Chez Nyah, so without the vocabulary posters. NOTE: usually the French is me speaking and the English is Nyah’s response.
The stories are complicated, Nyah says.
L’animal chez nous est un ourse.
A bear?
La nourriture de l’ourse….. veut manger…. pas la nourriture des chiens, pas la nourriture des chats…..
What do bears eat? Salmon? (shows comprehension)
Qu’est-ce que c’est comme nourriture?
Salmon and berries.
aiment les ourses manger le gateau?
There’s no cats in the woods – repeat gateaux – oh, cake. (tone showed her delight in correcting herself, having heard it as Spanish ‘gato’)
A la maison de Mema(grandmother) et moi il n’y a pas de nourriture des ourses…….
Obviously.
La seule nourriture chez nous – moi et Mema- c’est les petits gateaux.
Oh, small cake. (there follows various guesses like tea cake and then ‘cookie’ with great delight)
les gens
???
Les gens chez nous sont moi et Mema
Oh….
Qu’est-ce qu’il y a pour les ourses au magasin? (long struggle over magasin until I mentioned some names of supermarkets)
Aux magasins se trouvent les fraises.
Oh, strawberries.
et les crevettes
shrimp….
Les phoques………. (there followed a delightful discovery that the French word for seal was phoque as her classmates had told her)
Les ourses aiment la nourriture de la mer……..
and the river (showing comprehension of the context, expanding ‘seafood’ to that found in rivers)
Here I used words she knew – la nourriture – with the sea for seafood, not fruits de mer or produits de la mer.
Les ourses aiment manger les requins
why>
les requins nagent dans l’eau, dans la mer
yeah, yeah….. but they are in the ocean (showing she was following along – bear in mind that crevettes and requin and la mer were words introduced in earlier stories)
les requins sont tres grands
Great White?
L’ourse arrive a la mer avec le permis a chercher aux requins, pecher…
fish? oh, to fish. (showing complete comprehension of the whole sentence not based in reality i.e. a bear needing a fishing license)
Vous souvenez la police attrapent le voleur…
capture?
manger le requin
turn it into soup? shark fin soup……….
comment s’appelle le bateau? (there followed a brief argument over whose story it was i.e. I was trying to get more participation by her naming the boat – this was a bone of contention throughout the experience of teaching her, her reluctance to make up details though at times she did it very well. This is where a class would be good because some student would come up with something – her response: “I made up the polar bear and the orca.” Then I got a lecture on the law of the sea)
personne habite a l’Arctique. Qu’est-ce que c’est que les esquimaux mangent……….. les phoques.
But they’re cute. I can show you a picture, what do they call them? Cubs.
Oui, les enfants des phoques. Vous etes enfant, Jaden est enfant (kids in the family, so a way of teaching a new word, enfant)
checking for understanding: Comment s’appellent les enfants des chiens?
Puppies?
et des oiseaux? Vous avez une amie qui s’appelle……
Oh, Birdy (her friend’s name)
les oiseaux….
what about them? (showing she got the plural)
Les oiseaux habitent dans les arbres
ok
Comment s’appellent les enfants des oiseaux (I put the word fledgling up and it was a new word for her)
(she got jeudi confused with jeu)
Vous pouvez l’ecrire (speaking of a story)
An assignment where she writes a story in English and brings it and then I’ll tell it to her in French.
(she’d lost her drivers license) Vous croyez que quelqu’un a vole………….
probably
Vous l’avez perdu a l’ecole, au magazin, au restaurant?
Probably Target.
(writing) on a vole la license a vous.
Yes.
Quand va a arriver votre nouvelle license ici?
Here? 15 days.
Nous devons arranger les lecons……….. chez moi. Plus facile pour moi enseigner chez moi.
she understood after I said ‘teach’ that it related to Spanish ensenar and I asked her to process how she accessed that and she said she had to write it a lot, making posters, review. I pointed out that today we had introduced new topics e.g. when I said bears eat sharks she understood that that was out of the ordinary. I then asked her at this stage in Spanish class – about 2 months or less – how much would she have understood. I introduced this to show her she was learning.