Purposeful family living - with a French twist
Bonjour! I'm Michele Cherie: francophile, teacher, writer, runner, wife, and mama to five children. I'm a non-native French speaker from the West Coast, USA. My husband and I recently relocated our family to Alsace, France. IntentionalMama shares our bilingual journey and resources for a culturally-rich family life.
This lesson was the fifth weekly class for beginning French students (ages 8-12) after a two-week break. We focused on reviewing conversational phrases and playing BINGO to reinforce numbers through 79. We also began an activity that helps students learn basic sentence structure and gives them familiarity with using a bilingual dictionary (online and printed versions). This lesson was designed for a 50-minute class.
Read MoreLes amis, I've been wanting to tell you about the ACTFL Conference that took place in San Antonio, Texas, just over a week ago. ACTFL is the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages; their annual conference is oriented towards K-12 teachers of French, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Japanese, German, and Italian. This year's conference was the second largest--there were well over 6,000 teachers in attendance!
Here are my favorite aspects of the conference:
Read MoreThis beginning French lesson, the fourth in a series of seven, helps students review basic numbers and gain familiarity with vocabulary for the days and months. Allons-y! Let's go! (Here are links to previous lessons one, two, and three.)
Here is the third lesson for a beginning French class based on a once-per-week 50-minute course for upper elementary students. If you'd like to see earlier lessons, I posted lesson one and two within the past few weeks.
Last month I began teaching a beginning French class to a small group of upper elementary students. If you'd like to follow along on their language journey (or borrow lesson ideas!), here's the basic outline of what we did during our second and third classes. Keep in mind that this is only a once-per-week, 50 minute class, so we spend about twenty minutes or so reviewing and practicing what we've previously learned. (You can find lesson 1 here.)
Read MoreLast month I started teaching a beginning French class to a small group of upper elementary students in our homeschool co-op. (Most of my current students are around age 10.) Over the next two months I'll post my weekly lesson outlines here for teachers, parents, and those of you who'd like to learn or brush up on basic French skills. I lean heavily towards immersion and emphasize speech over writing, at least in beginning classes. Each class is 55 minutes and meets once per week for six weeks.
These lessons are designed for a small group of students with limited materials--we have no textbooks, workbooks, computer access, or video player in the classroom. We do use a CD player and mini-whiteboards. (You can learn how to make your own set of mini-whiteboards here.)
Read MoreWhen my husband and I hosted high school exchange students, they told us about the repeated conversations they had with American students during the first few weeks of school:
American: "So you're an exchange student? That's awesome! Where are you from?"
Exchange student: "I'm from Bolivia." [or Hungary, etc.]
American: "Really? That's awesome! So . . . where's Bolivia?"
Read MoreDoes it feel like summer to you yet? It's so close here--we have friends visiting from out-of-state, and this is my husband's last week of teaching before his summer break. I've been thinking of simple summer activities that we can do to keep French integral to our days since my family will be spending more time together and we will be conversing more in English (my husband doesn't speak French). Here are my suggestions for simple children's activities for summer fun in French (and most of them can be used to practice another language as well):
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