This week was busier than most. At the schools this week, I mostly continued teaching lessons based on the Hungry Caterpillar book. In my Skype class, the kids were given pieces of paper which had parts of the story written on them. As I reread the book, the kids had to put the parts of the story in order. Then, I gave them different directions, such as circle/underline certain words in the story (e.g. the days of the week).
On Tuesday, I taught one class a lot of winter vocabulary because they are going skiing in a few weeks. In another class, I showed them a short powerpoint with images of Atlanta and Atlanta attractions. I showed them one picture of the Atlanta skyline and they thought it was New York... lol. I guess they think that only New York has skyscrapers. After the presentation, kids came up to me and asked me when I was going back to the US, because they wanted to come with me :).
In the afternoon, I had lunch at the high school which was good as usual.
 |
| Some kind of fish, veggies, salad, and chocolate muffin |
In the evening, I went to my host family’s house for dinner. We had a tartiflette. It was so yummy and pretty easy to make! All you need are potatoes, lardons (pieces of diced bacon), onions, white wine, and reblochon cheese. First, you need to boil whole potatoes for maybe 10-15 minutes (you don’t want to cook them all the way). As the potatoes are cooking, you chop up an onion and then fry the pieces in some olive oil. Next, add the lardons to the onions. Cook that together for a few minutes and then turn off the heat. Then, peel and cut the potatoes long ways into thin slices. Cut the reblochon cheese into two (cut it horizontally through the middle) and place one piece in the bottom of a round glass pan. Then, place a layer of potatoes on top of the cheese. Next, put some lardons and onion on the potatoes. After that, make another layer of potatoes, then add more lardons and onions. Then, add a third layer of potatoes, and cover with the other half of the cheese. Finally, pour some white wine until it’s about halfway up the glass pan. Then, put it in the oven at about 350F or 180C for about 45-60minutes. After it’s done baking, it is ready to eat! My host family told me that it is a typical wintertime dish here. For dessert, we made Roses des Sables. This was very delicious and easy to make as well. All you need is baking chocolate, corn flakes, sugar, and shortening (I can’t remember the french name for this but it resembled shortening). (I have to check with my host mom about the amounts of each ingredient… I will add that in later.) You melt this piece of shortening in a pot, then add chocolate and sugar. Then, you let it cool. Once it’s cool, you add the corn flakes and mix it. Next, you prepare a baking tray with wax paper. You spoon out the chocolatey corn flake mix on the tray and then put it in the fridge for an hour or 2 until it’s solidified. Then, it is ready to eat!
On Wednesday, I had to teach the younger grades, because the older two classes (4th and 5th graders) were off skiing for the week. So, I just did some Hungry Caterpillar activities with them. I read them the story, we reviewed days of the week, and food vocabulary. With the younger grades, I went over the whole story with them on the board by putting up pictures of all the food the caterpillar ate under the correct days of the week.
In the evening, I went to the movies with my roomies, and some other assistants in Roanne. We saw the movie, The Wolf on Wall Street. It was interesting but it was dubbed… it was strange hearing Leonardo DiCaprio and the other actors speaking french. It was a long film (about 3 hours long) and it’s definitely not a movie for kids… Anyways, the movie theater here is really nice and big!
 |
| Roanne is a small town but it's got a big movie theater! |
On Thursday, I also taught the Hungry Caterpillar, but I had to make it a bit more difficult for the older grades. After I read, I had them retell the story, and then put all of the food the caterpillar ate in order. They also had to write out the names of all of the food next to the pictures so that they could start learning how to spell them. Then, I asked all of them about which foods they liked and disliked from the story. In my Thursday afternoon class, we reviewed the story, and I had the kids color a coloring page with all the food that the caterpillar ate but they had to listen to my directions as I told them what to color, and the color to use. Often, I would tell them that they could choose the color of the item, and then I would go around, and ask them to tell me what color(s) they selected for the item. In this activity, we reviewed colors, food vocabulary, and oral comprehension. One student used highlighters to color some of the food, so I taught him the word “neon” so he could describe his colors more accurately. I also taught them how to say, “multicolored” for things that they had colored many colors. The kids thought it was cool to learn those new words!
In the afternoon, I made up my own recipe for banana fritters because I had two old bananas that I wanted to use up. I just mashed the bananas, added some flour, cinammon, and sugar… then I fried them. To my surprise, they turned out alright.
Thursday night, I cooked dinner for my roommates. I made them krokiety which is a polish dish. They are basically rolled crepes with different fillings that are fried in breadcrumbs. I made them mushroom krokiety and they turned out pretty good! This was my first time making them all by myself!
 |
| Krokiety and salad |
 |
| After a rainy day, the sky turned pretty as the sun set |
Looking forward to a chill weekend,
No comments:
Post a Comment