ER Verbs

I figured since my French 1 students had such a hard time learning être, learning regular ER verbs was going to be a very difficult task.  I braced myself for confusion with them.

Much to my surprise, it went amazingly.  I introduced it last Thursday, and they already seem to have a great grasp of it.  Before I taught them how to conjugate it, I gave them definitions and examples of subjects, verbs, conjugations and infinitives.  I then explained to them how to conjugate regular ER verbs in French.  

Any homework I give immediately following the introduction of a topic is just given completion credit.  Either you did it or you didn’t.  If I do completion credit, I walk around and stamp their paper (so if I make an error in the gradebook, they can show me the stamp and prove me wrong).  On those days, we still correct the homework together so they can check their work and maybe clear up any lingering confusion.  To get a feel for how they did, I just ask them “how’d you do?” and they all respond with a thumbs up, a thumbs sideways or a thumbs down.  It’s a super easy way to get immediate feedback on how well they are grasping what we are learning and if we can move on or not.

Anyway…the day after I taught them ER verb conjugation, we went over a practice worksheet that had been assigned for homework, and at least 70% of them gave me a thumbs up.  That is HUGE.  I was very pumped that they grasped it SO quickly, especially since être was such a struggle.

Today, to reinforce a bit more, we played avalanche in class.  They just rocked it!  They rarely made any mistakes.  I did end up teaching them a song to reinforce those endings (which can be found HERE), which I think helped a lot too.

To any readers, I wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving!  I, for one, am looking forward to our break with immense impatience.

Avalanche

When student teaching, I learned a really cool game called avalanche that helps students practice their verb tenses.

You split the class into teams of 6 or 8 kids (I try to stay away from 7 because each person ends up getting the same subject) and put them into rows, facing the board.

You call out a verb.  The job of person 1 is to run to the board and write the infinitive and the definition.  They take the marker and hand it off to person 2.  Person 2 then runs to the board and writes the je form and conjugates it (je = I).  Then they hand it off to person 3, who then goes to the board and writes the tu form.  This continues until all six forms have been written.

Example (typed..it would normally be on the board)

 

However...if at any point a student gets something wrong, you erase EVERYTHING (all while screaming "avalanche! avalanche!" that has been written.  Then, the student who was next in line (so not necessarily person 1) starts over.  This is even if they mess up the last form.  I usually count accents as well.   

Example that would warrant an "avalanche"

 

The winning team is the team that gets to the end correctly first.  This game works best when you have a whole list of verbs or when learning a specific tense.  I recommend writing out the verbs you are using first.  In the heat of the moment while judging 3-4 teams, it is easy to forget if they formed that form correctly.

A tweak that someone recommended to me was not avalanching them right away.  Instead of writing the next form on the board, the next person in line could fix a previous person's error instead, and then hand off the marker (so you are still wasting a turn to fix the error).  The only time you'd avalanche is if the person AFTER the person who wrote the 6th form says "yes it's all good!" and it's not good.