It seems like the best ideas are always the ones that come to me at the last minute. I've always been a procrastinator and teaching is no exception, but I tend to do my best work under pressure (or at least I tell myself!). A few weeks ago I was trying to think of something to do with my first graders to introduce city vocabulary about twenty minutes before class when I came up with this game. It not only helps students practice place names but also basic directions.

I have a set of laminated flashcards of place names illustrated with cartoonish pictures of the places. Pretty boring, until you add construction paper roads AND hotwheels! I started with just the roads and displayed each card to the kids, having them repeat and look at the picture to figure out the definition. Following this protocol I added them to the "city" one at a time, sometimes justifying their location in simple terms ("Je mets la pharmacie à côté de l'hôpital" or "Je mets le parking en face du supermarché").

Once our city is complete I show them four different directions and write them on the board:

à gauche
à droite
tout droit
arrêtez

Next I pull out my little car, explaining that I am new in town and they have to give me directions. I announce my destination and start driving, making sure to pause at each carrefour and wait for directions. The key here is that I do NOT understand directions given in English, and I will keep right on driving if they don't tell me to stop at my destination! The kids really get into this game and it gets pretty hilarious when they mix up their directions and drive me off road or straight into a building. This is the perfect game to get students speaking in the target language because they are either motivated to help me get to the right spot or be mischievous and drive me off the road on purpose. Joke's on them because as long as they are speaking French I am happy :) Once I've practiced with them a few times they are pretty good about taking turns driving on their own and I can include the game in a rotation, allowing me to focus on other skills in small groups. You can even get fancy and add school buses an ice cream trucks with special destinations!

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!

Earlier this year I spent some time with my fourth and fifth graders going over the basics of French pronunciation. Nothing too complicated, just the essential accent marks (this accent dance was a winner!), vowel pronunciation, and particularities of sounds that don't exist in English. My goal is for them to be able to read written French even if they don't know the meaning or haven't seen the words before.

As a culminating project, I had them work on French tongue twisters and create posters to show the meanings of the virelangues for performance in an all-school assembly. Although we ran out of time for the second piece, it was a fun way for them to get their mouths around the trickier sounds and made for a cute wall display:

I used this site to select the virelangues, and was able to find some really great ones that were easy to differentiate. Here are the ones I used:

Zazie causait avec sa cousine en cousant.

Zazie was chatting with her cousin while sewing.

Trois tortues trottaient sur un trottoir très étroit.

Three turtles trotted along a very straight sidewalk.

Un gros porc dort au bord du beau port du Bordeaux.

A big pig sleeps beside the lovely port of Bordeaux.

Dans la tente ta tante t’attend !

Your aunt is waiting for you in the tent!

As-tu vu le tutu de tulle de Lili d'Honolulu?

Have you seen Honolulu Lily’s tulle tutu?

Sachez, mon cher Sasha, que Natasha n'attacha pas son chat !

Know, my dear Sasha, that Natasha didn’t tie up her cat!

Because I like spending completely unnecessary amounts of time on crafty projects rather than doing actual work, I cranked out these mini paper clothes during my prep time:

These little guys were a big hit with my second and third graders (my favorite quote of the day: "hey! I have that sweater!"). We played a spin off of one of my favorite game formulas:

1. Lay out a bunch of objects, naming them as you display one by one and asking the children to repeat after you.

2. Ask them to "fermez les yeux s'il vous plaît".

3. Choose one student to remove an item.

4. Ask them to "ouvrez les yeux".

5. Call on students to guess the missing item (in French of course!).

It seems simple but for whatever reason the children are consistently super motivated with this game and I almost always see all hands raised––although many of them think they can get away with giving the answer in English! If you're in a pinch for time it can also work well with straight up pictures of the target vocabulary.

It helped that I found some mini clothespins sitting around in my apartment, begging to be used for this project. Thus was born "Au Voleur !!", the clothesline game. The premise: while you all were sleeping, a thief in the night snatched an item of clothing hanging out to dry. Bonus points for the student who can guess the thief.

Bandes dessinées! What could be more fun?? I hand drew one of these templates on a whim one day and have already used them more than a few times, and at a couple different grade levels. You can switch up the format and dialogue depending on the subject, and leave more or less of the text blank to differentiate for abilities and age.

For this particular one, first graders had just been introduced to emotion vocabulary. We spent the first week practicing and playing games with "Je suis...", so they were accustomed to that format. The dialogue should look something like this:

-Bonjour!

-Bonjour!

-Comment ça va?

-Je suis ______________ . (triste, heureux, surpris, effrayé, ravi, etc.)

The fun part is filling in the thought bubble, since students get to decide what happened to the stick figure that day to make them feel a certain way and draw in the scenario (using lots of color of course!). I leave the template pretty basic on purpose, so when I get those kids who finish way earlier than the rest, I ask them to keep embellishing with expressive faces, clothing on the stick people, borders, etc.

Cute factor: 8/10
Happy doodling!

K-2nd Grade

While trying to decide how to celebrate the winter festivities with my younger kids, I knew I wanted to work in some kind of special treat, but had a hard time finding something hands-on. I kept coming back to that classic French Christmas dessert, bûche de Noël. If only there was a way to make it mini...

Suddenly it occurred to me: Swiss rolls! How did I not think of that before?? I sent out an email to the staff with a desperate plea for evergreen clippings, headed straight to the store and picked up boxes of Little Debbie's Swiss rolls, chocolate frosting, fresh cranberries, and powdered sugar. I used two rolls for each bûche on a paper plate and did all the assembly beforehand. In class I had the kids frost the logs, add bark patterns with forks, and arrange their choice of greenery and cranberries to their liking. For those who opted in, I "snowed" powdered sugar over the logs with a sifter and we called it good!
This project was a real crowd pleaser and the children were bursting with excitement to show their families and share the snack with them. I covered them with plastic wrap and sent them home on the paper plates. This is the kind of project I love—simple, adorable, edible, and kid-friendly! The only thing that proved to be a little tricky was that the layer of frosting on the rolls sometimes cracked off when you tried to spread the additional frosting. But with enough powdered sugar, it's not even noticeable :)

4th and 5th Grade

I have fond memories of making my very first bûche de Noël. My high school French teacher made a point of working cuisine into our curriculum, and she guided us along the measuring, mixing, baking, rolling and—best of all—decorating over a couple of days in December. I think there is nothing that embodies French Christmas traditions more than a beautifully decorated bûche.

Initially I was intimidated by the thought of crowding twelve lively nine and ten year-olds into the school kitchen, but I knew it would be something they'd always remember, if nothing else. We began our culinary adventure by learning about the history of the yule log and how it eventually turned into a yule log cake as modern hearths decreased in size. I couldn't resist showing them a clip of Julia Child making her version, and the kids were more than motivated by the time they left class.

This recipe from Epicurious ended up working well for our needs. I appreciated the extra component of zesting and squeezing the oranges, because it turns out that when you have twelve cooks, the job goes by a little too quickly! It was important to be able to divide the recipe into many smaller jobs (cleanup and photography are important ones!). I divided the children into three groups and had them start just by reading all the steps. In the end I pretty much stepped back and let them have at it and was pleasantly surprised by the result! Even the kids who usually give me the most trouble seemed to be focused on getting their task done. I also managed to find some disposable kid-sized chef hats on Amazon that made the whole thing pretty much adorable.

We were able to finish the cakes in about 35 minutes, after which I had them watch while I rolled it up in the parchment paper. At our next class, I put on Mon Oncle for them to watch while I called over two at a time to work on decorating. I was so thrilled with the way the kids banded together on this project, and it also made for some wonderful photos to send to parents.

The term calligramme was invented by Guillaume Apollinaire, French writer and poet of the early 20th century. His collection of calligrammes demonstrates the art form of turning words into images by manipulating their size and form. My favorite is the lady with a hat, but he's also known for his Eiffel Tower and horse poems. I just love how whimsical they are!

My 4th and 5th graders were learning adjectives to accompany their study of the verb être and I realized it would be the perfect occasion to whip out Apollinaire's calligrammes. The assignment I gave them was to use only words to create a self-portrait, including "Je suis" with a list of adjectives describing themselves.

I had them go over in sharpie and add color to add some finesse. They had just selected their French names, so I backed the portraits on construction paper and labeled them with the new names. The result was a beautiful display that hung outside their classroom for the better part of the year. I was so happy with the way they came out!

Lots of kids struggled with the challenge of not using traditional lines for their contours, but they were all happy in the end with their likenesses. It was a practice in refuting the notion of "realistic" in their art—some of them could just not deal with it and included lines anyways! Next time I may have them prepare the list of adjectives ahead of time, as some of them were having a hard time scrounging for words as they went on in the process.