La bise is the kiss that French people do when they greet one another. It varies from region to region, but tonight I found out that it's 3 in the Drôme department. The Spanish assistant arrived tonight, so the four assistants (two American, one Italian, one Spanish) and the two teachers went out to dinner. Found out la bise info from the two teachers. The town seems to shut down around 7 or 8, but we found a good restaurant to go to with a jazz concert after dinner that the owners said we could listen to for a little while for free.
At dinner, we were sitting there and the teachers started whispering to us in Spanish (?). One of them said, "Comment est-ce qu'on dit jefe de la ciudad?" We figured out that the MAYOR OF CREST was sitting behind us having dinner with his daughter. Ha!
Earlier today, I did some observation hours at one of the schools where I'll be teaching.
Here is how the French grade levels work (according to Wikipedia). I need to figure out a way to memorize this!
Cours preparatoire (CP) = 1st grade
Cours elementaire niveau 1 (CE1) = 2nd grade
Cours elementaire niveau 2 (CE2) = 3rd grade
Cours moyen niveau 1 (CM1) = 4th grade
Cours moyen niveau (CM2) = 5th grade
The first class I observed was CE1/CE2, so 7- to 8-years-old. I walked into the room with them after recess and one little boy comes up to me and goes, "Hel-lo." At the beginning of each class, a student volunteers to go up to the front and point to four different posters to say the day of the week, the month, the season and the weather. So, today, a student went up front and said "It's Thursday, It's September, It's Autumn, and It's 'ot." Very cute.
They were learning about colors and played a game where they were split into to teams, and there was a shirt in the middle. When the teacher said "Red," the students wearing red would run to the middle and try to grab the shirt. Some of the kids tagged each other and froze for awhile... I'm not exactly sure how it works!
In the CM1/CM2 class (9- to 10-years-old?), there is a girl from Utah - her mother is teaching at the high school for a year. It's interesting because when her classmates take a vocabulary test in English, she does the same test in French. I introduced myself in English, and they raised their hands to tell their teacher what they understood. They are currently learning about school supplies, so they played a game of Simon Says to review before the test. ("Show me your ruler." "Show me a pen." etc.) The teacher asked me to plan a lesson about Halloween for my first lesson with them.
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