Une Toute Petite Francophonie

One of the best investments I made this school year was a whopping $6 purchase at Goodwill back in October. Telephones! With a cord, making them "old-fashioned" of course.

They've been great fun and a huge motivator for kids to get speaking. It's pretty easy to customize a short, easy-to-memorize dialogue based on whatever unit we're studying and the kids get so excited when they come out of my panier magique. On Halloween we used the phones to make monster prank calls and practice saying "J'ai peur !!" My other favorite dialogue is a short one I use during the body unit to practice naming body parts. It looks like this:

I have a two volunteers come up, one to play the doctor and the other to play the patient. The patient draws a card from a pile with a picture of a body part on it and then conversation ensues.

Souffrant : Paris, 1-2-3-4 ! (dialing)
Médecin : Allo ?
Souffrant : J'ai mal !
Médecin : Où ?
Souffrant : Au pied (or according to the card).
Médecin : Dommage ! (il raccroche)

The premise of the negligent doctor who responds, "Too bad!" to the patient's complaints will never not be hilarious for children and they love to see just how evil they can make the doctor sound or how painful they can make the patient's "J'ai mal". Moral of the story: got telephones, kids will speak!