Teaching... on my own!

Today at my volunteer teaching placement, I got the opportunity to teach all by myself! For the second class, 1ere S, there are 35 students... as you can imagine, it is difficult to work with that many students. So today, the teacher booked an extra class and from now on I'll be taking half the class with me and teaching the same lesson. Luckily, it will be the same as the first class that isn't split up, which means I get to observe how that class runs and then I can basically repeat it and tweak it where necessary. It's just really neat that I get to do this, because in Canada I would never get to take a class all on my own without a teacher. Granted, I do get to teach and it's really helpful to have a teacher observing and giving me feedback, but it's still pretty neat to be going solo.
The lesson wasn't difficult today... they are beginning a study of India, so we just covered some basic facts about India and talked about what they already knew. Then I handed out different photos and they had to write down what the photos expressed, how they were portrayed, what contrasts there were, etc. We didn't quite get finished by the time the bell rang, but that was better than having spare time at the end to fill! All in all I think it went well and I'm really excited to do it again next week. Plus, I'm getting another class added at 9am so I will get more teaching practice!
The English classes have been really great in that they have helped me with my French (you know, little words hear and there, grammar and sentence structure), but most importantly they have given me some great ideas for activities when I'm a French teacher. My host teacher is really great at balancing grammar, writing, reading/comprehension, and oral expression all in one class, while making sure that students are engaged. I'm actually really excited to get students to love French!!