French the Natural Way

I am huge fan of the Michel Thomas method. The only thing that is bothering me is that it hugely relies on translation. I was trained to use the target language as much as possible in the classroom and my mentor taught me a few tricks to get the students to understand me in the target language like using lots of cognates. Instead of saying “écrire“, I would say “copier” in French which means not exactly the same but which the students would understand straight away. Using the target language in the classroom involves a lot of patience from the teacher. Unfortunately, teachers happen to be running out of time to get across all they want to teach, so they fall back to English and translation. On one hand I understand Michel Thomas point about translating everything because his method also relies on the similarities between the English language and another language and about making connections. However I do believe in assimilating a language through a lot of input. You only have to look at babies to see that they don’t get any translation. In fact they have nothing to rely on to help them learn a language. They only rely on the people surrounding them: their gestures and faces.

Therefore, I was looking for an alternative to translation but I still wanted to keep Michel Thomas structures, because they form the basis to understand and communicate in Spanish or French (the two languages I know from this method). I have been reading a lot about the TPR Storytelling method lately and one website that I just love is Martina Bex because she posts a lot of practical resources and she is always so positive about what she does and her students. She creates lots of story scripts which repeat the target structures she wants the students to learn. For example, one script I will definitely use with my students next year is Buscando Gafas because it practices the three singular forms of the verbs “querer” and “tener”, which goes with Michel Thomas. From there, I thought of creating my own story scripts based on Michel Thomas structures. Today I wrote a first story to practice “es posible” and basic classroom instructions. I would tell this story to a grade 6 class (11-12 years old) on their first day of school or as a recap to other higher classes. In that case, I would maybe add more vocabulary related to classroom commands.
Here is the script (please send me some feedback!):

1. ¡Todo es posible!

Key structures:

• Es posible – It is possible

• Sacar las cosas – Take things out

• Abrir el libro – Open the book

• Escribir – To write

• Hablar – To talk

• Levantar la mano – To raise the hand

• Aprender – To learn

• Está preocupado – He is worried

• Está contento – He is happy

Script:

Pedro tiene 6 años. Es su primer día en la escuela. Su maestra se llama Señora Martinez. Pedro está un poco preocupado. Es su primer día en la escuela. Pregunta a su maestra, Señora Martinez “ ¿Es posible sacar mis cosas?”. La Señora Martinez le dice a Pedro “Sí, es posible.” Entonces Pedro saca sus cosas de su mochila.

Pedro le pregunta a Señora Martinez “¿Es posible abrir el libro?”. La Señora Martinez le dice a Pedro “Sí, es posible.” Entonces Pedro abre el libro.

Pedro está un poco menos preocupado y le pregunta a Señora Martinez “¿Es posible escribir?”. La Señora Martinez le dice a Pedro “Sí, es posible.” Entonces Pedro escribe su nombre en su libro.

Pedro está menos preocupado pero le pregunta a Señora Martinez “¿Es posible hablar?”. La Señora Martinez le dice a Pedro “Sí, es posible pero levanta la mano primero.” Entonces Pedro levanta la mano. La Señora Martinez dice “¿Sí, Pedro?” y Pedro habla.

Pedro está contento. Le dice a Señora Martinez “¡En la escuela, todo es posible!”. Entonces Señora Martinez le dice “ ¡Sí, es posible aprender todo en la escuela!”.

Questions:

• En la escuela, ¿es posible mirar a la pizarra?, ¿Es posible hablar durante la clase?

• ¿Es posible aprender en la escuela?

• ¿Qué es posible aprender?

• ¿Cuándo es posible guardar tus cosas?, ¿Cuándo es posible cerra el librar?

• ¿Estás preocupado/a en la escuela?

• ¿Estás contento/a en la escuela?

I am trying to have healthier breakfasts. My biggest problem is that I am not really hungry in the morning and I do not feel like cooking something up. The fact is I am not a morning person and my dear man (thank you so much for that!) does all the breakfast prep. So we end up having cereals. Due to the fact I was bored of having cereals every morning and that I thought cereals out from a box were not the healthiest option to start the day, I decided to change this habit. First I created a “Healthy Breakfast” board on my Pinterest account and glanced through ideas on other Pinterest boards. However I soon realized that some ideas, like having French toast, were not so healthy but that I still wanted to try them out, so I changed the title of my board to just “Breakfast ideas“! The issue though, was to get up earlier in the morning to prepare those yummy healthy ideas! I found the trick by doing the prep the night before! The top favourite healthy breakfast in my family and the simplest to do by far is avocado on toast. Just mash an avocado with lemon juice, salt and pepper in a bowl the night before. Put it in the fridge. In the morning, toast some bread and spread the avocado. My boys love it and I know it’s super healthy!

What about you? What are you healthy breakfast secrets?

Yesterday I mentioned I was hooked on Google+ and here are the two main reasons why:

You can create circles which means that you can group your contacts according to any criteria that you like. For example, I have a circle of just my family and a circle for teachers. There are some things, like pictures of my boys, I don’t want to share with the whole world so I’ll share just with those in my family and close friends circles.

You can follow conversations on Google+ more than on Twitter. I don’t spend an awful lot of time on Twitter which means that sometimes people reply to something I said hours or days ago and I can’t remember what it was about. On Google+ when people reply to something that you’ve posted you always see what prompted their comments tied directly below your original post.

The other thing I quite like about Google+ is that it is easy to follow people mainly because Google+, of course, gets your Gmail contacts for you to use to connect with other people using Google+.

What about you? Do you use Google+?

Disclaimer: my post is largely based on Richard Byrne post 5 things I Like About Building a PLN on Google+.

I am hooked on Google+ at the moment and yesterday I read this short post from Yonatan Zunger: “This game is remarkably fun: You get five random images from Street View, and you have to try to figure out where in the world you are. It encourages you to travel on the one hand, and is excellent preparation for when you’re recruited by a secret agency to perform a completely anonymous assassination mission in exchange for $20M, and airdropped blindly somewhere into the world.”

I thought I had to try this with my two eldest boys because they love to talk about countries and where they are situated in the world. So instead of reading the usual bedtime story, I opened my laptop and got on Street View. I hid the bottom of the image so that my eldest boy could not read where it was and we started to guess in which country it was. We looked at the Unesco World Heritage Collection and it was fun and interesting to have a guess from the buildings, weather, way of transport we could see on each image. Now we know that there is a big aqueduct in Segovia, Spain and my boys learned that there are windmills in Holland and that a volcano erupted a long time ago in Pompei, Italy. For my second son, Thomas, it was great to be able to see an image of Kyoto in Japan because his best friend at the kindergarten last year moved there.

When playing this little guessing game, I could not help but think that it could be applied to a language lesson. Students would have to guess where in the world each image is conversing in the target language with sentences such as “Where do you think it is?” / “I think it is in …. because of the bridge / the castle / the type of houses…”. I think this would be a great starting point for discussion in the target language. Not only it would be a good lesson to develop speaking skills, it would also be excellent to reinforce geography skills (which I think are key for 21st century students!).

What do you think? Have you used Street View?

I read 10 Tips for becoming a YES Mom from The Happy Housewife and it got me thinking about me as a mum. I must admit that I am more a NO mom than a YES mom. I do have quite a lot in common with the Happy Housewife as “I tremble at words like paper mache, play-doh, and glitter. I don’t like dirt (especially on my floors), bugs, or science experiments...“. I like my house to be clean and tidy and I don’t have a lot of patience when it comes to making crafts with my boys! Hence, I do tend to say “no” more often than “yes”. However, I do realize that time goes fast and that I should spend more time playing and messing around with my boys than cleaning and tidying. After all, I will have all the time to do that once my children have left the house to become adults! So my plan is to start to be a YES person. Not only a YES mom but also a YES teacher and a YES person. At school, as a teacher I also have the tendency to say “NO”. My objective, next school year is to be prepared to say “yes” to my students and also to say “yes” in the staffroom and during meetings. I do think that not only it will make me become more positive but also happier and less frustrated.

I am French! So I do know that this change in attitude will not come overnight and that I will have to work hard but I do know that it will improve my life as a whole. So let’s try and a good place to start would be to watch Yes Man again! What do you think?