lundi 23 février

We started with revamped chain questions done in groups. The updated sheets are now in my teaching files. Printed them on to different coloured card and cut out unevenly jigsaw-style so that when finished could be reassembled to check the order.  Of course you can change the questions to suit your purpose but seems a good revision exercise (to do as a warm up) and excellent practice of reading and question forms.

We had more presentations from Lynn, Gavin, Gill and Jillian. Very entertaining! Remaining ones next week.

This is the page that gives tips on deciphering French voc eg chameau, ch is c and eau is el, so camel!

Discussed whether to teach un/une or le/la first and decided it depended on the voc and the followup activity. I will have a think about how to practise correspondence le and un, la and une

We had a listen to the Le La song . The video wouldn't work through websweeper though!

We went on briefly to Paris homework. Think I need to develop this more so bring your notes again next week.

Finished off with carte d'identité - sheet, also in my teaching files as a doc

Scott has promised to do the register next week. Merci

Will focus on pronunciation next week. I think I gave you a stapled handout of sounds way back? Can you read over and bring along. If not, let me know in comments!

Bonne semaine!

Paris

les monuments de Paris

(notice how the noun is first and the name second)

la tour Eiffel

l'arc de Triomphe

la cathédrale de Notre Dame

le musée du Louvre

le (basilique du) Sacré Cœur

la place de la Concorde

l'avenue des Champs Elysées

Homework - Paris research

Find out the names of the main Paris sights in French and 1 or 2 interesting facts about them in English!

http://www.paris.org

If you have any Paris souvenirs or postcars bring them too.

CPD for your colleagues

Roselyne has asked me to do further CPD for South Ayrshire. There will be 4 free standing sessions on Thursday in March in St John's at 4- 6pm

5th  ICT for ML teachers

12th blogging - the why and the how

19th active learning

26th French pronunciation

They are on the online CPD. No charge.

Pass the word!

Madame Rouge

Madame Rouge is really huge
She loves to eat French bread.
That’s the way to remember
That rouge means red.

This is an example of a (mental) image helping us to remember a meaning. Rhyme and rhythm are also used.

lundi neuf février

Merci à Lynn d'avoir fait l'appel!

We had several of you showing your ideas on presenting new language.

 I always find this interesting!

Here are some general points which I hope are helpful and are not meant as criticism. 

• Visuals need to be big enough to be seen and be sure to move them from side to side so that all the class can see.

• Think of colour / gender coding

• When using word cards go over the pronunciation. Talk about how to remember meaning and what letter combinations they have seen before

• Give feedback so that class knows what the correct response was eg when saying wrong word keep going until you get to the right one then move on or when doing indiquez la bonne image raise the  correct one to confirm

• Make sure you have the correct gender and pronunciation of the key words you are teaching -

site with audio clips of French words (no meanings)

and French audio dictionary

We did a chain question game based on Richard Tallaron's. We think it would be better done in groups. I will work on that.

We did a dictionary skills exercise for which there was a handout.  Dr Who smartboard file and a Millionaire game I made up on superteachertools.com based on same choices.

We finished up with some creative writing based on the sans toi model (separate post)

Post your best lines in the comments of that post! Some were more romantic than others!

No class next week - mid term! Bonnes vacances! 

In 2 weeks time we'll hear the rest of the mini presentations and I'll post some other homework soon.

la Saint Valentin

poème d'amour

Le quatorze février, c est la Saint Valentin, la fête des amoureux. Pour fêter ce jour on va composer des poèmes d'amour selon cette rubrique -

Sans toi, je suis un jardin sans fleurs

Sans toi, je suis un lac sans eau

sans = without and it can be followed by a noun with no article eg sans fleurs

you could put comme = like after je suis but I think it sounds better without!

A vous maintenant - postez vos vers en cliquant sur Comments

plus d'infos sur cette fête ici

Joyeuse Saint Valentin!  - happy Valentine's day

je t'aime! - I love you!

lundi deux février

C'est déjà le mois de février et aujour'dhui il y a de la neige!

Today Diane took the register. Lynne could you do it next week?

We then discussed history of MLPS prompted by a ppt which I will shortly upload to My teaching files. You will also find articles in a folder called "papers"

I prepared a handout on activities for MLPS and we worked our way through that. This is a work in prgress and you can add to the lists roughly divided into Listening and Talking, Reading and Writing. In practice most cativities cover at least 2 of the skills.

We spent some time on Reading and Reading skills looking at these sites
www.africanimo.com and tried the activities suggested by Lynne Horn on her blog We may revisit this.
I also suggested the site journal des enfants and looked at the article on the Obama children
Here is their article on the recent plane crash into the Hudson river
All of these web pages are real, interesting, relevant and not contrived or condescending. They are of course challenging and pupils are not expected to understand everything but gain satisfaction from what thy can decipher. I think of it as a puzzle and like detective work.
A site to help you read foreign language pages is lingro. First you copy the url of the web page and then launch lingro, paste it in and select French- English.Click on any word you don't know and a dictionary pops up with suggestions. Brilliant! Here is what the lion page looks like in lingro

Another site I like but we couldn't get into yesterday is mon jt quotidien meaning my daily newsreel (jt- journal télévisé). This is a bit like newsround with several short video clips changed every weekday. This is a listening only exercise so is harder - good for you though! There are often quirky stories under the tab insolite
Here are a couple of interesting ones
the parrot
the car that crashed into a church roof

Homework
Prepare to teach the class 4 words of your choice using some of activities in flashcard presentation and today's handout. This is by way of preparation for the micro teaching.

Bonne semaine!

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