve added hands to my clock cut-out and so I get the pupils to ask one another: What time is it? as they each change the time and take a turn at answering: It is ___ o’clock. It’s my turn next as I ask:

Cyril, is it 6 o’clock?
Yes, it is 6 o’clock. No, it is __ o’clock.

I get through all the pet, farmyard animal and wild animal cut-outs with the older classes. Each child presents an animal:

It is a dog. It is a giraffe.
The dog is brown and black. The giraffe is orange and brown.

I then go around asking:

Do you have a fish?

The response is:

Yes. I have a fish. or No. I have a ____.
It is red and orange. It is ___ and ____.

Next, the pupils are divided into groups. Each group gets an assortment of animals and I ask:

Who has the snake?

To which the relevant group responds:

We have it.
It is a snake. (holding it up)

This exercise sometimes becomes an individual effort as some groups share out the animals or just become plain possessive.

My cultural piece for this class is to tell the pupils about Ireland’s wild creatures or lack of, especially the lose of our snake population thanks to St. Patrick – we will be learning about him in a few weeks for St. Patrick’s Day. The younger children are told about how spoilt some pets are in Anglophone countries; the presents they get, their presence within a family, the funeral arrangements!

A few of the groups storm through the lesson and we end up having a quiz with me asking questions such as:

Which animal has a long neck?
Which animal gives us milk?
Which animal likes cheese?
Which animal has large ears?
Which animal says ‘baa’?
Which animal carries his house on his back?

Of course I prompt them and I nearly strain a few muscles with the wild actions I pull off to aid them. Some pupils complain that they can not understand but it’s an exercise in listening as well as comprehension and once they’ve hushed themselves they begin to associate milk with milkshake and ears with Head, shoulders, knees and toes…

I concentrate on pets and colours with the younger years as I have a worksheet for them which involves colouring certain animals certain colours. Before we get to the pastel and paper round we play listen and repeat and listen and touch with the six pets and the ten coloured shapes (circle, square, triangle). We also play hide and seek as I remove a cut-out and they have to guess what creature or colour is gone. Eventually the corresponding name tags are added to each cut-out. Together we read through the worksheet sentences: The tortoise is green. 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 are soon shading, sharpening colouring pencils and shrieking that the animals have disappeared from the board. The tortoise is green. The tortoise is slow.

My good husband John was on Nicola’s bus this morning and he informed her that the strange hairless cat creature we spotted at Sainte-Anne during the holidays was a manicou - it’s a member of the rat family and some people actually eat it. I presume Nicola didn’t consider this fact when she chose to go for lunch in a Chinese with Gethin this evening. Gethin has some nasty blisters on his feet and he rings me to ask what blisters are in French – ampoule (f), cloque (f). Thankfully I’ve finished my pizza at this stage and am now stretched out on the couch getting my chart fix on the Hit Zone.