My Class
Top row, L to R: Victoria, Christian, Alex. Row 2:
Alexis, Caroline, Axel, Elisabeth, Mme Buisson. Row 3: Wilfried,
Tessa, Pierre-Henry, Amaury, Laurene. Row 4: Maxime, Maka, Nicola,
Thomas, Sandhya, Clemence, Alison. Bottom row: Victor, Remy, Arthur,
Mathias, Ghilam, Kirsty, Brian, Yarra.
Alex attends school five days a week but has every Wednesday
afternoon off. (That’s when he has soccer practice.) School
days start at 8:30, breaks for lunch at 11:30, resumes at 1:30
and end at 4:00. The days are divided into 4 "blocks"
of learning time with recesses to divide the mornings and afternoons
in half.
Half of Alex’s time is spent
in his principle class with Madame Buisson and she covers the
basic curriculum, all in French of course. This includes learning
French grammar, social studies, and some pretty advanced math.
They’ve been working on adding long strings of numbers, working
with large numbers, learning how grid systems work (a la Battleship),
and now are learning to multiply (and they’re not stopping
at 12!) Interesting point: In France children learn to write in
cursive first, printing comes later! Here’s a sample from
Alex’s notebook. (The teacher wrote the red characters. You
can see the highly stylized French handwriting--it's hard for
us adults to learn to read sometimes too!)
Six hours per week are spent in intensive English studies.
The goal of these classes is to keep the students caught up with
their levels in English or American schools. They work on grammar,
spelling, creative writing, and reading comprehension. We’re
going to have some fun sorting out the British bits of knowledge.
For example, Alex was corrected for his spelling of color: it’s
c-o-l-o-u-r, of course! There is a different topic of focus each
trimester and this fall it was dinosaurs. This is the diorama
that Alex created for his class:
Alex also receives 6 hours a week of special tutoring in French.
This is offered to all the international students who are not
fluent. The government dictates the basic curriculum for each
year of school and it really moves fast. The principal teacher
really doesn’t have time to help the kids catch up if they
are behind and still fit in everything that is supposed to be
taught. So, there are a lot of special tutors around and we’re
lucky that the school provides one for Alex during school hours
to help him catch up to where he needs to be. Another by-product
of this required curriculum is that you can purchase workbooks
that cover everything that you’re supposed to have learned
at each grade level. These you can complete at home during school
breaks and we really ought to get busy on them!
Every Friday afternoon Alex has swimming lessons at the city
pool. He also goes to soccer practice on Wednesdays and has games
most Saturday afternoons. Athletic skills are highly regarded
here and are actually part of the requirements for completing
the prized Baccalaureate. There is no automatic high school diploma
here, there are very strenuous tests given after school is completed
and how you score determines what further education, if any, you
can pursue.
During lunch breaks there are various clubs offered for the
students. Alex takes part in the Chess Club on Mondays and competed
in the regional tournament and did pretty well. Tuesdays are for
the Library Club where he reads books, writes book reports, and
does word related crafts. Last trimester Alex was one of 14 students
who completed enough book reports to attend a special origami
party!