mrslryan's teaching resources

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

Enjoy some well deserved time with family and friends this holiday season.

Best wishes from Lorraine

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our American neighbours and friends!

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Generally speaking, each summer I look for a new "special" activity, game, idea, etc. that I can use in my classroom for the following school year. This fall I discovered "Kahoot" a wonderful on-line method for students to play games or do review activities while using their handheld devices or laptops. Having students engaged in learning is always important and where often using a student's cellphone is a "no no" this allows the students to use them in an educational way.

To start you need to set up a "free" account for yourself at: https://getkahoot.com/

You can either explore the thousands of 'shared' games that other people have made and use these in your classroom or make up your own to use. This way your games or reviews can be subject specific. I have made some for my French 8 classes to review the new concepts. Even the quietest of students can participate without anyone knowing if they get the answers correct or not. There is always a running list of who are the "top leaders" of the game and students can create their own "fictitious names" to hide their identities if they wish to remain anonymous. My colleagues and I also make games to review movies that we have watched in class and now one of the most recent ones is one about Christmas. === all of these are of course in French for us. With a multiple choice format or true/false you can either write questions, do fill-in-the-blanks or even link questions to pictures. This is particularly great for vocabulary review.

The questions will appear on the large screen (connected to a projector) and then the possible answers. You program in the correct answer when you make up the quiz/review. The answers will not show up on the students' devices but instead will be red, blue, yellow or green squares with shapes on each of them. The shapes are particularly good as it allows for students who may be colour blind. The faster the students answer the questions, the more points they will earn. You can also set the amount of time allowed for choosing the correct answer. I like to use 20 seconds. The funky music plays in the background so be sure to hook your projector up to a speaker via your laptop. The countdown will also appear on the screen. You can use this as review by pausing after each question and discussing the correct answer choice with the class. --- a great learning tool! Check it out!

Happy Teaching!! Lorraine

Thursday, August 27, 2015

A teacher to look at!

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share with you a teacher-author, Kimberly Geswein, who makes fonts 'extraordinaire'! I don't know about you but I get tired of the regular fonts that come with our computer programs and enjoy trying out new ones!

Kimberly has dozens of fonts at her Teachers pay Teachers store with catchy names that certainly must go along with a bubbly personality. I haven't met her but the names of her fonts give light to much "love of life". :) Her fonts are available to you for personal use at no cost. She shares these with everyone! So generous I must say. For those of us who are a part of the Teachers pay Teachers teacher-authors community or for others who sell their work, she requires a commercial license to be bought with each font you choose to use. So, for example, if I choose to use the font "Set Fire to the Rain", I can buy a single font license OR IF I find that I am going to use many of her fonts there is also an All Fonts license which will cover all of the fonts that she makes. Additionally, the license you buy for a font is not for a single use but for a single font. So, I can use a "loved" font more than once and not need to buy a second license. My purchases have been well worth it!!

For those of you who teach World Languages and who are wondering about the "accents". Yes!! Several - not all -- but several of her fonts include accents to cover 80+ languages. This makes our classroom work look so much better and we do not need to worry about adding accents by hand. :)

The fonts that I like that have accents for me to use are:

KG Alphabet Regurgitation, KG Already Home, KG I Want Crazy, KG Hard Candy Solid, KG Hard Candy Striped, and Covered By Your Grace.

Additionally, for those of you who are like me and really don't know how to put different fonts together in terms of what looks good, download Kimberly's Font Tips - Pairing Guide! It not only tells you the tips but shows you examples. Very helpful!

So, while you are working so diligently at getting ready for school to start - or perhaps you have already started and are busy with your beginning of the school year activities, keep Kimberly Geswein Fonts in mind. You will be pleasantly surprised and impressed as was I!

Here's a link to her store: KG Fonts

Happy Teaching everyone! Lorraine

Monday, August 10, 2015

Secondary ebook! - French and Spanish resources included!

Hi everyone! The 3rd ebook has just been compiled and published to celebrate 36 TpT teacher-authors at the Grade 7-12 Secondary Level of this subject area category!

Each teacher-author has offered you a FREEBIE from his or her store along with a BACK TO SCHOOL teacher TIP! Also included are resources for French, Spanish, Social Studies, Special Education, Art and more! Click below to download the Free ebook! There are many resources! I will also include the links for the other ebooks that are included covering the other subject areas and elementary education. But for now, here is Secondary 7-12 with the subject areas listed above. Enjoy!

Back to School ebook!! Grades 7-12

More ebooks to come!! Happy teaching! Lorraine

Saturday, July 4, 2015

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July to our American neighbours!

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Happy Canada Day!

Bonne fête du Canada!

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

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

Friday, May 1, 2015

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.