All posts tagged: lesson

Art Lessons to do with your Primary Students

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One of my regular duties as an English teaching assistant was teaching weekly arts plastiques lessons for CP and CE1 (1st and 2nd grade). Their teacher occasionally came up with ideas, but she wasn’t very crafty (her words), so most weeks she left it up to me. Going off of various topics they were working on in other subjects, I came up with a number of fun crafts that we used to decorate the classroom, the hallways, and a few that they got to take home as well :). I also have a small amount of art activities I did in my preschool classes, which they loved! It took me a while to figure out how to do these kinds of lessons well, but I’m so glad I persevered, because doing a craft is so much more rewarding than just reciting vocabulary. It was sometimes tough, because the school (and I don’t think mine is an outlier in this) did not have the type of resources I am used to in American school art classes. I tried to use the available …

Flashcard games!

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Here we go, current/future assistants, just in time for the start of your contracts. My favorite, easiest games that require little-to-no prep!! Plus, see here for my favorite art activities! Flashcard games GALORE!!!!! Flashcards and other visuals are so important to teaching new vocabuluary. Your colleagues may have flashcards you can use, especially for basic things like the weather, days of the week, or emotions, etc. But if they don’t, you should ABSOLUTELY create some. Simple clip art or hand drawn faces/sunshines/rain clouds/animals are all you need. There are tons of games you can play with vocab flashcards….here are a few of my favorites: Show me – Very simple premise: ask a student to show you one of the vocab words. They come to the board and point to it. Or, you can pass out the cards and call out a word and the person with the corresponding card must hold it up. Another variation is to hang the flashcards on all sides of the room, and students must point to them when each is called. What’s …

Primary Assistant FAQ

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In my time obsessively stalking all TAPIF blogs past, current and future, I’ve noticed the prevalence of secondary assistants across the interweb. It makes sense: there are way more of them! There are commonalities between the expectations and experiences of primary and secondary assistants, but seeing as most of the info out there seems to be geared towards the secondary level, I want to share some ideas that will be specifically helpful to current and future primary assistants, as they can be very different jobs.

The Waiting Game: making it through the long summer before TAPIF

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April 1st, 2015: I woke up in the morning to a text from my friend Giulia: Attention aux poissons sur ton dos! I arrived at school and every child had a little paper fish on their desk that they “sneakily” tried to tape on people’s backs. In France, April Fool’s Day is Poisson d’Avril, and these fish are part of the practical joke tradition. Later, I heard about a teacher who tried to trick her kindergarteners into doing worksheets meant for 5th grade, another who spent an hour teaching his class Chinese, as a “new school initiative”, and another who announced a fake pop quiz. We decorated fish during art class!

Take a ride on the Paris Métro!

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Bonjour Westgate!! Today I want to tell you about something important to the life of every single Parisian: Public Transportation!! In big cities like Paris, Washington DC, and New York it’s very important to have an effective system of public transportation  so that people don’t have to drive everywhere. More than 2.2 million people live in Paris; can you imagine if all of them drove to work every single day?! Luckily, Paris has one of the best Metro systems in the world!

Bonjour Westgate!!

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Bonjour Third Grade, à Paris! (Hello, from Paris!) I’ve been here almost 2 weeks now, and I’ve been learning so much. Mrs. Donnelly told me you might want to learn about Paris too, so I made this post for you! This is the Eiffel Tower, the most famous building in all of France!  In French we say La Tour Eiffel, but some people call it “la dame de fer” which means The Iron Lady. This monument was built in 1889 for the World’s Fair in Paris. It’s named after Gustave Eiffel, the man whose company was in charge of building it (his company also made the frame of the Statue of Liberty in New York City!).