I love my job!

It's days like the day I had on Halloween with my students that I just want to shout "I love my job"!!

How much better can a job be than to have a day like this one?  Yes, there are some days that are difficult and tiring but luckily more days are wonderful than difficult.  So, what was it that made it so wonderful?? Well, it was a day where hard work just seemed to pay off; where my students were engaged and having a great time while working on their French.  Students were extra happy and teachers relaxed and all dressed for Halloween.  (me included)

I must also thank TpT for a most amazing product by Arik Durfee called Frankenstein's Monster - a PowerPoint Review game. This product designed with the Frankenstein theme with background sounds and music has been designed in such a way that it can be used in many subject areas.  It was perfect for Halloween.  So, I decided to put together a review game for my French 10 students.  With 4 categories available in the design, we were able to review "passe compose", "imparfait", the pronom "en", and "la Belgique".  Students worked in teams at their tables, many dressed up for Halloween and collaborated on the answers to the multiple choice questions that I designed. 

In between the bonus rounds there were "special questions" where students could earn extra points or in my case "un bonbon" for a special question for the first student who was able to answer it.  Students turned lights on and off, sharpened pencils, stood up and down, clapped their hands, patted their heads and said "bonjour" to their neighbours.  - all for an extra treat. 

I will definitely tuck this gem away for another year!  I will create more versions of this game for my other grade levels and will stock up on bonbons.  "un gros merci" to Arik!  :)

Need to get your students involved?

Do you need to get your students involved?  You want them to be truly engaged in their work?

My best suggestion to you is for YOU TO GET INVOLVED TOO!!  There is nothing more exciting for the students than to see their subject teacher participating in the activity along with them. 

Remember how great you felt when your PE teacher would run with you in your class?  (My hat comes off to those teachers who can manage to participate with 8 classes!!!!) 

Participation in the second language classroom is no different!  When you are doing an oral activity with your students, get in there with them!!  Be a full participant.  Not only do you get to hear your students and are able to help them out along the way, but you are seen as not only a teacher who gets involved but your students will be able to see the "language" in action! 

Market place activities are perfect for this and so are the inside/outside circle activities!  Have fun and "parlez"!  :)

And we begin again! :)

Wow! Where did the time go?  I had no idea that it had been so long since my last post!  My deepest apologies to all who follow my blog.

June in our school is extremely important with many oral evaluations being done to see how our students have progressed in their language learning.  This is indeed time consuming but very very worthwhile. 

Have you ever heard your students tell you that they can't say anything in your target language?  That day is not one that you want to hear!  Our department goal for our students this year is to truly work on the oral speaking component of our subject area and to reinforce to our students that they do indeed know a great deal and that with a little bit of effort they can prove it to themselves! :) 

How do you get 30+ students in a class to practise enough?  One of my ways is to do "market place".  I have a couple of different versions of this at my store with varying topics.  They are not long activities but give the students the opportunities to get out of their seats and speak with other students in the class with a focus on a specific topic or language component.

Another favorite of mine is the round table oral activity.  This can be done with any topic that you are working with! My younger students are learning to talk about themselves.  We started with very basic questions and learned and reviewed the information needed to answer these questions.  By the end of September I am going to show these students just how much they can say about themselves only after the first month of classes!   The round table activity allows students to practise these questions.  Student #1 asks the person to their right a question.  Student #2 answers the question.  He then turns to student #3 and asks a different question.  Students #3 answers it and then turns to student #4 to ask another different question.  Each student continues to do this until they have asked and answered all of the target questions.  Brainstorming the questions before beginning the activity further solidifies their knowledge! 

Have fun with this!!  Students will learn more about each other while practising their speaking skills!

Show what you've learned!

I try to keep the imaginations of my students working and love to see them use what they have learned in French class at the same time.  Recently, I had my students write stories in class.  They only had one hour in which to put something together.  They had a page of 'handdrawn' pictures from which to choose.  They cut out 8 pictures from a page of several pictures to write their own stories. Each story would be different as the students all chose different pictures.  They had to write a minimum of 2 sentences per picture with a goal of between 16-20 sentences for their stories. They were encouraged to use the vocabulary lists and grammar concept rules that they had in their notebooks.  They were not allowed to use any electronics for this activity.  Without any suggestions at all, they also chose to colour in the pictures.  These are high school students!  They were engaged for the full hour and had a good time with their creations.  The results varied of course as would be the case in all classes with varying ability levels.  I was very pleased with the results. To see the product in my store check out this link:  Racontons une histoire!

We're having a sale!

We're having a sale at Teachers Pay Teachers on May 7-8.  Up to 28% in savings! PROMO CODE: TAD13    Come find some wonderful products made by teachers for teachers!  :)

Moroccan Food Festival

'Best lunch ever!'  That's exactly what I heard from one of my students about our Moroccan food festival in class this week, and she wasn't even speaking to me!  My students are finishing up a unit on Morocco and I wanted to allow them to have a fun way to further experience what they have been learning about.  I carefully chose recipes that my students would be able to make (Some had parental help) that would be easy enough and not too expensive to make and also "youth friendly".  The "secret" to Moroccan cooking is in the spices but these are easily found at our local grocery stores. We ate "family style" in the classroom and sat around a large table made by pushing together many of our desks. Since utensils are not typically used in Morocco my students knew they would have to use their "bread" to help eat their food. We had such an amazing time! Try it out!  It was so much fun!

For the recipes used:  Recipes of Morocco 

Practising Reflexive Verbs?

Mr. Bean - getting up late for the dentist on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VumrpkL6RS0

This is a great video for humour and for practising "reflexive verbs"!  Today I used this to review how to use reflexive verbs in the passé composé.  After much laughter, the students viewed the video while making a list of what verbs they could use to retell the story.  Afterwards, they were to write the story in the passé composé using the reflexive verbs pertinent to the story.  They will later read their paragraphs aloud to me. 

Faisons des achats en France!

If you can't go shopping in Paris,  France the next best thing is to go on a "virtual shopping spree"!  On-line shopping is becoming an everyday occurence for many people and even my own son does this on a regular basis.  Although not from a Parisien store he certainly shops as diligently as anyone who would go into a store at the mall!  Galeries Lafayettes a very popular department store in France also has an on-line shopping site where my students did their own shopping today with "virtual euros".  :)  Although they certainly could not finish the activity that is found at my store within an hour, they certainly had a great time trying to do so.  "I still need shoes!" - "Are you comfortable spending almost $300 on boots?"  - These are only two of the comments that I heard my students making while I glanced and listened around the room.  The chatter was totally "on task" and they were having a great time at the same time.  "Would you really wear that camping?" and the comments continued.  "This is the kind of work I like to do.  It's not like work at all!"  What better way to have students talk about your lesson than like that?  :)  Give it a try!

Shopping in Paris, France - an internet activity

The dice game

Over the years I have found that students learning a foreign language always create sentences of the same length.  In order to try to promote a variety of sentence lengths in my students' work I have used a variety of activities in order to promote this.  This week we played the "dice game".  In its simplicity the student's find it enjoyable and yet also challenging.  Each student takes their turn to roll 2 die.  Whatever number comes up is the number of words the table of students must use in their sentence.  They continue to write sentences for about 15 minutes using this method.  I encourage the older students to use "conditionnel", "past conditionnal" and even "subjunctive" in their work.  At the lower levels we discuss transition words before beginning the activity so that they don't think it's an impossible task!  :)  At the end of the time period, I roll the die and ask for volunteer sentences that they have created for each of my rolls. 

That was fun!

"That was fun!"  Those have to be some of the best words a teacher can hear when students are leaving the classroom!  Because I truly believe that a relaxed atmosphere allows for students to be more open to language learning, "fun" definitely needs to be on the menu.  :)  My colleagues and I have just finished our "EXPO" project with our grade 8 students.  They are (12/13 years old) and are not quite beginner learners to French but are the first level for us at high school. Our EXPO project has the presentation day set-up of a Science Fair where students tour around the classroom looking at other students' projects. They have an information sheet that they must complete while doing so.  Our goal is to have our students learn as much about the French speaking countries around the world as possible so that they are more open to the knowledge that it is not just in France or Canada (where we live) that French is spoken.  Apart from the basic information that they must research for the project they often "cook" and bring food samples to class on EXPO day.  Well that day was today and with a mixture of Poster Board and Technology projects (PowerPoints, Prezis and websites)  we had 90 students in one large room with an amazing amount of excitement!!  - a busy yet awesome day!