Jump to content

Mistral

Members
  • Posts

    570
  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never

Everything posted by Mistral

  1. I'm a bit confused about the Nicene Creed; I've never heard of it being taught in a french school. As tourangelle says, there are things in the history/French programme that may surprise people (and lead to letters of complaints from parents every year) Pupils have to study "founding texts" in 6eme which include an extract from the old testament. The 6eme history programme is ancient civilizations; Romans, greeks, Hebrews.....So they learn about all those religions and study an extract from an important text for each of them. The 5eme programme is the moyen age. The do Islam and medieval Christianity. That's the only place I could think of them doing the Nicene Creed, but I'm pretty certain it's not in the manuels (I'll check later- our 5eme manuels are all on the balcony) Once they get to the 4eme, they will be expected to study (and learn?) the declaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen. Replacements; Tourangelle has said it. In secondary schools, you have to be signed off for more than 2 weeks in one go (i.e. If you're signed off for one week and then 10 more days it won't count) before the rectorat will find you a replacement. Otherwise the school is expected to find replacements among the teachers. This short term replacement system is new and it's not working well at all. Primary schools have a system teachers who can be called in at very litle notice but there aren't many of these. My daughter has no teacher tomorrow which the school has known about for oer a month, but we've still been told that if we send her in, she'll go into repartition. (as an aside tourangelle- the new laws don't say anywhere that we wil be forced to teach subjests we haven't been trained for, that's typical SNES exageration. The only thing you have is the new -optional- addition to the CAPES which allows you to take a subsiduary subject which you can teach as well. If you do more than a certain number of hours in that subject, you get paid more) I don't want to even think about educational cuts. My school has the same amount of pupils as last year and the same amount of teacher hours, it's just that more than 30 of those hours now have to be used for non subject teaching things like IDDs. Meaning all the subject hours are down to their lowest legal limit. They've also given us so many overtime hours compared to teacher hours that nearly every subject has a teacher who will have to work in another school while the other teachers in the same subject have to do overtime (in fact I will be teaching in another school and doing overtime- neither of which I have chosen) Computers; They cost money and not everybody knows how to use them. We've been told we have to validate the B2I by using computers in our lessons. But nobody could tell us how the pupils were supposed to get the original computer skills we're supposed to be using (not teaching, using) or how to deal with the fact that you have 28 pupils in a room with 15 computers, only 10 of which work....
  2. Everybody has already given you the correct facts; School years are worked from calendar years, so all children born in 1997 should be in CM1 unless they have retaken a year.  (my daughter was born in 1997 too) The question remains as to why the headmistress thinks your daughter should be in CM2. It can't be because of her age, because you would hope that a French primary head knows how the system works. Is your daughter finding the work too easy or complaining of being bored? It could be that the headmistress thinks she should go up a year (yes it happens, less frequently than retaking and it seems to depend on the school's principles about the idea and the parents' feelings) if she is going to skip a year, it would be more logical to do it before she hits 6eme. The fact that your daughter is a January baby more make a school more likely to suggest this because the thinking goes that she would be more mature than most children in CM1. (just as they feel more comfortable suggesting redoublement to smaller, later born children- stupid, but a fact)
  3. I can't get fresh cream here either. I could get it when I lived in Normandy, although not everywhere. If I want a double cream equivalent, I either use marscapone or I mix marscapone with creme semi epaisse that you get in little boxes. I like creme fraiche but not with sweet things. My first attempt with creme fraiche was to eat it with stawberries; there was a picture of a strawberry on the pot and mentally I had translated "creme fraiche epaisse" as "thick fresh cream" (now, why would I do that? )  
  4. [quote user="Coco"] Popping round for a coffee with a neighbour (Thursday morning I think) as I had been told to do..... any time.  When what she meant was, any time as long as it was on a Saturday afternoon, after I had phoned first![/quote] That one's familiar.[:)] It reminds me of when a friend came to stay the night.I showed her her romm, where to find the toilet and then did a quick tour of the kitchen (here are the cups, coffee, tea....) She burst into laughter and told me she wasn't planning on buying the house. I love this thread. I might collect all the comments and show them to my pupils next time they ask me what I find strange about living in France compared to the UK.  It all seems to come down to not knowing (or bothering with) the unwritten social rules. Personally, I prefer cultivating my difference rather than sticking slavishly to the rules. It took me long enough to work out the french rules, by which time I had decided I wasn't going to make myself ill trying to following them all.    
  5. I agree with what TU has said. Your best move would be to see a free lawyer who can tell you where you stand in french law. Most large towns have a maison de la justice/du droit. They ususally have the possibility to see a free lawyer. That lawyer won't be the person representing you in case of divorce but they will be able to tell you where you stand and what you can do. It is worth remembering that in French law, removing children from the family home or leaving yourself without a written agreement from both partners, can be used against you in divorce proceedings. An assistant social will be able to tell you what help/benefits you can get while sorting things out. As other people have said, you can find out from the mairie where to go. Otherwise if you have school age children, every school has an assistant social (for maybe a half day a week) so you could ask for an appointment through the school. He/she can give you the basic information and also find you the name of the person registered to your area. Forgot. here's the list of maisons de la justice http://www.justice.gouv.fr/region/mjdanten.htm
  6. All new collèges are supposed (yes, supposed) to have wheelchair access. Mine was built about 8 years ago so it has a lift but it wasn't until a pupil in a wheelchair actually started here that all the necessary ajustments were made. We were lucky in that the parents of this pupil came to the school and went into every corner making a list of everything that needed doing before he came. Our main problem was that the architect designed the corridors at the narrowest width he could get away with (we have a "wonderful, airy space" in the middle and very narrow dark corridors) so although the wheelchair can get down them, he has to wait until everybody has chnaged rooms before he goes. Plus along the corridors there were big sort of open spaces (so you could fall down 2 floor very easily- we had to them railed in before the school could open, the architect was furious we had changed his design) we had to add a sort of lip so that the wheelchair wouldn't slip off. A lot of parents of handicapped children just give up the fight and send them to a specialist school. The parents of our handicapped child had fought for changes ever since he was in maternelle and had somehow managed to keep their patience and sense of humour. They had learned to plan a couple of years ahead for each school change.
  7. There are 941 people in France with my husband's surname (and all of them seem to live in Brittany-they're probably cousins) But there are 2,724 people with my English surname. When we got married I chose to take his surname thinking that French people would recognize it and I wouldn't have to spend my time spelling it.....
  8. I've only tried the first one so far (80%) but i'll have a go with the others. They were really the kind of mistakes French people make every day.
  9. I thought I had already posted this, but I was obviously dreaming So here goes again. There is a strike planned for Thursday 8th February in state colleges and lycées. I have a feeling that it will be relatively well followed since most schools seem to be having to deal with budget cuts, increase in the number of pupils per class and more heures sup against heures postes. In my academie at least, there is also a worrying reduction in the number of hours for UNSS
  10. I read Tourangelle's and Albert's comments with interest. I'm in the same situation as Tourangelle, I've taken the same exams and I, too, have a larger vocabulary than most of my pupils (and many of my fellow teachers too) My written French is better than quite a lot of my friends and I can communicate as well in French as in English in every situation that I can actually communicate in (i.e. my lack of communication ability in computing has nothing to do with language) But I don't know if I consider myself as "fluent". I'm more likely to say that I speak "very good French". In the same way, I was talking about bilinguals with friends the other day and they said "but you're bilingual" Again I have never considered myself to be bilingual (probably because I still make the odd mistake on some genders and because I still have my English accent) I'm obviously a bit of a perfectionist So I suppose that the problem with "fluency" is that everyone has their own idea of what it means exactly.
  11. Going from how Saint Eloi is pronounced in the song "bon roi Dagobert" I would use Ell-waa  
  12. [quote user="Mikew"]Go on, freeview (TNT) won't spoil you, it is all in french, [/quote] Not necessarily so [:)] We've had TNT for a couple of weeks now and I've just discovered that certain programmes are shown in VM (version multilangue) which means you can chose between the VO or VF version (or even German for Arte- Lucky Luke in German was interesting) I haven't looked at which channels offer this .Canal plus (on TNT) does, and of course Arte. You've even got Dr Who in VOST on france 4. I'm in the same sort of situation as Cat. My husband is French and although he speaks good enough English to get by in the UK and follow a television programme, it is more of an effort for him. For the first 13 years I lived in France, we only had French TV. (with canal plus) If we  wanted to watch a film or programme that was available in (English) VOST on canal plus, then we would watch the original version but most of our television watching was in French. Then a couple of years ago, we got ourselves a satellite (with loads of help from the people here) and we now have the UK FTA programmes. It hasn't actually changed our habits much. We check the radio times online every week to see if there's anything on we want to watch and note it down. But our first reaction is French TV. plus with the hour change, it' s going to be programmes we record not ones we watch directly. The things I've noted down to record next week are a couple of films and the Swan lake this afternoon. Plus a lot of class TV that I'll use in school (animated shakespeare for example) The children automatically try the French channels before looking at the British ones too, but having the satellite has been good for their English and they've become hooked on Jackanory, Raven, Dr who, Robin Hood (depending on the child) We don't generally tend to watch either reality shows or soaps in either language, so it's more series like 24, desperate housewives, NYPD blue, CSI, cold case..... (we're following Re-Genesis too) For me, having UK television was as much about having a wider selection of programmes available  (just like getting TNT) as it was about having them in English.    
  13. [quote user="Bones"] I think it's because the overall average can be dragged down by a poor showing in skipping! [/quote] That's not fair, you know that skipping is no longer on the curriculum [;-)] Quite honestly, I have less complaints about the EPS grade having the same weighting as other subjects for the MG, than I do about something like education civique which is half an hour a week.
  14. TU, that's terrible! I grade all my pupils on the same basis. i.e. I teach them something, ask them to use it and grade how well they are capable of doing it (this is why I find it hard to do adapted grades for my non-french pupils). Looking at my tests,  I wouldn't know where to start to work out a bareme for a "langue maternelle" grade.
  15. [quote user="RumziGal"] And what exactly is that fruits confits?   It's too sweet for me, and the colours are really quite alarming.  Most definitely not natural! [/quote] Yes, then people go on about the unnatural colours of jelly, telling you the french would never do anything  like that
  16. Redlancer, once you have an address, you can find out from the mairie which school your children should go to. If you are in a village area, there will probably only be one school to chose from anyway. (unless you go the private route) If I've understood your comment about going into the nearest school "language permitting" I think you may have picked up comments made about secondary schools. Primary schools generally don't have a language option as reason for asking for a derogation. Since you are talking about primary schooling, this is organised by the mairie. They can give you a list of paperwork necessary for inscription which you will probably need to take to the school. It can probably be done in a single visit if you have all the paperwork sorted. The only schools I have heard of with summer schools to help pupils have been in big cities or in areas where there are a lot of deprived pupils. French as a foreign language lesons are available in some schools, but again they tend to be in places where there is a high percentage of non-french speaking pupils. I wouldn't count on the  education national to proide any lanagueg help if I were you. This is the link to the ministry site with information on primary school inscription http://www.education.gouv.fr/pid34/ecole-elementaire.html You will be in the Grenoble academie, here is their website http://www.ac-grenoble.fr/admin/spip-agora-14/ I can't find a site for the casnav (who deal with newly arrived pupils) for Grenoble
  17. Another thing to remember is that almost half the pupils in Brittany go to private (Catholic) schools. This means that there are less state schools to chose from. The positive side of this situation is that there are more private schools to chose from. Don't be worried by the words "private" or "Catholic". Most French private schools have signed an agreement with the state to teach the state curriculum, which means they have a state subsidy, so fees are very low and generally based on income. The Catholic side rarely means being taught to recite the bible by nuns and is more likely to mean there is  a non-obligatory hour of RE a week. Technically, the only reason to go to a state collège outside of your catchment area is to take an option that is not provided by the college you should go to. But depending on the amount of free places, they will accept other reasons.
  18. Those are excellent moyennes. They must have worked hard. You must be proud. Sometimes non-French speaking pupils have adapted grades for the first couple of years, based on different tests to the others or a different grading system. The teachers won't necessarily tell you that they are doing this and it isn't necessarily a school wide decision; each teacher decides on their own grading system. I have never done it and was surprised to find out  that colleagues did, just as they were surprised I didn't. I'm not saying this for Dotty's kids. I couldn't see the school letting her daughter do latin if she was on adapted grades.
  19. [quote user="Susan"]  My daughter has had her passport since the age of 3 months - she is 5 now and when we went back to the UK in November it was a joke at the passport control - there is no way she could have been identified from her photo. [/quote] My eldest daughter's  French ID card photo was taken when she was 10 days old. She is now 9. The ID card is technically still valid for another 5 months. As you say, there is no way she can be identified from the photo. The mairie (while laughing) told us that we could change the photo at any time (probably by getting a new card, since they are free) Daughter number 2 had a French passport  at the age of 2 months (long story) We had to fill in definitive details such as height (50cms) and eyes (blue) Luckily, they didn't want to know about hair (none) So far, no-one has picked up on the fact that we are travelling with a 1.10m, brown-eyed child.
  20. This fight between certain doctors and the education national has been going on for years. For at least 5 years (probably longer) I have been hearing people tell me that their doctor has told them that the BCG is no longer obligatory or that it is obligatory but that the law is about to change..... From what I have understood, some doctors feel that the present BCG vaccine isn't very effective against the strains of TB around at the moment and is a bit pointless, so the governement has been asked to consider making it non obligatory. At first I really  believed the law was going to change, but 5 (or more) years on it still hasn't. The quote TU posted hasn't changed. Here's the link to the site http://www.education.gouv.fr/cid37/inscription.html Seriously, I should never have expected the law to change so fast. You still have to be tested for syphillis before you get married and that law came in just after the first world war. I think that there are quite a few doctors making decisions based on their own opinions or hopes. This would be OK, if they said "I don't believe it is necessary" instead of stating officially that it is neither necessary nor obligatory. If you come across an anti-vaccination directeur/rice then they may even tell you the same thing. It will only be picked up by the school doctor (that is if they check)  
  21. I've never tried bread machine brioche. I quite like brioche from time to time actually (about twice a year) But I like it sliced, toasted and buttered. I've sometimes had it for goûter at other people's houses and then you get a big chunk with no butter. I agree with TU, it's not fun to eat that way. Down in Provence the traditional "galette" des rois is the brioche ring with fruits confits in. The brioche itself is generally quite dry and I'm not too keen on big chunks of fruit confit. I like the proper frangipane galette when it's got proper frangipane in it and not a sort of ground nut mix. A brief comment on Christmas pudding. My grandfather ate it with gravy. Apparently a Suffolk tradition.
  22. Dotty, the collège probably simply assumes that they've had it done. In all the collèges I've worked in, I've only known one principal to check vaccinations.When my kids started maternelle, the school checked what jabs they had had. When they then went on to primary and collège, nobody bothered checking. The assumption is that since they couldn't have been at maternelle without it. French people (like most people) assume that what happens in their country is the "norm" so they would assume that a secondary age British pupil would have had the same jabs at the same time as a french pupil. On the other hand, there is an obligatory medical visit in 3eme (or shoul be anyway) and the school doctor will check vaccinations
  23. Here's the link to the French law (not EU as far as I know) which made CdS unnecessary for EU nationals. http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/WAspad/UnTexteDeJorf?numjo=INTX0300040L  The important article for EU nationals is art 14 which I've copied here. Les deux premiers alinéas de l'article 9-1 de l'ordonnance n° 45-2658 du 2 novembre 1945 précitée sont remplacés par trois alinéas ainsi rédigés : « Les ressortissants des Etats membres de l'Union européenne, d'un autre Etat partie à l'accord sur l'Espace économique européen ou de la Confédération helvétique qui souhaitent établir en France leur résidence habituelle ne sont pas tenus de détenir un titre de séjour. « S'ils en font la demande, il leur est délivré, dans des conditions précisées par décret en Conseil d'Etat, un titre de séjour, sous réserve d'absence de menace pour l'ordre public. « Toutefois, demeurent soumis à la détention d'un titre de séjour durant le temps de validité des mesures transitoires éventuellement prévues en la matière par le traité d'adhésion du pays dont ils sont ressortissants, et sauf si ce traité en stipule autrement, les ressortissants des Etats membres de l'Union européenne qui souhaitent exercer en France une activité économique. »  
  24. [quote user="verviale"]  my son has two french guys managing the european markets in his office, but they travel back on eurostar every weekend.[/quote] I don't think that could be simply put down to them wanting to leave the UK as soon as they can. From my experience a lot of French people are very attached to their region d'origine and travel back as often as they can. To give you an idea, I live just north of Marseilles and I have a colleague who goes back to Toulouse every weekend and another who leaves for the Alpes every holidays as soon as the last bell rings. Most of my colleagues are surprised that I don't return to the UK every school holidays.
  25. [quote user="Pun"] In france we dont have parking charges in most towns and villages let alone hospitals  [/quote] Try parking for free in Aix en Provence or Marseilles. I won't bore you with how much it costs to park at la Timone (one of the big Marseilles hospitals) or even the hospital at Martigues which isn't a big town.  [quote]Its those little things in life you want as you get older that mean so much, feeling safe at night, not having any worry if you decide to go for an evening walk around the town or village, seeing flowers growing in the public area's ie round abouts, shopping mals, hanging baskets all summer, old people , no graffiti Ive not seen any for ages.[/quote] Sounds like Exmouth. Wonderful hanging baskets. My in-laws can't believe them
×
×
  • Create New...