DAY 20 (27/02)

First lesson: FRENCH
This lesson was slightly different than the previous ones, but not really inventive or creative for us. We received a little booklet from Viv where short role-plays/dialogues, where mentioned. It was actually the same thing like the previous lessons, only with those dialogues you couldn’t really ask extra questions, you had to stick more or less to the leaflet.

Teaching French is actually easy, because we don’t have to prepare anything, only do speaking activities with the pupils, but on the other hand it’s also a pity, because otherwise we could have practiced our French more and prepare our own self-made lesson preparations. Now, we do talk French, but it are more fixed and simple sentences.

Second lesson: PSYCHOLOGY
I gave this lesson with Timmy and we gave a lesson about depression and its symptoms,… We made the lesson interactive and creative with pictures of ‘famous depressed people’, statements game, little movie on from YouTube where they explain about depression, a poem,…
But the text we got from the teacher was rather difficult to understand for me, because there were certain hormones with a difficult name and some strange processes to understand. It would even be difficult to understand in Dutch, let be in English. I tried to understand it, but I think I underestimated ‘depression’ a bit.
But after all, it has been a nice experience and a great challenge. The pupils had a lot of fun and so did we!

Third lesson: TRAVEL AND TOURISM
We wanted to give something about Belgium, and so we prepared a short leaflet 'Dutch for beginners', with nice and funny sentences, how you should ask to go to the toilet, what you should say when you really like a girl/boy,...
It was funny to hear them speak Dutch, but they liked it !
All the pupils were very different at worked at a different level and speed. It was easier to work and guide in little groups, so I explained how they should pronounce Dutch and mentioned some difficulties like: ‘sch’, ‘g’, ‘h’, …

Next to the course ‘Dutch for beginners’, we also prepared a little leaflet about the most important cities in Belgium like Ghent, Bruges, Ardennes and Antwerp,…
After we had finished our little Dutch leaflet, we started by letting them indicate Belgium on the map, and not surprising us, they didn’t know and we helped. Next, they had to indicate and situate the most important cities where we were going to talk about. And then we started the introduction about Antwerp (made by Ann). The pupils did their best and they were very friendly, curious and respectful. They also said they had never done so many things in one lesson and that they really enjoyed doing it!

Evening:
This evening, we went to the drama performance in our school (performed by our own pupils in Groby school), which was SO NICE to see!
There was dancing, singing, playing the piano, theatre,...
We will probably go back this Monday and Thursday!
After the performance we went for a drink in Leicester, together with Sophie ( a local) and we had great fun. We first went to a kind of lounge/pub with loud music and a loooong wait before you could even order your drink, but it was pleasant.
After this lounge, we went to a real pub, where we had room to sit and drink our beer at ease and where we could talk without shouting.

This neighbourhood actually was much better than the previous one (less Pakistanis) and a more mixed kind of people, lots of students, normally dressed girls (sometimes it was the same = worse) but this neighbourhood was better ;-)
It was half past 2 we fell asleep !

Kisss xxxx