Success

We would love to report a particularly successful class in which we felt we actually achieved the goal of team-teaching.  The students were seated in L6 in a U shape, a bit cramped but ok, for a listening task. It was in fact a dictation, an exercise that we find useful for feedback purposes ie. the students are able to tell us immediately what errors they have made in understanding/grammar/vocab - and more importantly, why they made them.  In this instance, both Gaby and Fishy were asking questions and answering them - the advantage to the students being that they hear different methods of explanation. 
We came across a word that no-one recognised at all - léger.  With the class we discussed what the first 3 letters might be, including the accented e, and then brainstormed all the possible endings that might be used to express the sound 'ay'.  The students came up with er, é, ée, ez, ai ais ait aient.  We then challenged them to determine what part of speech léger might be, in its context in the sentence.  We were then able to exploit their knowledge of grammar to eliminate endings that would not be possible.  It was established that léger is an adjective.  We then challenged them with a sentence in which léger was used to modify a feminine noun.  This whole exercise allowed us to revise noun-adjective agreements, and remind students of verb endings for particular tenses. 
The exercise was particularly fun because both students and teachers were participating equally, asking and answering questions, arguing why or why not something might be the case.  They know enough grammar and grammatical terminology at this stage to competently put a case for their point of view.
At the end of the lesson we asked for a show of hands as to who enjoyed the lesson and every student put up their hand enthusiastically.  As did we.  There was a real buzz in the room.