Learning French flashmob

A lot of people around have been talking and writing about podcasts. Every resourse/blog on personal development topic says at least a few words about podcasts and audio books - sources of information that I have been denying for several reasons. But the joy of using them has finally found me and I can't wait to share one particular podcast that I have been trying out for the last week or so.

A short paragraph on how I came to it first though. I wanted to spend the time I usually waste in subway or on the bus somehow usefully. And on average I have about 15 minutes a day to spend on such an activity - to learn something new. Now, I;ve tried taking up Frnch several times but it never went any further than saying hello, goodbye and 5-10 verbs. So I thought I should try out French podcasts or something like that. And after 2-3 days of listening through several French teaching channels I discovered Coffee Break French on iTunes. These are 15-20 minutes lessons, and there are four seasons of 40 lessons each.

Being a teacher, it's very interesting for me to try a new approach - a way I never used to study something before. Audio-lingual method is completely new to me as to a student, and I am not an audial at all I must say. So the more interesting this experiment is.

Everyday I listen to an episode of the podcast (sometimes two episodes a day, but only if I'm in the mood) and that's all. I'm very interested about where it can take me and how much I can achieve listening to some French speech (well with English explanations, of course) for 15 minutes a day. I have 10th of June as my milestone - it will be 30 days since I started listening to the podcast - and I'm planning to revise everything on that day.

Besides that I also have Mr.Petrov's lessons on my plan. He uses grammar-translation method as a base, but he's become very popular in Russia and has his own TV show where he teaches different languages using his technique. His students aim at achieving simple speaking level by the end of 16 lessons. These lessons usually cover present, past and future tenses of the language, main 50-60 verbs and some basic topics like introducing yourself.

I want to combine these two ways of learning French and see what happens. Mr.Petrov's course is going to be just supplementary for me, I'm not going to plan any schedule like lesson a day. Whenevr I feel like I want to do more French and have 40 spare inutes, I'll start watching, but mainly my experiment is going to be focused on audio-lingual approach.

Bonne journee, mon amis! :)

Primary Colours Week

I have so many things to write about and I haven't written anything for so long!
Let me start with something that has just recently ended. We had a Primary Colours Week at Unium and it was awesome!

When I was in America, I remembered a Crazy Socks Day at school as something great that we don't have and as something that would make school life more fun and enjoyable. I always ask this question - why not have all different sorts of fun while studying if it doesnt' interfere with the actual learning process but what is more contributes to it?!

Teachers Crew on the Violet Day

And having special days seems to be one of those fun things. So at the second Speaking Club meeting (a bit later about that) we came across the topic of these special days and I offered our students to come with ideas of their own special day or rather a special week as we are not a usual school and our schedule is different. So while just one day wouldn't work for us, a week would suit perfectly. Students were encouraged to send their ideas to me by e-mail. After a week I created a poll to vote for the best idea (got three ideas from them but still it's an achievement, I think, since it was for the first time). And the idea of Primary Colours Week when everybody wears clothes of the colour assigned to a particular day won. So we went from red Monday down to violet Sunday following the rainbow order and it was awesome!

Kids that had me as a substitute teacher on the Blue Day

Since I have lessons only on Saturday and Sunday I was preparing for indigo and violet, but at some point suddenly a substitution came around and I went to one of our centres on Friday and brought every blue accessory I had with me and made the girls wear it and take a photo =))

It was so much fun! I'm sharing with you photos of my groups, not all of them followed the colour rules despite my request but still it was great and quite team building.

My Elementary group

So this upcoming Sunday we are going to reward the girl whose idea of Primary Colours Week was implemented and we have also made a competition for the most active educational centre and yesterday all the winners were chosen and now their prizes are on the way as well! :)

me, my student and two colleagues - Indigo Day

I'm glad that this idea came to my and my colleague's mind as we were writing the plan for the second meeting! I hope we will be able to do something like that next semester as well! I also think it will be fun to make some kind of quest/flashmob in summer so that the kids satay tuned over the brake.

Do you have any special days at school? Please share, I'd love to hear about your experience!