Teaching English in France

PRIMARY

SECONDARY

Teaching when and what:

Teaching takes place every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and involves the French equivalent of years two, three, four, five and six, known as CP, CE1, CE2, CM1 and CM2 respectively. In most cases, students teach without the other Stagiaires or Julie which implies rigorous personal organisation and motivation. In theory government guidelines state that a form teacher should be present during a Stagiaire’s lesson but in practice students may find themselves teaching alone and upholding discipline possibly in a class of thirty pupils. As project co-ordinator, Julie makes regular visits to demonstrate teaching techniques and chart students’ progress in their teaching performance.

Teaching takes place every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and involves the French equivalent of years seven, eight, nine and ten (6ème, 5ème, 4ème and 2nde respectively) at the college, and year eleven, Lower 6th, Upper 6th and college-style adult further education at the lycée (2nde, 1ère, Terminale and the BTS course respectively). As the assistant, the usual pattern is to take half of the class on your own for half of the period, then swap with the teacher. The assistant has more contact with the Lycée/Collège teachers than with Julie, as Julie is not directly involved with lesson content at secondary level.

Planning Lessons

Working on a four week timetable each student teaches in approximately ten different schools. Contact with the pupils is divided in the following way:

Once a fortnight

CP 30 minutes
CE1 45 minutes
CE2 60 minutes
CM1 60 minutes
CM2 60 minutes

At the end of the year pupils will have received seven lessons divided into fourteen modules. Lesson planning is done as a group for the Primary School stagiaires and takes place on Fridays in the office with Julie, where you will meticulously discuss feedback on the past week and prepare lessons for the next week.

This is also when you will collect the relevant teaching aids for your coming lessons from the prop cupboard. Obviously, the inventing and improving of lessons is an ongoing process and therefore you should expect to be constantly enhancing the lesson content every Friday, certain Wednesdays and also in your own time, using your own initiative and adapting them to your own classes. The emphasis of lessons is very much based on teaching principals involving children learning through doing, with a strong emphasis on games, songs and other interactive activities which, needless to say, require abundant energy from the student.

Working on a two-week timetable, the assistant sees classes once a fortnight, except the Euro-classes, which are taught every week. Lessons are planned following instructions/ using material given by the class teacher with whom the assistant liaises on a regular basis before and after lessons.

EURO CLASSES
You will teach three classes a week as well as taking on the role of an assistant. These classes are considered to be history-geography lessons taught in English, and there are 3 broad topics to cover during the year with each class. [This option is usually chosen by the more academic pupils in 2nde, 1ère and (from September 2009) Terminale.] Clearly, as with the primary lesson plans, students should be constantly striving to enhance previous years’ lessons.

Although the assistant teaches four days a week, whereas the primary sector stagiaires teach three in schools and spend one on planning, the daily timetable is not as full and free lessons allow the assistant time to plan Euro class lessons.

The assistant is encouraged to use the prop cupboard in order to enhance oral work with pupils.

Example of a typical [primary school] timetable and lesson plan:

Example of a typical [secondary school] timetable and Euro-lesson plan:

View a primary school stagiaire’s timetable
 
View a typical primary school lesson plan:
CE1_Lesson_7B
Street Role Play

View a secondary school assistant’s timetable

Transport for the primary assistants

Transport for the secondary assistant

Your transport to and from the schools is again organised by Julie, normally on a Friday, and will consist of teachers and/or parents giving you lifts from one school to another. This system requires forethought and organisation as students change families three times during the year and teach up to ten different schools, with different travel arrangements for each one; but with good planning, writing things down and being constantly equipped with a list of school phone numbers your problems should be limited.

Transport is easier for the assistant as you only need to get to the college/lycée, both of which are within walking distance from one-another, so the assistant only takes the school bus morning and evening if the host family lives outside Montaigu.