Roses are Red

Another fulfilling day of teaching. I'm finding that I much prefer working with the Terminale classes which is the equivalent of our Seniors in HS. It seems the older students are more confident and outgoing which makes class more interesting. I love it when they actually ask me questions!


Today we started with an ungraded quiz on USA facts like "who is the current President and Vice President? and "How many times larger than France is the US?" (By the way the answer is 17!). After that we switched subjects to Valentine's Day. Groan groan. Funnily that is the response from most French people. Some of the girls get a little giddy but in general young people view the holiday as commercial. That said, I did see quite a few people out purchasing sweets and flowers on Monday evening. Not to mention that there were special Valentine's Day menus at a lot of the restaurants.

But back to my lesson...I had anticipated that they might not be thrilled to do an entire hour on VDay so I decided to chose one simple activity: Poetry. Even more groaning!! But as I pointed out it was one way to express your feelings without spending money or "buying" into the holiday. Okay okay they still weren't loving it so I started to write a Roses are red, Violets are blue poem on the board. Ahh some recognition from the students. So I ended up writing about 5 different variations on the board. Some romantic (sugar is sweet and so are you), some funny ( I forgot to buy a present but I love you) and some a little negative (Valentine's day is stupid and so are you). Anyway once I started bashing the holiday a little bit they loved it! And once I told them that whatever group came up with the best poem got chocolate they were completely on board.

So here are their responses for your viewing pleasure:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Life is wonderful
Just because of you

Roses are red 
Violets are blue 
I don't care about V.Day
But I love you

Twinkle twinkle
little star
How I wonder What you are
up above world so high
like a dimond in the sky

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Your eyes are mine
And I'm yours

Hard to pick a favorite though the twinkle twinkle is pretty random and great. Especially since they completely ignored the worksheet that had the beginning of the poem started for them. Not to mention I'm impressed they knew the lyrics!