French the Natural Way

Goal 10 of the 30 goals challenge for educators 2012 is about sharing, one of the most important, if not THE most important skill one teacher should have. As part of my job as an educator, I do share constantly: I share my knowledge with my students, I (hopefully!) share my enthusiasm and passion for languages with my students and colleagues and I share resources with my colleagues at school and online:

• Curriculum: one of my biggest achievements to date has been the introduction of Spanish at my present school. As the teacher in charge of this new subject, I have designed the Spanish curriculum and decided to make it public via a wiki.
• Lessons: I started to use LearnBoost to plan and share lessons. In a matter of minutes, you can create a lesson plan which includes learning goals, different activities and the materials needed. You can also include links such as media files and you can create assessments in the evaluation section to ensure lessons align with your goals. The beauty of it is that you can share your lessons directly on your Facebook, Twitter, Posterous, WordPress, Blogger, or Tumblr account. LearnBoost also allows teachers to grade, keep attendance, and do report cards. You can view one of my lesson plan to teach how to tell the time in Spanish here.
• Best practice: as well as Twitter and Facebook, I use Pinterest to share good practice quickly and effectively. As a teacher, you are busy, therefore you want to be able to glance at ideas as you rarely have time to read or listen to long explanations. With one picture, you can straight away see what the activity or idea is all about.
• Resources and students’ work: I set up a blog for students to view, read and listen to good stuff related to Spanish culture and language, and to also share and view their work. The main goals are for students to keep up with their Spanish and to also share their views in the “comments” section. When they read or listen to other students’ works, they are then able to compare, assess and see how they can improve.
• Assignments: Edmodo is a private chat room. It allows to assign homework as well as to collect and grade students’ work. It also allows to upload, store and share files (including docs, pdf files, presentations, sound and video). I set up two groups, one for my Spanish ab initio class and another group for my Spanish IGCSE students but did very little with it. As a matter of fact I am undecided between staying with it or setting up a Facebook page as I know my students are much more used to it. Most of them have a Facebook account so by liking my page, they will see Spanish or French resources coming up daily or at least regularly. Although I am aware Edmodo is quite different and allows to do more teaching related things such as grading students’ work.

In the past, I also used Slideshare to share presentations in French or Spanish. I created a group for other language teachers to join and share their presentations. I also created a group on Flickr called Images to teach languages where people can share or use photos or videos to teach either a word, a conversation or a grammar point. Although I have let them down, they should still be running on their own!

One short-term goal which is mentioned by Shelly Terrell and that I wish to achieve is to teach my students to use online bookmarking, curation, and aggregation tools to gather and organize their knowledge. Diigo, Delicious or even Storify seem to be good options.

Last but not least, here is a video I posted a few years ago which I think summarizes this goal pretty well:

What about you? What do you share? How do you share it?

Other goals I have accomplished so far:

• Me manifesto
• Highlight of my magical moment
• Ask a learner and reveal their strengths
• Feed yourself inspiration
• Investigate and instigate questions
• Make a global connection
• Share an activity
• Teaching ourselves and them to overcome

It has become a tradition now to start the new year with new goals. Looking back at 2012, it has been a busy year mainly because or thanks to the arrival of number 3, Augustin. He is nearly one year (already!) and I am still on maternity leave until August. So lots of “free time” to achieve my personal goals!

 

Personal life

 

I have downed my personal life to one goal: publish a free e-book with my favourite recipes. I have had this goal for two years now so I really want to achieve it!
Actually another personal goal is to update my photo calendar daily.

Professional life

• Update my Spanish curriculum wiki at least once a week. I actually plan to change it a bit as I would like to do more projects with my classes and I also would like to flip my classroom.
• Keep on writing at least one post a week on my blog.
• Finish the 30 goals challenge for educators. I am now on goal number 10, so 20 more goals to go!
• Do videos to teach French and Spanish to learners. I will tell you more about this one in later posts…

What about you? What are your goals this year?

Remember “it is okay and sometimes a good thing to modify and tweak your goals throughout the year. People change and circumstances change, be flexible!” from The Happy Housewife.

Other related posts:

• 2012 Goals
• 2010 Goals
• New school year, new start
• Reflections on the school year

To share the Epiphany tradition with your French students, here are some ideas:

Explain the tradition
The Mary Glasgow website published an article La Galette des Rois which explains the tradition in France with its audio version to download (all for free). The big plus is that the article is available in different levels (basic, pre-intermediate or intermediate).

Tell a popular story
My dear sister-in-law who is a primary school teacher suggested the children’s story Roule Galette … which is very popular amongst preschoolers (because the ending is not happy!). If you Google it, you can find tons of resources created by French primary school teachers. Browsing them, I created my own document with the adaptation of the story (aimed at French learners) and some comprehension questions to go with the story: you can download it here.

One way to teach this story with some flipping into it would be to:

• have students watch the cartoon version of the story at home. The aim is for them to get the overall point of the story with the help of the animations. They should not try to understand everything in details but to watch and listen and get the point.
• read the story to the students in class “TPRS style”. When the galette sings the song, students could sing it too.
• read the story again (students on their own) in silence and answer the comprehension questions.
• play the game le jeu de l’oie de Roule Galette in groups of 2 to 4. All you need are some dice and to print out the board game and the pieces along with the rules. This game is simple but perfect to have students communicate in French and revise numbers and commands.

Sing a traditional song and bake!
This presentation should help to introduce the song J’aime la galette. It comes with the recipe of the galette which could be tried.
Download it here for free on Teachers Pay Teachers.

What about you? How do you share this celebration with your students?

To start the new year in a fun way, I have launched a photo calendar online. Not only it is fun to post a photo each day, it is also an easy way to inform my family and relatives (who love in other countries) about what is going on in my life.
I found this tool when reading Ana Maria Menezes’ post Wrapping up 2012. She listed her 10 favourite sites and one of them is Shuttercal, “a space where you can post a photo a day and add a text to it in a calendar and then share with others”.
You can even mail a photo of your calendar as a postcard for $2.90 which I think is a great idea for a gift.
So far I am on track but I know that the most difficult part for me will be to keep up with each day. Let’s see… 

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How about you? How have you started this new year?

Our students use Wikipedia to research. However it is still largely criticized and even banned by some educators. One day when my students were preparing a presentation about a South American country, they asked me if they could use Wikipedia. Some teachers had actually banned them to use it because according to them it was not accurate enough and nobody checked its accuracy. I was gobsmacked and again had this bubble feeling!