Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Culture in May

With the end of the school year fast approaching every minute that passes by seems to be a blur! However, when I looked around the classroom and the languages hallways outside of it I was reminded of many of the fun activities we have done in our department this school year. So, I have a couple of things that I want to share with you.  First, is a beautiful project on "Le Petit Prince" done by two of our French 12 students.  The choice of projects was very broad allowing the students basically free reign on what they wanted to present.  Here is a picture of their Le Petit Prince world. 






Secondly, is our languages hallway wall!  Included on this wall are two multi-culture seminar activities.  The first is our celebration of the "Day of the Dead" where students make skeletons.  The more recent multi-culture seminar was to celebrate "Cinco de Mayo".  During this seminar students made masks and decorated them with their own creations.  I really love looking at this wall.  Fun and culture in one. I hope you like it too!  Some of the masks even made it "onto" the skeletons!


Happy Teaching everyone!  Thanks for stopping by!  Lorraine

Friday, May 1, 2015

Games to solidify learning!

1)  I just looked carefully at the calendar and have found that I have only 30 more school days until the end of my school year!  Wow! Has that time every flown by! I sometimes feel like I sound like a broken record reminding my students that they must be careful of their subject-verb agreements when they are doing their writings and ask them to practice the various verb tenses over and over again.  Well, enough!!!  I kept trying to think of ways to get my students to practice these verb tenses without them feeling like it is a chore --- and I believe I have found it! 


The above is a game of "les serpents et les flèches" which basically follows the rules of the traditional snakes and ladders game.  Each square has a French infinitive and students move up the board when they land on the bottom of the arrow and slide down when landing on the snake's head. Each number on the dice represents a different subject pronoun: #1 - je, #2 - tu, #3 - il/elle, #4 - nous, etc. 
Each time the students roll a number they must "write" the verb out on a sheet of paper in the appropriate form AND VERB TENSE!  This picture is in my grade 10 class when we learned about "le futur simple".  -- 25 minutes of practice and FUN. 

I must give credit to "Teaching FSL" for the bread bag tag idea!  She uses them for bingo chips.  I have just labelled them to use as player pieces for the game.

I circulated around the room to casually check on how their answers were going.  I always want to be sure that my students are reinforcing their learning CORRECTLY. 

Today I marked their worksheets and was pleasantly surprised to find the results very good! I can't wait to use this next week in one of my other classes when we review "le passé du conditionnel"!

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2) My dear mom is in the process of moving to a seniors' apartment building and I feel so lucky that I am still able to spend time with her. I have great memories of growing up in our family around this time of year with Mother's Day just around the corner.  I no longer have my dad and so have a bit of an understanding of what it must be like for my students who do not have a mom or dad to share these days with.

This year when celebrating Mother's Day with your students at school, why not celebrate Father's Day at the same time?  Final exams and review sessions often get in the way of Father's Day and so this year I plan on celebrating both at the same time.  Here are 2 new products that I plan to use.  Adjustments have been made to allow for that special person being perhaps a grandma, or an uncle instead.

Perhaps you will find them useful too.


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Happy Teaching everyone!
Thanks for stopping by! Lorraine