mrslryan's teaching resources: Is it meatless Monday?

While on a regular basis we see advertised that we should try to lower the amount of meat we are eating by having “meatless Mondays” I like to encourage instead “French Fridays” for the classroom!

How does this work? Doing a reward system works really well at all grade levels. And the reward doesn’t need to be something huge either; usually just a change in routine which feels like a reward in itself and an easier way to get through that Friday class!

So. The goal for French Fridays is exactly what it sounds like. For all French classes that you have on Friday everyone is required to speak only French during that class. Perhaps you already require that in your classrooms but for more beginner classes it is an added incentive to language learning. Often, however, students really need to ask questions about a “grammar concept”, for example, in English in order to fully understand how the grammar point works so while your goal is to have everyone only speak French all the time, this doesn’t always occur.

For French Fridays, divide your class up into 2 teams. The left-hand side of the class and the right-hand side of the class is easiest. If you don’t use a seating plan create one for only Fridays. Choose a student to tally the French responses on each side of the class for that day. They can use the chalkboard/whiteboard or a piece of paper but using the board creates added incentive and interest. For 3 classes of the month the tallies are recorded and then on the 4th Friday, it is reward day! Have a couple of things put aside for rewards for this day.

Here are some examples:

French movie day – It is good to have a couple put aside and have the winning team choose which movie the week prior to movie day so that you can set it all up ahead of time and NOT as they walk into your class. I have even provided popcorn now and again. Clean up RULES must be set in advance!

French game day – This does not need to be teacher directed necessarily although if LOTO is chosen you might want to be the caller. French game day could be ‘BOARD GAME DAY’ where you set up a board game at a number of work stations around the room and the students choose one to play. 4-5 players per game is really the ideal number you would want to have at a board. If you don’t have enough board games to keep your game at 4-5 players though, have your students play in pairs as partners!

French “catch up” day – Not all students are always on top of their homework in French or the activities that are coming due shortly. They have added responsibilities at home, have part-time jobs, etc. During one of these days, introduce a project that the students who are on track can start to work on. The winning team from the previous week gets to choose which project will be done, so it’s good to have a couple available for them to choose from AS A GROUP. It’s not necessary to have 2 projects going at the same time.

French project day – As mentioned in the above suggestion, the winning team would choose the next French project to do. Introduce it on the Friday and allow your students to give it a start. It’s something interesting and not necessarily teacher directed which gives your students more freedom to work on their own and do as much as they like AND WHAT part of the project they would like to do during that Friday class.

Always have your rewards French-related with your curriculum. Board games are curriculum oriented in that they tie into Speaking & reading comprehension, movies are listening comprehension and catch up days are more general. Projects are sentence structures development and culture based. And as a side note: Have a fun vocabulary worksheet ready to go for movies that end before the end of the class. There’s nothing worse I think than a class on a Friday that unravels for 15 minutes!

Here are a few resources that can help with some of the suggestions above. I hope you will do French Fridays and have fun with it! It’s great for promoting more French speaking AND helps with classroom management too!

CLICK HERE for BOARD GAME