April 3rd

Another block day! My 1st year students started off with Mon Pays again. Then we went straight into Pauvre Anne and finished Chapter 5. Next we took a "brain break" and watched episode 4 of Chez Mimi, a very silly show on Discovery Streaming that is made for French language learners. My 1st years have already watched all of the Telefrancais episodes (available on youtube), so this is our next step...I don't know what we'll watch when we're done with Chez Mimi! After that, we took a quick quiz over Chapter 5, just oui or non with me giving statements in English about the chapter. Most students do very well on these quizzes and I consider it a pretty good indication of their listening comprehension. Then, I had them do a five minute free write. I try to have them do this about once a week to practice writing fluency. I do not check grammar or spelling or anything. The purpose is for them just to practice writing. The goal is for them to write more words than the previous week, with an end-goal of over 100 words in 5 minutes. Once that stuff was done, we sang a silly song called En Voici, En Voila by Alain le Lait (found on Youtube) about different kinds of food. Finally, we finished the day by talking about what the students had done over the weekend. With my 2nd year students, we followed a similar agenda, but we substituted a TPRS story using l'a emmene, s'est reveille, and a quitte as our 3 phrases. We finished that story and then took a comprehension quiz like the one we took with the 1st years. Then we did a free write and followed that with watching the last episode of Extra (again, available on Discovery Streaming). I've ordered Friends in French to watch with the 2nd years next week. My goal is just to get them listening to authentic French and getting used to not understanding every word. My goal when I'm speaking, telling a story, or we're reading is for them to understand every word. So this is their chance to make wild guesses. We finished with talking about their weekend. I love this activity because it can take a really long time if you ask a lot of follow-up questions. Plus, it gives kids a chance to say Je suis alle au cinema or j'etais malade. J'avais une boum. I'm exhausted! More blogging later!