French the Natural Way

Candlemas is around the corner and I have prepared some fun activities to do in the French class to celebrate this special event. In fact as the activities are mainly centered around crepes and how to make them, you could also use them to celebrate Mardi Gras (which is on the 9th of February this year) or if you are teaching a topic on food.

Candlemas or La Chandeleur is celebrated on the 2nd of February, the day when Jesus was presented to the Temple. It also marks the end of Christmas time, so we should in fact take off the Christmas decorations on that day! It is also the day when we eat tons of crepes to mark the coming of a prosperous year and when we light up all the candles in the house.

The activities include first a short description of what Candlemas is about and then a child song which explains how to make yummy crepes:

I tell you this song should stick in your students’ heads because just now I can’t get it out of mine!
It is perfect to comprehend a recipe in French. It also has verbs with the prefix “re” which means “again” like “rajouter” which means “to add again” or “recommencer” which means “to start again”. It can be an interesting vocabulary structure to tell your students. All the verbs for the instructions are in the infinitive form which can also lead to learn or review what the infinitive of a verb is and how they are formed in French.

There is also a reading activity which involves numeracy and logical skills. The reading is a mini story about a family making crepes. At the end of the story, students have to find out how many crepes each member of the family ate. It is in the prefect tense or “passé-composé”. Even if your students have not learned that tense yet, it is a good way to introduce it as the story uses the verbs and vocabulary from the song and is comprehensible.

You can view and edit the free version which includes the song activities here.

If you also want to have access to the mini story, reading activities along with detailed guidelines and ideas on to plan your lessons, you can purchase the full package on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

 

This morning, I was reading the Active learner blog post about “Café y conversación” and it inspired me to share about an authentic conversation I had last week with my French students. As mentioned in the post: “When we have authentic conversation about topics that students want to talk about, they ask better questions and learn at a higher level.“And this is exactly what I experienced!

So last week, I decided to ask my girls personalized questions.

Personalized Questions and Answers, also known as PQA are an essential part of the TPRS method, as they help the teacher come up with compelling stories. Depending on the responses from the students, these questions might lead into a scene or skit often referred to as extended PQA.

There are many resources online created by wonderful teachers and I translated the document in Spanish made by Kara Jacobs:“La Estrella del Día” to help me come up with interesting questions. And indeed we had an authentic conversation going on! I felt that my girls were having fun, although they are quite shy. Since they are in grade 8, many structures were above their level like the use of the conditional tense and if clauses. But I made sure to translate the more complex structures, to check comprehension and to provide as many spoken repetitions of the new structures in context as possible.

My boy number 3 who is 4 years old joined in the conversation and I asked him the same questions I asked the girls such as “De quoi as-tu peur? = What are you afraid of?”, he answered “j’ai peur du loup = I am afraid of of the wolf” which introduced new vocabulary and at the same time led to more repetition. The girls were eager to listen to my son because they thought he was so cute and funny! He also said he would buy three bins if he had a million dollars, which of course was hilarious. I think that the girls now know how to say “bin” in French!

I will now use the information I got about my students to ask stories and I will continue to ask and review those questions every week. Not only does it provide comprehensible input and supported output, it is also a good practice for their IGCSE oral examinations in grade 10.

You can find and download the document entitled “L’étoile du jour” here.

From the bottom of my heart, I wish you all a prosperous year full of happiness and success!!!

This year is kind of totally new for me. Although I am looking after my fourth baby, it is a new experience, I have to adapt to a new life and find a new balance. Technically I am a full-time mom but not so long ago I discovered comprehensible input and TPRS and I now would like to put it into full practice. Although I am not teaching normal classes, I do teach individual students and this gives me the opportunity to try out techniques and see how they work. I also want to continue to share my yoga practice and recipes for big families.

I have just started the yoga camp with Adriene and I love it! I love the mantras for each video as it allows me to focus on one aspect of my life each day. So far I accept who I am and my life situation at the present moment. I also create a new way of life because having a new child is having to seek new ways for my family:

What about you? What do you accept and what do you create?

 

 

I don’t know about you but now that days are getting colder and shorter, I am craving for a slice of cake!
However baking a cake can take time and effort so when I am running out of time and I am in need of something sweet, I go for a crumble. It takes less time than mixing all the ingredients for cake and it doesn’t require eggs which is always an option if you don’t have any eggs left. The beauty of it is that you can be creative and try with any kind of fruit: apple, pear, rhubarb…. If you don’t want to peel and cut, you can use canned fruit such as pineapple or peaches. I also find it relaxing to crumble the butter, flour and sugar with my fingers!

Anyhow, here is my version:

1. Butter an oven-proof dish and place fruits.

2. Crumble with your fingers: 100g plain flour, 80g almond flour, 80g caster sugar and 100g cold butter. Lay the mixture evenly over the fruits.

3. Put the dish in the preheated oven at 180 degrees and let it bake until golden on top for about 20 minutes.

What is your favourite crumble?

The speaking examination for the IGCSEs can be a stressful experience for our students as they are having to speak in the target language for 15 minutes and they are being recorded. It is therefore best to practice this experience often during class time. In the past I have used Audioboo so that my students could practice and review the general questions (which are a series of linked questions on two or three topics which students have covered in grade 9 and 10). Have a look at my older post to get more details on how I proceeded.

I would brainstorm questions they could be asked and I would then give a list of questions at the end of a unit covering that specific topic. I would go through the questions with the students checking for comprehension and I would also ask them to highlight the questions which are in the past and future tenses since students are to be able to convey past, present and future information.

Now that I am becoming familiar with TPRS®, I would practice these questions by doing PQA (Personalized Question-Answer) at the start of each lesson. For example, I would start by asking a question which requires a Yes or No answer such as “¿Te llevas bien con tu familia?”. I would then repeat the student’s answer by saying “Clase, Aimee se lleva bien con su familia.“. I would then add a detail to my question to Aimee which would remain a YES or No answer: “¿Aimee, te llevas bien con familia porque tus padres no son estrictos?”. I would then turn to the class and ask more questions: “¿Clase, los padres de Aimee son estrictos?“, “¿Los padres de Aimee no son estrictos?“, “¿Aimee se lleva bien con su familia porque sus padres no son estrictos?. Therefore the students would get a model answer to a question as well as loads of repetitions on the key structure “llevarse bien/mal con…“.

After students have been doing PQA and I am confident that they have acquired the key structures and tenses, I would make them work in pairs by giving them a set of questions on laminated cards so that they can practice answering questions for 5 to 10 minutes. It would also give me a chance to assess if they are prepared or if I have to do more PQA with certain questions.

I have compiled a list of questions in Spanish on different topics such as family, house, free time and holidays, and I have included some ideas on how to use this list. You can download the document for free on Teachers pay Teachers.

Some more useful posts to prepare your students for an oral examination:

• A fun way to describe a family in Spanish
• What do the other students do when some a recording a podcast?
• Different language projects around the topic of school
• Reviewing holidays with IGCSE students
• How to get students to talk about about a sport in Spanish for one minute or two?
• Civilization project to use the past tense in Spanish
• How to practice and review the general conversation for the IGCSE oral exam