The 13 desserts of Christmas in France

Do you celebrate the festival of the "13 desserts of Christmas" in France with your French students? Most commonly known to be celebrated in Provence, the 13 desserts represent Christ and the 12 apostles at the Last Supper. The 13 desserts is celebrated throughout France and does not have a specific 13 desserts as the desserts vary from region to region. There are, however, certain guidelines that are followed.

The core items of the 13 desserts include raisins, nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts), dried figs and almonds. These 4 items represent the 4 beggars or mendicant friars who originally owned neither personal or community property. --- 4 items

 

There is also a pastry (Pompe à l'huile ) included which is made with olive oil. This could be a round brioche, for example.  This is never "cut" with a knife but broken as would have been done at the Last Supper. ---- 1 item

 

You will also see two types of nougat. A black or dark nougat represents "evil" and a white one representing "good". ---- 2 items

The remaining six items can be a combination of different dessert items. That could include some of the following: -- 6 items

 - Pain d’épice or gingerbread

 - Bûche de Noel or Yule Log

 - Casse-dents of Allauch biscuits

 - fresh or candied fruit

 - other fresh fruits

 - fudge

 - dates or prunes stuffed with marzipan 

 - grilled apricot decorated with star anise 

 - raisins in milk chocolate infused with lavender 

 - quince paste or jam

 - other variations of desserts depending on the region of France 

 

This can be a fun and culturally based activity for you to do with your classes. Divide the students up into pairs or small groups so that the cost of desserts/items is less and less time consuming for the students.

 

For another activity to help with food activities with your students, enjoy this freebie that I have for you.  Get your freebie here! 

 

 À la prochaine

Lorraine

 

 

 

Teaching French before the holidays

December is now upon us and with the joy and festivities also comes some stress in the classroom. So, how can you make that a little easier on yourself?  The usual classroom guidelines sometimes need to be made less stringent and allow your students a way to celebrate while still covering learning goals and outcomes. 

Using Christmas resources is really no different than choosing a theme for your teaching lessons. You can weave the theme into your lessons and add some extra joy for your students. I always gave the students who didn't celebrate Christmas the choice of doing the activities, or not. I usually had something else on hand (winter themed) that they could do as an alternate choice. 

There are always activities that will work with a variety of grade levels and with students' interests. 

Have a look at these. They cover a variety of activities and I'm sure you'll find something that you will like and that will work with your Christmas THEME. 

 

 

If you would like some activities or choices in one place, choose one of these:

 

 

 

I hope these help you!

Lorraine 

 

 

 

 

 

 

French Class Timesaving Activities

This is such a busy time of year and it only gets busier as the days go by. From American Thanksgiving, Parent/Teacher interviews, report cards and soon to be Christmas shopping and celebrations, our "home" time is so much more important than ever!  

So what do we all need?  "Timesavers"!  Timesavers are different for everyone but for teachers it's often something that you can have ready to go for those extra busy days. That might be a Monday morning after a busy weekend at home with the family or another morning after being at work for an event until late. 

I want to share some resources with you that might be able to help you out with one of those times. 

Here are some popular items for this time of year that you can download, print off, copy and have in your room when you need them. 

1. Noël bundles - Noël BUNDLE

                    - Noël BUNDLE - SECOND ONE

AND here's a FREEBIE one for you!     Noël/Christmas Task Cards

2. If you aren't ready yet for Christmas activities, have a look at these resources:

    Clothing shopping - Shopping in Paris

    Food Shopping - On-line Food Shopping  

3. Or maybe you need a project to start with your students.

    French inventors project - les inventeurs français

As always, bonne journée à tous!  Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!

Lorraine

 

 

 

 

 

French Remembrance Day resources

Bonjour! Salut tout le monde!

With Remembrance Day quickly approaching I am confident that you are all thinking about your lessons and how you can continue to instill in your students the importance of remembering those who have sacrificed so much to allow many of us to live in the manner in which we live. Free of war for many of us.

With this, I have a French resource that I would like to share with you and one that will ALWAYS BE available to you at no cost. I welcome you to use these in your classrooms this week and open the very important discussion of freedom and sacrifice at all grade levels. It has been updated and includes more activities so if it is one that you have used before, please download it again to get access to the additional activities. 

   Remembrance Day Activities - le jour du souvenir

Lest we forget - Bonne journée. 

Lorraine

Organizational tips for you in your French class!

Here are 5 classroom tips that just came to mind that I thought I’d like to share with you:

 

1.  How to learn students’ names? – Have students write their names on a half sheet of paper, folded in half like a tent and print their first name on the paper in THICK black felt pen. Pick up a few black markers before classes start!

At the end of the class have the students put their name cards in an envelope by the door before leaving, to be picked up again on the way in, next class. These envelopes can be tacked to your bulletin board with the class name on it. THIS is even great at semester turn around if you have one!

 

2. Plan, copy, and organize your materials for the following school week before you leave on Friday!  Have them on your desk or the counter by a window with the “day” on a piece of paper on each pile.  Easy peasy! All ready to go.  No Sunday evening nightmares or sleepless nights!

 

3. Put together an “emergency sub plan” that is multi-graded and leave it on your desk!  This should be something that will work for multi-grades and can be easily done with a non French speaking sub if you are away!  (ie. A webquest or a review package of materials) The only thing the sub needs to do is photocopy before classes begin. 

 

4. Even for high school students’ parents: Send a quick update once a month on what you have been doing in class and what you plan to do next month.  Even high school parents LOVE to know what their kids are learning about. If you don’t want to email everyone and have a class “on-line page” find a section to include information for parents on it.

 

5. If you are doing “interactive notebooks” find a good place in your classroom for your students to leave their notebooks in the room. There’s nothing worse than starting an activity together to find out that 5 of your students have left them at home. Allow them to take them home occasionally for study review or to allow more time to do a longer activity.  Always have your own completed copy of the interactive notebook on hand! A substitute teacher will love you for this!

 

À la prochaine! Lorraine

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends and family! Take time to reflect on what you have to be thankful for today no matter how great or small. 

Bonne journée! Have a great day! 

Lorraine

How to reinforce French vocabulary

Are you looking for ways to reinforce French vocabulary with your students? 

It's so important for students to build up their vocabulary base. It doesn't matter how good their grammar is, if they don't have the words they need in order to get their message across, they are defeated before they begin!  Here are a couple of ways that I like to help with this.

1.  Since it's near the end of September and school objects seem to be a common vocabulary focus for this month, I like to have the students play "Kim's Game". Simply put, arrange a collection of items on your desk or table for your students to have a look at.  Before showing the objects to the students, cover the objects with a t-towel so that they are hidden. The goal for the students is to remember as many of the items "under the t-towel" as they can and to write the words on a sheet of paper. While the items are still covered, I have the students gather around the table so that everyone can see. They are NOT allowed to take notes at this time. Once everyone has a good view I uncover the items for 1-2 minutes for the students to try to memorize as many of them as possible. Remember NO NOTE TAKING. After the 1 or 2 minute time frame I cover the items back up and the students scurry back to their desks and start intensely writing down as many items as possible. It goes without saying that the words must be in French!  The student(s) with the most number of correct words written down win(s).  Even my high school students like to play this game.

2. Need something for that day you are going to be absent? --- cold and flu season has certainly begun and teachers are bound to catch something!  Have a LOTO/BINGO set of cards tucked away in your teaching supplies.  Even the most active of classes will remain calm for your substitute while playing LOTO. It's a great way to reinforce a themed set of vocabulary or to even introduce it to a class.  How does that work if they don't know the words yet? All of my LOTO/BINGO sets include the calling card which also doubles as a vocabulary reference card.  You can either copy this along with your LOTO cards set (one for each student to refer to while playing) OR you can have the substitute project this card onto the class screen for students to look at.  

If you would like to have a look at these LOTO/BINGO sets just click the link here.  CLICK HERE

Are you interesting in some free writing prompts to leave if you are away? 

If so, this will give you access to some:  CLICK HERE !  

Enjoy these French vocabulary ideas!

À la prochaine et bonne journée! 

Lorraine 

 

 

 

How to introduce your French speaking country unit

Are you starting a unit about a French speaking country ? There are so many to choose from but what I think you’ll like to get your unit studies going is a "springboard activity". Why not have your students do a webquest about that country? Here are some things to think about to help organize this!

If you have a lower level class you can use an  English version of a country webquest and if your students are able to do some French research a French webquest is ideal!

Do you have ESL students in your class or students who don’t have a strong background in their French studies who have joined your class? Use a differentiated learning option for them.  Try a webquest with fewer questions for them to do or have your students work in pairs.

If you would like to have your students study more than one country at the same time, divide the class into smaller groups and assign a different country to each group. Within each of those groups you can choose a “French version”, an “English version”, a differentiated learning version. Choose whichever best suits the students so that everyone is successful.

I've noticed that the most popular right now for the French country studies for this time of year are: Senegal, Haiti, Morocco, Switzerland and Belgium.

I'd like to help you out with these springboard activities.

-Try one or all of the above country’s webquests:

  

Senegal

  

Haiti

  

Morocco

  

Switzerland

  

Belgium

-If you’d like them all together, here’s la Francophonie webquest BUNDLE at my store

 

-La Francophonie --- This bundle includes the above countries and also Madagascar and France!

 

AND here's a FREEBIE for you which would be great as a finishing activity for your unit!

 

CLICK HERE FOR THE FREEBIE ! 

À la prochaine! 

Lorraine

Are you teaching French reading?

I remember my parents telling me that if you could read, you could pretty much learn to do anything in life. I’m pretty sure though they were NOT talking about hitting the platform at the railway station and jumping through the wall to go to a magical school of Hogwarts as my children loved! I couldn’t read the books fast enough for my son and soon he was reading the books on his own while I was still tidying up the kitchen. 

 

When teaching Core French reading to high school students it’s sometimes a challenge to find something that will interest them and help you accomplish your goals at the same time. Looking for authentic documents from restaurants, tourist attractions, posters, movie reviews, magazines, etc. will all help you with this! It’s not necessary to pick up a novel and hope that your students will be able to read it, but starting with smaller articles are great options for you. 

 

And reading together is a WONDERFUL IDEA! You can read as a whole class together or you can divide your students up into smaller groups and have them read a French article together aloud. The stronger students can help the students who may struggle with this and everyone benefits. It’s the “two heads are better than one” idea; in this case 4-5 heads in a group. Also, having your students take turns reading the passage aloud will give them the opportunity to practice their pronunciation. When you are doing this, be sure the students stop after a couple of sentences and go through what was read aloud.  Often students do not understand what they are reading aloud in French and need to go back and decipher the content with a comprehension focus. (not just the pronunciation focus)  Unless you are lucky enough to have a whole class of readers, assigning the reading for homework may NOT work. Some of your students just might not be able to do it on their own. 

 

Using in-class reading activities to promote comprehension is crucial and if chosen wisely can be fun and engaging at the same time.  What is something that I like to choose?  Over the years more and more of my students have been travelling with their families and so I like to use webquests about Francophone countries. Technology is so prevalent in students’ lives in most cases that exploring the internet is a life skill that is developed very early on.  Teaching about the French speaking world is interesting and is included in curriculums. So here is what I have to share with you…. A BUNDLE which includes country webquests.

 

      

  Click here to have a look!

 

For those of you who would like to check out one of my French research projects, please GRAB this FREEBIE.    

Click here to GRAB THE FREEBIE !

 

Enjoy the world of virtual travel and reading!

 

Bonne journée!

Lorraine

It's a bonus time!

 Hi there!

There will be a back to school BONUS SALE next week!  The information is below for you! Don't forget to use the bonus code for additional savings at the checkout!

 

             Click here for quick access!

Enjoy! 

Lorraine

 

 

Are you French unit planning?

Getting started on any new task is very exciting! However, starting a new task can also be daunting. You know what is to be done and in theory how to go about doing it, but when you look at the big picture it is often a bit overwhelming.

 

My first couple of years of teaching were so exciting and so overwhelming! It was a time when you weren’t able to teach just in one “specialty” subject area, you had to leave town to find a job and settle where you knew absolutely no one!  If you were lucky enough to have a significant other to go with you, it was a bonus. Many of my colleagues back then showed up green to the teaching career and eager to dig right in.  I was the same!  

 

I spent long hours prepping every evening so that I could “survive” the next day. Weekends had some time for myself but honestly, I missed out on so much of life while prepping for courses I really had little knowledge of how to teach. I’ve heard people say that there are those who are “born teachers”.  That may very well be the case but it sure doesn’t help when you have no knowledge of the subject that you are teaching except for when you were sitting in the student’s desk.  Does this ring a bell with any of you? 

 

I was fortunate to have an amazing staff at my school who helped me immensely along the way. Sage pieces of advice (like not staying at work past 5pm) were passed along and some I took and some I didn’t.  Very human of me I believe.  After the first year, I decided to make a plan to help myself with the next school year.  One of the things I did was start to put units together over the summer.  I picked a project and while not doing an entire unit I would put some things together that I could grab and add to those days when I really needed a break. 

 

You know what I mean.  A day where you’ve had no sleep the night before, or you are lucky enough to have a conference to go to, or report card time is weighing heavily on your shoulders, or a day when you just would like your students to be independent workers.  

 

I want to share with you 2 resources that will help you with this journey throughout the school year! Yes! Throughout the year!  It’s for the holidays! They seem to creep up when you are the busiest and everyone in the languages classes are doing extra fun things to celebrate.  This is one of my most loved aspects of teaching French --- the fun you can have with the holidays. Perhaps you would like a little bit of help for your journey. Have a look and help get yourself set up for the school year. 

 

             

Check it out here !

               

Check it out here !

 

 

AND also for you a FREEBIE !

Grab it here!

 

À la prochaine!  

Lorraine

 

Is it a HASHTAG deal?

 

Bonjour tout le monde! Hello everyone!

Yes!  It sure is a “hashtag deal”! Here are DOLLAR DEALS as a treat for back to school for you! Don’t miss out on this opportunity to save yourself some prep time and get back a weekend or two for yourself while teaching!

 

It’s especially great when the weather is so wonderful and you certainly don’t want to be stuck inside prepping for the week. 

 

The information is below for you including how to search for the DOLLAR DEALS!  And who doesn’t like a deal?

 

CLICK HERE TO START YOUR SEARCH

 

Enjoy! À la prochaine! 

Lorraine
 

What to plan for in August!

 

Have you ever wondered what other teachers are doing in other areas of the country to start off their school year?  Over the years, even I got into a specific routine about when I should teach different units.  Often, I would connect with other teachers in the department and we would do the same unit at the same time to create continuity in the department. We could then participate in special event days all together. That was the best!

 

Well, here’s a glimpse into what my teachers audience often plans for in August!  Maybe this meshes with you too!

 

                                            

Oral Task Cards                 Interactive Notebook bundle                Printable Calendar             

 

 

                                

Passé Composé bundle             Carnaval de Québec                    Giving Directions

And to top off the August plans, there's a Teachers Pay Teachers Back to School Sale coming along that I am participating in! All of my products including the ones above will be on sale at a 20% discount on August 1 and 2 EASTERN Standard Time. So, on the west coast that finishes at 9pm on August 2. At the checkout use the promotion code BTS23 and TPT will give you an additional 5% reduction on your purchase prices!

I hope you will take advantage of this and add some new resources to your "teaching units".

Have a great day everyone! Bonne journée!

Lorraine

(mrslryansFrenchresources)