TpT Cyber Smile Sale

Hope everyone had a lovely holiday weekend! Let's keep the celebration going this Monday and Tuesday with a Teachers Pay Teachers Sale. It's a great time to check off those items on your wish list!

Why I Taught Parts of Speech in French Class

Has this ever happened to you: You’re helping students during a writing activity. You see one of your kiddos writing a lovely sentence but their adjective doesn't agree. So, you say “Excellent! Mais, fait attention à l’adjectif”. And they stare back at you. Blankly. Almost bleakly. Suddenly the writing process is disrupted and you find yourself going into a grammatical explanation for the 10^th time this week.

This used to happen rather frequently in my room. I was torn: I wanted to give the students the tools they needed to monitor and correct their own writing WITHOUT disrupting their workflow. (Also, having the same conversation about French grammar rules over and over was getting a little old.)

This year I thought I would introduce the parts of speech in French. I figured if students had a better understanding of the parts of speech, I would be able to direct their attention to certain aspects of their writing easily. To my surprise, the kiddos responded really well! I just uploaded the products I used in my TpT store, if you’re interested.

First, I assigned this graphic organizer for homework. I gave them a couple of nights to do it, since I assumed they would need to use the Internet to look up some words. I asked them to find the English equivalent of each, the definition, and some examples in French or English. When we went over it in class, our conversation was mostly in English, but I think it was time well spent.

Then, we worked on the parts of speech foldable. On the inside flaps, I had students write the English equivalent and a couple examples in French for each part of speech. You can find that here. When I do interactive notebooks, I like to have examples in several different stages of completion. I hang them up on the board for reference. It makes the direction-giving and assembly process go so much smoother.

Have you ever had a similar dilemma? What was your solution?

Positive School Climate Day

Today we celebrated Positive School Climate Day at school. It’s usually scheduled during the Week of Respect, and we spend the entire day talking about – you guessed it - respect and bullying. 

So what did we do in French class today? We talked about a father and son whose language barrier prevented them from speaking for 20 years!

I first heard the story last week when I was on my way to work listening to the podcast “This American Life”. It’s Act II of episode #567, What’s Going On In There? You can find it here.

It was a perfect activity for today. The story is less than 15 minutes long, which was short enough to keep my middle schoolers’ attention, but long enough to provide some great discussion topics. Here’s some of the discussion highlights:

-       private life vs. public life

-       the languages spoken in the kiddos own families

-       struggles faced by immigrants

-       the power of communication in conflict

-       language acquisition  

Do you have something similar in your school? What do you plan for those days?

Bloglovin

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It's official! You can now follow me on Bloglovin!

With my new blog design launching in a few weeks, I am trying to get all the little details worked out. Check back soon!

Jenna

Sunday Funday

We're in a heat advisory here on the East Coast. Wow, guys, it's hot! It's a good day for staying inside if you ask me.

So far, my Sunday Funday has included the following:

1. This Urban Decay Naked 2 Palette make up tutorial from The Small Things Blog.  'Tutorial' is maybe a strong word, since this was really very simple. But I never hardly ever try new things with my make up. It's time to switch it up.

2. Device-free time with Monsieur. We played Sorry and it was great. (Even though I lost twice.)

3. Chocolate Peanut Butter Muddy Buddies. YUM!

Let's talk about this snack I adapted from Mom On Timeout. (I originally found the recipe on Pinterest.) My local convenience store didn't have any Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or Reese's Pieces, so I just used peanut butter M&Ms instead. Also, I strongly dislike peanuts, so I went with almonds. This is pretty fantastic. I might recommend dividing the entire bowl into individual snack sizes as soon as it's done. Trust me on this.

What did you do today?

TpT Store Newbie

Bonjour everybody!

Well,  I've finally opened my TpT store. It only took me about 3 months to upload my first two products. While I'm bummed it took so long, I love these cute products!

My first year teaching, my supervisor suggested creating some small "classroom expression" posters to hang out around the room. This way, she reasoned, the kiddos have access to expressions that will allow us to deal with common management issues IN FRENCH.

Sounds ridiculously simple, right? Well, it is! In my three years of teaching, I've added tons expressions to my original posters and they work!

Every year my kiddos use these expression posters from the first day of school to the very. last. day. Throughout the course of the year, they learn these as memorized chunks of language - some even figure out how to modify the expressions to use in other situations. (yay!) Also, the use of these expressions keeps the entire class (myself included) speaking in French. Even when someone has to go to the bathroom. Or needs to borrow a pencil. :|

So, here it is! My first TpT product. This is the Freebie version and comes with 5 posters.

...And my second product. This is the paid version and comes with 21 expressions! I use these all year! Just print, cut, and hang. For extra durability, I print the poster on white printer-friendly card stock and laminate them.

I'd love to hear any feedback via TpT or in the comments below. 

Merci!