Spoons

If I could pick one area of weakness with my kids, I would definitely say verbs.  There's only so many conjugating worksheets you can do, but games with verbs are hard to come by.

Then it hit me.  Spoons.

It is played like the game spoons. Here are the rules if you are unfamiliar with it.  However, using the printer in the office, I created my own decks of cards.  Each card has a verb on it...either the infinitive or a conjugation (je, tu, il/elle, nous, vous, ils/elles) but WITHOUT the subject.

I came up with two different ways kids could make a set of four.  They could get four different versions of the same verb (for example: portons, porte, porter, portes) OR get four different verbs in the same conjugation (for example: suis, ai, vais, fais [the first person singular of four different verbs]).  I found that both worked GREAT and they had so much fun with it.  It happened to be nice outside so we took the game outside.  If you don't have spoons, any objects will do.  I used markers and it worked just fine.

To help them get MORE practice, if they are "out", I require them to still play.  They just cannot grab a spoon.

I Spy

I am currently in a clothing unit for the French 1s.  One warmup the kids have really started to enjoy is I-Spy.  I give the kids a few minutes to study their vocab, and I write out four to five outfits of what people are wearing in the room.  I describe the people one at a time and the students need to guess who I am talking about.

This activity is great because the kids come to school in different outfits every day.  Sometimes I need to be specific because they will be wearing similar things.  Other times I can get away with "il porte un tshirt a manches longues" (he's wearing a long sleeved t-shirt) because only one student has this.

Both of my classes ask to play it almost daily.  I have seen a great improvement of their vocabulary because of it.

What am I?

I'm really in this mode lately trying to encourage vocabulary retention.  My 1s are currently learning about "faire les courses" or food shopping, so I did an activity that not only enhances their vocabulary, it also has them using the target language.  It's an activity called "qui suis-je?".

I made cards for each food vocabulary word and tied string to it.  Each student gets a food item behind them (like a backwards necklace) and they have to ask yes or no questions to their classmates to figure out what they are.  Because they are French 1, we wrote a list of questions we could ask on the board in order to keep them in the target language.  Questions like, "can you buy me at a boulangerie?", "am I red?", "am I a vegetable?", "do I say moo?"...things like that.  They have to go around the room asking their classmates yes/no questions trying to narrow down which food they are.  Once they figured out what they were, they turned the card to their front side.

I found that it worked really well.  They had to rack their brain for the possible vocab words they could be in order to narrow down their questions and then guess that they are.  One class did it perfectly without English, the other got into English a bit.  I tried to do it that if they heard someone speak English, they could take that person's card.  However, I didn't like that.  They ended up fighting and also it then made that English speaker even LESS likely to use French later.  I'm still trying to figure out a fix for that.

The Stamp

I realized that I never did my last post in my string of organizational posts, or ways to make your life easier and your students' excuses go out the window.

Often, to save myself the headache of grading 50 worksheets in one night, I will just give my students completion credit, especially at the beginning of a chapter.  At the beginning of the hour, I go through the class and just check that everyone did it, then we would go through it.  However, I found it very hard to keep track of who did the assignment and who didn't.  Often, I'd have kids coming up to me and saying "but I had it done that day!" which was difficult because, unless I specifically remember seeing an empty page, I'd have to take their word for it.

So, I decided to get a little stamp.  When I check for completion credit, if they finished the assignment, they get a little smiley stamp on their paper.  That way if I do make an error, they can prove me wrong.  No stamp means the student never showed it to me completed.  I have yet to have any student try to tell me they handed something in when they didn't.

Do you have what I have?

I saw a post on another teacher blog about a game called "do you have what I have?" to help practice vocabulary.
Basically, you put all the kids in a circle and give them a whiteboard.  Each round, the students pick a random vocabulary word and write it on the board.  After everyone's done writing, they reveal what they had.  You get a point for every match you have.
I played it this way in my first French 1 class today and the kids loved it. But I noticed they were always choosing the easy ones like "une orange" or "une tomate" (the cognates).  Because of this, I decided to mix it up for the second French 1 class.  Instead of getting a point for a match, you get a point if NOBODY matches you.  It encouraged them to dig a little deeper into their vocabulary memory and use some of the oddball ones.
I liked it much better this second way and found that they got much more out of the activity.  They all seemed to love it! They asked if we could do it again sometime.
There are many different variations you can do depending on where they are in the chapter.  In the beginning, maybe they can be allowed to have their vocab sheets with them.  Next step would be no sheets, but maybe some pictures on the board and not so picky about spelling.  Next step would be no pictures, but also not so picky about spelling.  Last step (for the end of the chapter) would be no prompts of any kind and spelling needs to count.
I will definitely be playing this again!

Mmmm Pizza

So I have a policy in my classes that if the entire class gets a 90% or above on a test or a quiz, I buy them pizza.  It may seem like a daring proposition to make, but I have to say, in my entire time teaching, I haven't had this happen yet.  I've been close several times, but never had it happen.
Until last week.  I gave a verb quiz on the chapter verbs and my French 3s all got above a 90%.  It was a hard quiz too because there were a ton of irregular verbs (they're working on the chore unit right now).  So I am getting them pizza today.  Being the end of the month, it's the chapter test, so I'm going to let them munch on pizza while they take the test.  Hopefully that is motivation for them in the future (and for other classes) to do well.
I must say, though, thank God for Little Caesars.  I don't have to break the bank to get them all a slice of pizza :)

Pronunciation: The key between blood and boobs

So today in class, my students asked how to say "blood" in French.  I wrote "le sang" on the board, and before I could pronounce it, someone pronounced it as it sounds in English.  Literally "le" and "sang" (like sang a song).  The correct pronunciation is more like "sahn" but a nasally n sound.

I made that same mistake back in my day when I lived in France.  I was trying to say there was blood somewhere, but little did I know, with my American pronunciation of the word, I was actually saying there were boobs somewhere.  In French, breasts are "les seins" which is pronounced like you would say "sang" in English.

So I started giggling when this student blurted out what they THOUGHT was the pronunciation.  Of course, they were intrigued why I was giggling, so I wrote "les seins" on the board.  I pronounced both for them, without giving them meanings.  I then wrote the English translation next to each word and re-pronounced each one.  It didn't take them long to realize they were saying breasts instead of blood.  The reaction was quite hilarious.

And now they're going to go home and tell their parents they learned the difference between blood and boobs today.  I'm such a great teacher.....

End of the Semester

So I'm feeling a little discouraged today.

As a teacher, I have expectations of myself that are pretty high, especially for a second year teacher.  I truly want ALL of my students to succeed, so any time they don't, I feel like I failed them in some way.

As grades start to come out, there are always those who didn't get the grades I know they are capable of.  I have one student in French 1 who literally refuses to turn in homework.  She has an F.  Every time I have tried talking to her, she has no explanation and won't really answer my questions.  I've tried talking to her guidance counselor and contacting home, but I'm always met with a dead end and she never turns anything in.  Even though she's like this with every other class (we can see grades online), I still feel like there should have been something more I could do.

In my other French 1 class, I have two boys who are both really good friends of one another.  Both of them are very smart.  But they also both get really distracted and are disorganized.  Early on, I made it my goal for them to do well in my class.  I put them both in prime seating to pay attention, I offer them help often, I remind them of missing work.  I just found out that they are dropping my class at semester because their grades aren't good.

It's really silly for me to have this Utopic idea of what my classroom to be.  I teach 12-15 year old kids.  There's no way I will ever engage them all and there's no way they will all love my class and all get A's. 

I want to be a good teacher.  I want the kids to learn and I want them to love the language.  I just wish I didn't take it so personally when they don't.

Clipboards

This is post two in my series of organization tips to make your life easier and make your students' excuses go out the window.

Flu season is upon us.  I don't know about everyone else, but keeping track of who was absent when and for how many days gets to be a huuuge headache.  The hard part of all of that is trying to remember which assignments and classwork they missed and relaying that to them easily.  Yeah, you can probably verbally tell them.  But what 14 year old is going to remember what you say to them ten minutes later?  I also cannot stand being crowded around at the beginning of an hour with students asking what they missed.  It wastes my time and their fellow classmates' time.

Instead, I decided to start a clipboard system.  Each level has a clipboard in the room.  Each clipboard has a sheet of paper on it with three columns: date, classwork and homework.  This allows students to see exactly what we did (INCLUDING: what was handed in...I can't tell you how many students do their homework but don't hand it in because they were absent the day it was due), what notes they need to get from a classmate, and what homework they have.  Any handouts are in the absent folder (see THIS post to know what I'm talking about with that). 

I only started this a few weeks ago, but it's making a big difference.  It's especially effective in conveying if there is something out of the book or a non-worksheet assignment that is due.  My students used to just go to the absent folder, but I obviously can't put their textbook in there to tell them they have #4 on page 38 due.  My goal is by the end of February to never hear the words "Madame, what did I miss?" ever again.  Of course I'm happy to clear up any questions, but 90% of their original questions can be answered by checking the absent folder and the clipboards.

Class Folders

I've noticed over the years that students will give just about any excuse to get what they want. Most of the time the excuse is geared towards making their life easier all while getting the best grade possible.

My next few posts are going to be geared towards showing ways to eliminate those excuses (mostly through classroom organization).  Hopefully they can kill two birds with one stone: firstly keeping you (the teacher) organized and secondly, DRASTICALLY cutting down on excuses and increasing student self-responsibility.

In my room, each hour has a box (I use a magazine holder box).  In each box are three folders: IN, OUT and ABSENT.

Rather than have students pass forward their work and then I put it in some sort of grading pile, I have them turn it into the in-folder.  This majorly cuts down on "Madame I gave that to you!" or "Madame, I put it on your desk!"  If it's not in the in-folder, it's not in.  The out-folder is where I put finished/graded items for students.  They are always welcome to dig through there to see if they have anything to take.  Whenever there is a work time and the out-folder is getting particularly full, I'll pass it out as well.  The absent folder is where I put any worksheets students missed while absent.  I put their name on it and they go to the folder to get any handouts they missed.  It saves my sanity from having to keep track of extra copies for students who are gone.

I also have my OWN set of folders in my school bag to keep organized.  I have a "to correct/grade", a "to hand back/to", and a "my papers".  I ALWAYS take anything from the in-folder of a class to put it immediately into the "to correct/grade".  Once it's graded, it's put into the "to hand back/to" folder, which then goes to the out-folder.  By using a folder system, I have found that losing student work is minimal to non-existent, which not only cuts down on their excuses, but mine as well.  Whenever a student comes up to me and tells me they handed something in (even if I'm showing it's not), I can say with SO much more confidence, "Sorry Pierre, I don't have it here.  Maybe check your folder?"