One of my favorite parts of my job is creating displays for student work. Mostly because it means we are finally DONE with a project, but also because it's such a fulfilling way to show learning to families and the students themselves. When kids can see a final product that's visually appealing you can just see their pride shoot through the roof and spill over to other students. I love to see a group of students crowded around a new display, noticing how each child worked a little bit differently.

Today I got to put up one of those new displays for a writing project my 4/5s just finished. And this time I figured out how to make it interactive! I have been trying to incorporate more technology into my classes--to varied levels of success--and found inspiration in this article. We had already been working on using frequency words and conjugating -ER verbs, so it seemed like the perfect moment for a writing project.

This was the prompt: Choose a character. Think big... it can be anything from a cartoon character to a person from history to an inanimate object! Write a paragraph describing your character and include two things that she/he/it ALWAYS does and two things they NEVER do.

I loved seeing what they came up with. I had flying pigs, Samuel Eto'o, Snoopy, multiple unicorns, and even lead... literal lead, as in the substance. Once they were finished writing and decorating their sheet, I had each of them practice the pronunciation of their paragraph for about ten minutes before using a recording app to create a clip of their reading. Finally, I generated QR codes for each composition and put them together. Et voilà, c'est tout! You can find more detailed instructions for making the QR codes on this blog article I referred to earlier.

So far it has been a big hit! Parents love hearing their kids speaking French and there haven't yet been any problems with the technology piece. How have you been most successful incorporating technology into your foreign language classroom? I'd love to hear from you!

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.

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.