(Edited 7/9/19)Like many of you, I teach a mixed level class that includes students in both French 4 and French 5, some of which are taking the course for college credit and/or in preparation for the IB exam. While the brand-new French 4 students are understandably intimidated by being in class with the French 5 […]
Over the past couple of weeks a few of my virtual colleagues have requested suggestions for designing a unit on family. Although this is a theme that I think almost all of us address in our level 1 classes, I haven’t yet gotten around to sharing my materials for this unit, mostly because I’m not […]
I have just enough time for a quick post before heading off to work this morning, so I thought I’d share the IPA that my French 1 students will be taking today. In this unit the students learned family vocabulary and how to describe people. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really happy with the reading I had […]
When I polled the members of my Facebook group about the types of activities they’d like me to include in the Novice housing unit I am working on, nearly all of the responders mentioned their favorite speaking tasks. Here are their favorites and a couple others that have worked well for me. How it’s prepared: […]
Based on the comments I’ve seen on the French Teachers in the US Facebook page, #langchat, etc. I know that the work of teaching via distance, hybrid, in-person-but- socially-distanced-learning has not gotten any easier since the school year began. While I wish I could do more to help my colleagues that are doing the real […]
Today I just wanted to share a quick beginning of the year post. The chronological nature of a blog can make it difficult for new readers to find helpful posts. So, as I did last year, I’ve created this list of links to past posts that included complete unit plans. Keep in mind that these […]
As I mentioned in my last post, this August marks the first one in 29 years that I have not welcomed 100+ students into my classroom. As you can imagine, I am “feeling all the feels” as I read the excited/overwhelmed/anxious/enthusiastic/etc. posts of the members of my PLN who are beginning a new school year […]
Today I’ve decided to share a unit I developed on the theme of French/American stereotypes for my combined French 4/5 class. I’ve never taught a unit on this theme before, but I think it will be a great way to start the year with this class! These are the steps I used to create this […]
As a follow-up to my earlier post about using infographics, I’ve written a five-step plan to designing a lesson based on an infographic. 1. Find the infographic. Most of the infographics I use have come from Pinterest. I have a separate board for each theme that I teach, so that as I begin each unit […]