Tuesday 29 March 2011

Teaching Moment of the Year

Deciding that getting my seconde carrières girls to write a whole story in English was far too taxing, I set up a game of "Who Am I?", during which a volunteer is given a famous person, and the rest of the class has to ask who the person is, but only with questions that can be answered "Yes" or "No." It goes surprisingly well, until one girl is given Joan of Arc. Bear in mind that we are two hours away from Orléans, where Joan of Arc, or "Jeanne d'Arc," as she's called in French, fought in the 1400's. She is known as the maid of Orléans...

Class : Is it a man?

Girl: No.

Class: Woman?

Girl: Yes.

C: Is she old?

G: Bahhhh.... Je sais pas.

C: Is she alive?

G: Uh....

C: Is she American?

G: Je sais, uh, I don' know....

This goes on for a while longer, until the class have run out of questions and I have lost the will to live. I decide to sum up the information they already have, while adding in a few details to help them.

Me: Okay, so we know she's a girl, she's dead, she's French -

Girl: Jeanne d'Arc is French?!

Me: *facepalm*

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