mrslryan's teaching resources: 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.