Wednesday, August 29, 2012

P.A.T. ideas

I use Fred Jones' P.A.T. as a classroom management tool and I have had great success with it.  I even presented what I do to a group of my peers last summer!  But last year I started dreading P.A.T. time.  The kids would always vote for the WORST games and then I would be stuck trying to manage this horrible game for 40 minutes on a Friday.  So my colleague and I brainstormed to try and figure out a way to make it work for us again.  This is what we came up with...

We are going to do a sort of rotation each month.  One Friday will be music videos (most kids LOVE this).  One Friday will be a tasting.  I am thinking that the first month we will do beverages.  I will show kids a menu with Boissons to give them an authentic look at restaurants in France.  We will talk about how to order a drink, do a tasting of Perrier, Evian, Orangina and then talk about if they like it or not.  The first month will be pretty lame because they will get a lot of vocab and they won't get enough practice, but I'm hoping that by using the same or similar vocab every month, they will acquire it by June.  One Friday will be a game.  I have a ton of game ideas, so this shouldn't be a problem.  My second year kids will get to vote on what game they want to play while first year students will rotate through my repertoire.  The last Friday will be craft day.  I've gone online and tried to find some authentic crafts for the kids to do.  Some things that I've thought of (and they aren't all authentic...) is to teach a mini lesson about Van Gogh and have them make paper sunflowers with tissue paper and glue, make an Easter bell with yogurt cups, mini bells and pipe cleaner, paint in the style of Seurat with Q-Tips and tempura paint, make a fleur de lis Christmas ornament out of paper, make a stereotypical French man with a template and TP roll, make Valentine's Day cards in French, make a Poisson d'Avril...

Any other ideas?  I'd like to use more authentic crafts or at least celebrate authentic French holidays... 

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