Thursday 7 April 2016

F is for French Angels - Oh La La!

Welcome to my posts for the A to Z Challenge 2016.
This year, I am posting 
Special School Stories
 tales from either my time as a teacher or teaching assistant within classrooms in the U.K. or from my own school days growing up around the country

I am not a linguist but I love languages and so I have often been involved with getting European projects off the ground at the schools I have taught at and I have never balked at teaching children or having children teach (if they know one I don't!) various phrases in several world languages.  So when it was proposed that the younger children should start learning languages too it was my name that cropped up as the teacher to do it and that I would teach French and I would make it fun!

It was to be the infants' Christmas production and the speaking and acting parts were few and far between.  I had a very talented Year 2 class for one afternoon a week so I proposed we would add an additional scene to the production and this would allow those in the class without a speaking part to perform a song in French.  Sometimes I say things without really thinking things through!!  
With various nods from the other infant teachers, I was left to sort it out.  I soon realised that teaching a traditional French Christmas song in the three weeks before the production (in only three hours of lesson time!!) was going to be out of the question so I decided instead to go for the song Chanson D'Amour below:
Suddenly the new scene was very different to what everyone had imagined it was going to be i.e. the children singing a French Christmas song as a lullaby to the new baby Jesus near the end of the production - instead we now had a scene that would be cut in after the "normal" angels has appeared to the shepherds in the story. It would go more along the lines of "Pitch Slapping" with my French Angels  basically telling the other angels that they needed to have more style and launching into the song - ending with an oh la la in a very French superior but chic way.  Their costumes (and I had both boys and girls being angels) were white dresses for the girls and white shirts with black trousers for the boys and all of them wore ... sun glasses!  These angels were super cool and didn't they know it!  Getting a backing track for the song proved a nightmare and in the end the one I had to download had a terrible risque picture so I had to make sure I never had the whiteboard on whilst it was playing!!!  Although in our first rehearsal with all the other classes, the other infant teachers couldn't quite believe their eyes and ears the scene proved to be a big hit and when we played in front of the rest of the school and to parents there were lots of laughs as well as a big round of applause for my little French Angel superstars.  
(Thank you to Monacomac at deviantart.com for the Spock sketch)

Let me know what languages you speak? Which did you learn at school?  Did you have strange scenes in your Christmas plays sometimes?  Have you ever been a most unusual angel?
You know I'd love to know so leave a comment below :)

9 comments:

  1. Formidable! I say that with French flair. Funny story - I bet that was the most memorable play ever. I've always loved languages - took French in school (can read so-so), same with dabbling in German and Italian. I think it helps with English a lot!

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  2. I can speak a little Spanish. Enough to understand a patient in the hospital. Not fluent by any means. I would love to have seen a video of your kiddos singing. The song you posted from You Tube was very pretty! I listened while I read. I will have to go back and view the screen.

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  3. Angels with sunglasses...sounds perfect! I tried learning some basic French a few years back when my sister-in-law was living in Brussels. Yeah, much harder than I imagined! I just don't think I'm one of those people who pick up languages easily.
    ~Katie
    ~Katie
    TheCyborgMom

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  4. Ha, I laughed lots when I read this! I love it when you sing things people don't expect! This is a super idea!!!
    In addition to my native English, I speak German and Indonesian fairly well. I speak SOME French (teach it in school and did it for 3 years) Greek and a bit of Balinese!!x

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  5. Sure sounds different than any Christmas show I've witnessed :D I speak English, understand Spanish pretty well but haven't had an opportunity to speak it, studied French, Norwegian and Arabic. Of those three, I have pretty much forgotten all I knew except a little French. Finding Eliza

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  6. This reminds me of "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever," which is quite funny. It also reminds me of the time I had to produce a musical in the small school where I was teaching, and none of the kids could sing. Glenda from
    Evolving English Teacher

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  7. In Hawaii, our big school production is never for Christmas, but for May Day, Hawaiian style, with leis, hulas, and children dancing - often very cute dances and songs like the one with your French angels. Maui Jungalow

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  8. Great story! What fun that must have been. I took French when I was in school, and my kids are taking it now.

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  9. That sound like a lot of fun.

    Heather

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