Eastenders

IN and HA are whispering to each other across the room. Very animated hand gestures, excited facial expressions - these year 7 girls still haven't cottoned on to the fact that it's very easy to spot students communicating during a test.

A note starts to make its way across the classroom - two sheets of folded paper in fact.

Me: Pass them here. This is a test.

IN: No, Sir, it's okay - we're not cheating.

Me: Of course not.

HA: Nah seriously, Sir, nah, man, nah we're not cheating!

I get up and take the folded paper from the messenger who currently clasps it nervously - torn between disobeying a teacher or 'snaking out' his classmate.

I open it up expecting a note of some kind - answers or gossip.

Instead it's an article expressing outrage about the latest EastEnders controversy involving the cot death baby story! You mean a vocab test ain't as riveting as this?!

Back to School

The last 7 weeks of the school year began today after a blissfully sunny half term.

BH decided that French was not what he wanted on his first day back in school. When I gave him a glue stick he started smearing it all over his friend's desk when his friend was allowed out to go to the toilet.

When I pointed out to BH that he should probably not be doing that, he shouted, "suck it, man, suck off!"

While I was trying to work out what that meant by this, he managed to storm out and leave the classroom in a huff. I was pleased that the rest of the class managed to carry on working without too much disruption.

Back to school, eh? Two detentions doled out already (the second to fat 11 year old ES who rocked up to school eating a pasta salad - how cosmopolitan! - at 10am and didn't know which lesson to go to).

Time for some sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Glee

25 Year 7s went missing on Thursday. They were found locked into the Dance Studio, being taken through their paces by LM, a feckless Year 10 girl, and AR, a camp Year 9 ruffian. LM, you see, had volunteered to run a dance club as part of her Youth Philanthropy Initiative project. This was cautiously supported by the staff as LM has an appalling record of truancy and rudeness and was "severely disengaged from the curriculum". Perhaps this was her chance to succeed at something and benefit from some praise (or "positive reinforcement", as the behaviour managers term it). However, LM took matters too far when she convinced the 11 year-olds that attending her dance studio session was more important than going to lessons and, what's more, had been approved by the teachers. It was slightly embarrassing for the school not to know where 25 youngsters were, and all the more so given the encouragement that LM had received to go ahead with her volunteering project. It is now doubtful whether she will be allowed to continue with her career as a dance coach.

Compound Nouns

I was trying to teach Year 7 about compound nouns. In French you can't make compound nouns in the same way as it is possible in English. Cheesecake becomes Gâteau au fromage, for example. Other compound nouns are formed with a partitive 'de' like pomme de terre for 'earthapple', or potato.

Me: So for example, you might stick two words together in English to make a new one. Hourglass, for instance. Or steamboat or Hogwarts or laptop. Can anyone think of any other compound nouns in English?

MM: Dickhead?

DJ: Bumhole!

KB: Dumbarse!

Well at least they understood the grammatical principle.

C'est quelle couleur?

We're learning about the colours:

Red is rouge, blue is bleu and so on.

I give them 'colour sums':

rouge + bleu = ?

jaune + bleu = ?

blanc + rouge = ?

The activity is engaging and they get all the answers right: violet, vert, and rose.

So far, so good.

The next one pops up onto the slide:

noir + blanc = ?

M's hand shoots up: marron!

Odd. He's got them all right so far. Why does black and white make brown? I don't get it...

It took me a while to understand, but he's not wrong.