The Basics.

Every class that I've been into so far, I've tried to teach, or reinforce, 'the basics' first, before heading onwards and upwards to the heady heights of colours, breakfast stuffs and the contents of a pencil case. This consists of a list of everyday classroom requests that I think will be important if, as Aquitaine's Inspector of Education so greatly desires, I am to communicate with these primary school children purely in English. 

Having decided on this plan, I set about spending a good 5 or 10 minutes coming up with the definitive list of classroom phrases, and this is what I produced:

• Good Morning/Good Afternoon
• How are you today?
• Listen!
• Be Quiet!
• Stand up
• Sit down
• Raise your hand
• I'll say a word, and then you repeat it
• What's this?
• Point to the...
• Who can tell me...?
• Is there anybody here who...?
• We're going to play a game
• Goodbye
• See you soon/See you next week

A fairly comprehensive list? Yes, I thought so too, but oh, how naïve I was.

Soon to be added to the list were:

• Stop doing that!
• No, I said "in English"
• Pay attention.
• What are you doing?
• Take your pencil away from her face.
• Yes, I saw you.
• And that means *insert french word and hope there are no hidden microphones*.

Next, came the requests for translations from keen young children who had clearly listened when I told them that their classroom was to be an English-only zone and wanted to ask the following things:

• Please can I go to the toilet?
• Please can I get a tissue?
• Why do you have a mosquito bite on your arm?
• Why are you here?
• Do you like the Queen?
• Do English people live in houses?
• Do English people drive cars?
• What do English people drink?
• Do you have towns in England?
• Do you want to be the Queen?
• Can French people be the King of England? - a controversial topic, but one I thought I'd leave for today.

However, my absolute favourite has to be the following:

• Help! My tooth has fallen out.

Unusual, you may think? No, not at all. The first time this happened, I thought it was quite sweet and a little nostalgic. The second time was a much more bloody affair, and the sentence had to undergo a little conjugation to become 'Help! His tooth has fallen out and now he's bleeding all over my books'. The third time, I wondered whether I was under some sort of curse. But after some reflection, I realised that no, I was stupid not to have thought of it first. 

Lets just think this through. I'm teaching 5-10 year olds in 2 different schools. I see every single child in each school. Each school has about 150 pupils. That's 300 children. Each child has 20 baby teeth. That's 6000 teeth.

6000 teeth ready to drop at any moment. Really, it should have come before 'Good Morning'.