Chinese please - Jeudi, 25.01.07

Jeudi 25.01.07 Chinese please

I start my classes with an animal related song today: Who’s the King of the Jungle?

Who’s the King of the Jungle?
Ouh. Ouh.
Who’s the King of the Sea?
Bauba. Bauba. Bau.
Who’s the King of the Universe, the garden, field and tree?

I’ll tell you…

L-I-O-N
Lion. Yes!

He’s the King of the Jungle.
Ouh. Ouh.
But he’s not the King of the Sea.
Bauba. Bauba. Bau.
He’s not the King of the Universe, the garden, field or tree.
Bauba. Bauba. Bau.
Ouh. Ouh.

The younger kids really go wild for this song. I actually get requests from Madame Acina’s class to do the Ouh. Ouh. Song. I’ve already got my aides stuck to the other side of the blackboard so I open up and start singing, motioning to the cut-outs and generally acting-the-ape.

I run the risk of turning into a juke-box so I close the blackboard flaps and commence with colours and shapes as I had intended. The kids know most of the colours but there are a few stragglers I have to pin-point. We listen and repeat, listen and touch, match the tags to the colours, play Hide&Seek and rematch my mismatched tags until we’re blue, red, green, yellow, orange, white, black, brown, pink and purple in the face.

Today’s dialogue is minimal but I ask them their name before doing a task. When they respond I give an order such as: Touch the red circle. Point to the yellow square. Give me the white triangle. We then divide into two teams for a speed round of listen, think and touch. I get the two competing pupils to turn their backs to the board and only when they are certain that they know the answer do they turn and touch. Madame Acina’s class have the Pink Porky Pig and Baa Baa Black Sheep teams while Madame Thaly’s group choose Pretty Polly Parrot and Slimy Slippery Snake.

I end the lesson by running through the different habitats where animals live and I bring in relevant vocab to help them understand the newest song. We go through the actions and the class ends with a final rendition of Who’s the King of the Jungle? One little girl in Catherine’s class comes up at the end and asks me if we can learn a song about pets. She doesn’t have one in mind but between Old MacDonald and Co. I’m sure I can make up one…

I have an easy time with the CM2 classes too. It’s out with the copybooks today as I divide the animals into three groups: Pets: Farm Animals: Wild Animals. Each child gets an animal.

I ask: Who has the hamster? The owner replies: I’ve got it, before presenting it whatever way they choose; I have a fish: It is a sheep: The giraffe is brown and orange. They place the animal in the correct group, look for the tag in the pile and then I go through the plural for each animal. I highlight the tricky ones and explain the changes as well as explaining why we say an elephant as opposed to a elephant. A banana. An apple. An egg.

In their copies they copy down the groupings, the animals and their plurals. Of course some can not just copy things directly from the board but I suppose sneaking around with a red pen is part of my job.

While the pupils are transcribing I get to have a natter with the teachers. Madame Caruge is proud of her class. They behave so well, work diligently and are respectful of their peers and teachers – unlike other classes she adds. She has trained them to work amid noise and disruption. The lunch vans and messengers pass by their class every waking hour and they seem oblivious to these external distractions. There are two beings however who cause internal distractions. They aren’t disruptive and in fact the pupils have learnt to live with their rustlings, their cooing and their flighty ways; two pigeons sit on top of the cupboard each day observing the class. They don’t have a nest but they’ve got the best seats in town as they huddle together amongst paper crowns and ornamental twigs taking in leaves and lessons.

I’m supposed to have a meeting with Jossylene tomorrow but the kids have Sports Day which means I don’t have class. I tidy up the essay she asked me to fix and slide it under Claude’s door before trying to call her. I send her a text; filling her in on the whereabouts of her file, and jokingly quoting a future fee for my sub-editing services!

Its Chinese for lunch today. My cow-pow beef looks a bit underdone but it goes down well. Nicola has some slimy chicken chow-pow but it disappears too. One of the girls behind the counter seems to know some other assistants and we briefly linger on the steps talking to her before the monosodium glutamate kicks in and we kick off. Nic buys some sickly sweet drink which should be diluted with a gallon of water before drinking it. I take a swig and silently pray that there are no beehives about; sugar to the hips, bees to the lips. We pass a specialist food store and Nic pops in to inquire about glutton-free, gluten-free, for-a-fee bread while I window shop with her just-lit fag in my hand. There’s a blow-up Mario Santa Claus doll in the window next door and I resist letting off some of his hot air with the smouldering fag.

Back at the ranch we give Will a jingle. He has had a cold and I swear after talking to him for a minute I can feel my own sinuses swelling already. We plan to go out at the weekend. No prizes for guessing where but if it serves a hot whisky we could all be saved.

We put on a DVD - Changing Lanes, and opt for the English version; Samuel L. Jackson may be a credible actor but Ben Affleck still needs an interpreter.

I don’t need anyone to tell me how drowsy I feel. I head to bed. Nic and I are communicating with cough and sneeze signals all night. Cough-cough. Splutter-splutter. Ah-chooo.