French the Natural Way

I discovered yoga soon after the birth of my third boy. I wanted to get back into shape and it worked. Before I always thought yoga was a kind of meditation activity but that it didn’t involve a lot of physical activity. I was wrong! Yoga can make you sweat! And in my hectic life, it is the best “me” time I can get: a moment of quietness in the day to reflect, pause, pray and at the same time stretch and activate my whole body. I love it and I need it 🙂

The other great thing about yoga is that you merely need a mat to practise it. You can do it anywhere whenever and if you want someone to lead you through the poses, you can access thousands of online videos. One online teacher I love to follow is Adriene because she is fun and she makes yoga accessible to everybody. Usually I tend to do different yoga videos throughout the week but this week I have been doing the same practice nearly everyday. In fact I followed Adriene’s advice to “return to this practice to experience growth“. Although it was the same, everyday was different. One pose one day would be challenging and the next day, it would become easy. Adriene ended her newsletter with a quote which summarizes what I experienced this week “The journey is the reward.”

Try this flow for a week:

or if you are new to yoga, try this one:

I now have a “big” family and so far I have to feed five people everyday (3 boys and 2 adults but my boys eat nearly like adults!). Needless to say I am looking for easy big meals which can last for a few days so I don’t spend my days slaving in the kitchen. Unfortunately I have noticed that the World Wide Web doesn’t offer so many recipes for families or big crowds. I have a great cooking book Cook up a feast by Mary Berry and Lucy Young which has recipes for 6 to 12 people but it is quite difficult to find such recipes on the Internet. Therefore my aim here is to share meals which are quite simple, require ingredients you can find in the supermarket and which are for 6 people or more.

The first recipe I want to share with you is a “gratin” or oven dish with melted cheese on top. A “gratin” is really a family dish and it is so versatile! For example you can hide your leftovers in a “gratin”, all you need is grated cheese and a bit of cream or tomato sauce! Last night I had some old potatoes, a kohlrabi and smoked trout (which I find is cheaper than smoked salmon) and Frenchie as I am, I also had grated Emmental and crème fraîche stored in my fridge.

1. Peel, cut and boil the potatoes. Mash them with the crème fraîche.
   https://goo.gl/photos/t5EybfqtGnNApMZz7
2. Add the smoked trout or salmon to the mashed potatoes.
   https://goo.gl/photos/RTYr36vgvVHL3N9j9
3. Grate the kohlrabi and cook it for a few minutes in melted butter in a pan.
4. Layer an oven-proof dish with the gated kohlrabi, then the mashed potatoes and smoked fish and to finish the grated cheese.
   https://goo.gl/photos/vUsf5GXWFcyvAz8y9
5. Grill in the oven for about 10 minutes or until golden on top.
   And here you are: a delicious nutritious meal which my family loved so much, it only lasted for one dinner (not the intended goal I’m afraid!).

Note that kohlrabi is not to be found in every part of the world but you can easily replace it by pointed or white cabbage or leak. You can also use single cream or even milk and any other kind of grated cheese. I also forgot to mention that I added a squeeze of lemon juice into the mashed potatoes and smoked fish. And remember not to add too much salt because of the smoked fish which is already salty.

What about you? Which kind of “gratins” do you cook?

Yeah!!! I am back to blogging! I had a very good excuse though for not posting for such a while: I had my fourth boy on the 24th of September. His name is Antoine and he is a lovely baby boy doing well 🙂

Whilst recovering from the birth and taking care of my precious little boy, I have been thinking (a lot!) and I have decided to make some changes to my blog. Until now I have been mainly focusing on languages and sharing resources and ideas aimed mainly at language teachers. I now also want to share more about two of my other passions in life: cooking for a family (which I have been blogging about in the past) and yoga. Therefore there will be a greater variety of interesting posts 🙂

And for now… As a follow-up of my last post, I have produced a reading activity to go with the story my French students invented about Sarah and Kevin. The story has different characters and location but it is based on the key structures “C’est / s’appelle / il, elle est …. / il, elle a …. / il, elle dit….” which are part of of Martina Bex’ storytelling unit for French 1: Dit.

There are 3 steps to asking a story in TPRS®:
1. Establish meaning.
2. Ask the story.
3. Reading.
The reading doesn’t have to be the exact same story as the one your students invented but it should obviously include the same key structures.

How do I proceed with the reading step?

First, I read the story with my students and check for comprehension by asking questions in French such as “La fille s’appelle Sarah ? La fille s’appelle Caroline ? La fille s’appelle Caroline ou Sarah ? Comment s’appelle la fille ?“. So we do repeat the key structures and go through the facts of the story. Then, in order to make sure students understood what we read, I read a sentence from the text and let the students chorally translate in English. Since I have only three students, I can check easily if all of them understood the sentence. After having orally read the story, students can complete the three parts exercise of the worksheet. The first part is to again check comprehension with questions about the text and True or False statements. This is easy to complete as we have already gone through most of the questions orally. The goal here is to make my students confident about the fact they can actually understand a text in French!

The second part is called “Vocabulaire” and the exercises are done to reinforce the use of masculine and feminine adjectives as well as the use of the “I” form: “Je suis… / J’ai…….“.

Finally the third part is for my students to produce some comprehensible output. They should be ready now to use the key structures themselves and to tell their own little stories.

You can find the document entitled: “French reading: un ami très spécial.” which you can download on Teachers Pay Teachers along with other useful resources!

As well as teaching online private English lessons to Spanish students, I help some French students at beginner level. As you may already know, I am a big fan of Martina Bex and I decided to use her storytelling unit for French 1: Dit. It is working great with my students who love the repetitions of the key structures: “c’est, un garçon, une fille, s’appelle, dit, je m’appelle, il / elle est ….” and the use of many cognates to describe people: “énergique, stupide, bizarre ….“.

To ask a story, I use Playmobil® figures:

The girl is called Sarah, she is a bit weird and she is talented at preparing pizzas. She is a butcher in Erfurt which in French translates to: “C’est une fille. Cette fille s’appelle Sarah. Elle est un peu bizarre. Elle est talentueuse pour préparer les pizzas. Elle est bouchère à Erfurt.”
We are now reviewing the key structure “il / elle a….” to move on to the boy who is a special friend of Sarah. He is called Kevin and he is a policeman. He is talented at eating pizzas! In French, it is: “Sarah a un ami spécial. C’est un garçon. Il s’appelle Kevin. Il est policier. Il est talentueux pour manger les pizzas!”
There are loads of cognates and comprehensible input and the students have fun inventing names, jobs and personalities for each character. It is still too early to say, but I am confident it will help them improve their French.

I also created a communicative activity to go with this unit based on Martina Bex’ communicative game¿Qué te gusta?. The goal is to practice the key structures: ” Je suis / Tu es ….” and to understand the concept of masculine and feminine adjectives. Students can do this activity walking around to classroom (which always gives them a chance to get moving a bit!). Using the adjectives on the handout, one student asks another student “Tu es calme ?”. If that student answers “oui” then he/she can write his/her name in the “calme” box. Students can stop the activity when they have 4 different names in a row. Along with the activity sheet itself, I have included instructions for the teachers and some follow-up ideas which would make students practice their writing skills too.

You can find the document entitled: “Comment est ta personnalité ? Activitié orale.” here which you can edit to suit your own needs. (Of course you can also download it for free on Teachers Pay Teachers along with other useful resources!).

One of my online Spanish student has an advanced level of English and she wants to practise her speaking skills but she lacks confidence. I have noticed that most language learners often lack confidence when it comes to having a conversation. They can comprehend a lot but they fear of speaking because they think people will not understand them or they will make too many errors.

When I learned Spanish, I didn’t learn it at school, I learned it the “hard” way by living in Spain on my own for half a year. There were only Spanish people around me and I didn’t know any Spanish. For one month, I didn’t speak! I only listened to the people around me. I only got tons of input and then… I couldn’t even explain how it happened but it happened, I started to talk and the people around me were actually quite shocked I could speak that well. The point I want to make here is that you first need a lot of input before being able to provide some output. And you do provide output when you are ready. So there is no need in forcing people to speak another language if they are not ready.

Coming back to my Spanish student: I was looking for ways to improve her fluency on topics which matter to her. At first, I thought that talking about food would be interesting enough. I asked her to watch a video about Thai food:

The goal was to discuss different types of food and the concept of ethnic food. I created a resource with follow-up questions about the video and an exercise to broaden food vocabulary with a link to vocabulary flashcards I created Quizlet (you can also download it for free on Teachers Pay Teachers along with other useful resources!).

It was a good start to our weekly sessions but I found that the student was not really motivated. One day, she told me she had watched a great TEDx Talk about an inspiring guy who talks about how easy life is:

I asked her to re-tell the video to me and we then talked about it. My student was more engaged and I could feel she was happy to share what she had watched. So from now on, I have asked her to watch videos that inspire her and to then talk to me about them. That way, she first gets a lot of input and when she re-tells the video to me, I can check if she has understood it and it is also an excellent exercise to improve fluency.