Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day!

Bonne fête du Canada!

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

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

la Saint-Patrick et des décorations

I know we have just finished Valentine's Day but for me it means getting ready to think about Saint Patrick's Day! (That, along with report cards)  I found this door decoration on Pinterest that is sure to spruce up any classroom.  I wanted to share it with you! Quelle belle porte!

I am also looking for help from my readers about the "poem" below.  My children learned a variation of this poem when younger (certainly not as extensive as this one though as this one is simply amazing!) but I am now looking for an equivalent of it in French.  Anyone know of one?  If so, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a comment on my blog or a message at my TpT store.  I know that the rhyming of poems makes it impossible to be identical but the general "idea" equivalent is what I am looking for.  Merci tout le monde!  

- Lorraine

La Boême = des crêpes extraordinaires

Now this was a lesson! 

Our languages classes were fortunate to have had the opportunity today to host "La Boême" - a French Vancouver based crêpes food truck run by Bruno and Paola!  A Classically trained French chef from France, Bruno has now opened his own food truck and has a huge following in the city of Vancouver, BC.  It is a bit of a drive out to our school from downtown Vancouver (an hour) and so we were so excited to hear that they had offered to come and serve our students today.  Not only do these wonderful chefs both speak French (perfect for my classes!) but Paola also speaks Spanish.  This was ideal since we could have all of our second languages students order their crepes in either French or Spanish.  That is EXACTLY what they did.  I must say that I was so proud of them all! 

It was such a delight to see our students do authentic French speaking with Community members - even the youngest of our students came to order.  If you have the chance to do this at your school I would highly recommend it!  

Bon Appétit! :) Lorraine

Imagination plus!

I am always looking for ways to encourage my students to speak or write in the target language and in my classes it is of course - French. Sometimes the students are asked to write dialogues or to do "real" conversations with just "mini notes" on hand and other times they create questions about pictures, tell impromptu stories, do descriptive monologues, create "speech bubbles" about a picture, etc.  The ideas are only limited by your own imagination! 

Here are a couple of new pictures that I just had to share with you!  I hope you can find a use for them in your class.

 There are evenings when my time is overtaken with "pinning".  I just love to find amazing resources on line to help me with my lessons!

 

The East coast of Canada has been buried in snow recently!  I am so fortunate that I only need to be sure I always have an umbrella with me.  What is on the minds of these "bonhommes de neige" I wonder?

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Un gros merci - Cliquez! 

I am celebrating my first 100 followers at my TpT store.  Please accept this gift from me. :)  Thanks for stopping by!  Lorraine

la musique française - Internet activity

Music changes each year and over the years we have seen an amazing amount of new talent climb the music charts. Just when you think you have heard every combination of musical notes along comes a new artist or group to stretch the boundaries and the imagination once more in the music world.  It would be impossible for the average person to keep up with the ever-changing music.  However, I decided to take a look at the top 100 songs on the music charts in France and found that many songs were NOT in French at all but were English songs heard right here in North America. -- just another example of how small our world really is! 

I'd like to share with you my updated list of musical talent that I have put together from the charts in France.  They are from various years but all have been in the top 100 at one time or another.  I like to pair this list with an internet challenge which is also available at my TpT store. I'm sure your students will like the variety of music included here!

Une liste de musique française

Une activité sur l'Internet

Thanks for stopping by! :) Lorraine

Tis the season

..... for love and friendship?  Well, the stores are filled with pinks, reds and white for decorations and there is chocolate and little gifts everywhere!  Although certainly not a stat holiday, Valentine's Day is widely celebrated. It's a nice way to add a little variety to the classroom and a great way to teach about appreciation for one another with the students.

 Here are a few of my products to help you celebrate Valentine's Day in your classroom!

 

Saint-Valentin

La Saint-Valentin

            Pioche!

I have come across a second linky party with resources for Valentine's Day.  Check it out.  I'm sure you will find something to "spice" up your lessons as February 14 approaches.  Have fun!

michelle dupuis education - Valentine's Day Linky Party


Are you also preparing for La Saint-Patrick?  If so, here are some products for la Saint-Patrick:

                                                        La Saint-Patrick - les activités

 

 

Happy Teaching everyone! -- Lorraine

Tried and true and new finds

A) Do you like to play games in your language classroom?  I certainly do!  And I truly believe there is a time and place for both a traditional board game and a more technology based one.  The goal? --- to have students learn, reinforce their language learning knowledge while having FUN FUN FUN! At our school we play a trivia game which until just this week was basically a paper-based game where students would answer Country trivia questions in groups.  A competition between one group and another.  And then along came: Kahoot! This on-line game turned our Group Game into an extraordinary Group Game!  Kahoot allows you to create your own games on-line or you can use games that have already been made by others.  Many different themes are available.  How many questions to make for a game?  Well of course that will vary on the difficulty of the questions and how fast you go through the questions but our students were able to answer about 40 questions within a half hour.  There was lots of excitement - multi-national trivia questions answered - reinforcement of cultural learning from the classroom and FUN!  Give it a try in your classroom!

Here's the link:

Get Kahoot

B)

With Valentine's Day just around the corner I've been looking at my files to see what I might like to use with each of my classes this year.  Although I have some "tried and true" activities that I use regularly I always work at finding something new to use each year.  It not only helps my students enjoy their days a little bit more, but it makes my days more enjoyable too. Here is a Linky Party that has just come up on TpT.  Have a look.  You just might find something new.  :)

A Linky Party for Valentine's Day!



Happy Teaching! Lorraine

New Year activities

Wow! The New Year is already here and I can hardly believe how quickly it arrived. - 2015! We often think that after Christmas everything slows down but if you really think about it there are so many other events that approach quickly. - In January we have Chinese New Year, Ground Hog Day is at the beginning of February, Quebec City in Canada celebrates the Quebec Winter Carnival and of course "love is in the air" with Valentine's Day soon approaching in February. Have I given you a few ideas as to how to get through the sometimes difficult months of January and February? On the West Coast here we basically have an umbrella attached to our arms for the winter months, however, I must admit that so far this winter it has been much clearer and we have seen many more "blue sky" days. Sometimes we go for weeks without seeing the sun and we laugh about experiencing all 4 seasons in ONE day. But that's just the way it is on the "wet" coast. Here are some of the activities that I use in my classroom to help us get through these darker and wet days. Perhaps you will find something that you can use too. :) Happy Teaching!

Lorraine