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!