Ever feel like...?

Cette année, comme toutes les années, je suis en train de naviguer des défis que l'école m'a balancés, afin de conserver le programme de français; à savoir, un cours qui combine les élèves de NH avec les élèves de IL comme cibles de compétence linguistique.

Le défi n'est pas nécessairement que cette tâche soit impossible en elle-même; pourtant, quand on a deux cursus différents, c'est ça qui pose le problème.  La question que je me pose ad infinitum, c'est comment ne pas passer des heures à préparer chaque séance et en même temps fournir assez de "input" pour les différents niveaux afin de les préparer pour une atteinte éventuelle de leur niveau de compétence linguistique?




Pour le moment, je travaille en labo et je fais des expériences avec des cobayes et des rats et des souris, c-à-d, les élèves.  Reste à voir quels seront les résultats.  Si jamais j'en ai de bons, je vous les communique.

Bonne semaine!

Joyeuse St. Patrick! Une activité très simple pour apprendre les bases de la musique irlandaise

Hi all.  This post will be perhaps the shortest I have written since I started my blog; the goal of this article is to share a very simple activity with you that allows students to learn content in the TL with the simplest French possible.  This enables advanced students to feel very confident and lower level students to feel like the activity is feasible for them.

The activity is basically a webquest to 1) learn the names of the instruments used in traditional Irish music in French; and 2) learn a little about the forms of the dance music that we often hearthis time of year, but know nothing about.  You may even have some Irish dancers in your class, but often they don't necessarily know about the music.  In addition, the teacher will learn alongside the students.

Here is the activity:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7N0wQje-qwAaU5KM3RwMmpXNkE/view?usp=sharing

You can search youtube to find music to listen to, as well:
Dervish is a great example of a band that incorporates many of the instruments.

If you have any problems, feel free to email me at blipshutz@usmk12.org.

A way-out, easy way to talk about art for intermediate-advanced students

Welcome to my wacky world!  I am a flutist.  I am also a language teacher. In addition, I have been described as quirky.  When you put these three things together, you get this activity for the language classroom.

When I was teaching English at the Université de Paris III, I was always trying to find ways to engage the students so that they were so compelled to speak that they dropped their inhibitions.  I had somehow been thinking about the great experimental composer / musician, John Cage.  You may know his famous piece, 4'33'', where the entire piece is silent.

So, one day, I took my flute into class, with a music stand and a copy of his piece, and I "performed" it.  There are three movements, but because they are all tacet (silent), I put my flute up to my mouth for a certain time.  Then, to change movements, I put it down and put it up again to signal the next movement.  At the end of the piece, I wrote this question on the board: Is this music?  Why or why not?   When I began to teach French, I just translated the question into French.

Another activity that works well is to project a picture of Marcel Duchamp's R. Mutt and to write on the board: Is this art?  Why or why not?  As a follow-up, students can create their own music or art and justify it in the target language.

Here is a link for the sheet music:
file:///Users/blipshutz/Downloads/5F0788C58DD115C8FC1CA2935553CA48.pdf
Here is a link for R. Mutt:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3456/3257727248_836bb65cf7.jpg

Bonne classe!

How Healthy Do People Eat? Stats, food and cheese!

In my French II class, we have been looking at different foods in various Francophone countries and preparing to create cooking show videos; one concept we learned at the beginning of the unit was whether the food we eat is healthy or not.  (It should be noted that this survey is an introduction to the passé composé.  We do not learn anything about the tense other than they are in the past.  I also introduce devrait, so they can give advice on what is healthy.)

To this end, I thought I would share this simple activity for two reasons: 1) it's very easy to implement; and 2) many of us do not know how cool it is that a pie chart is called a camembert.  This second reason brings in a cross-disciplinary element, giving you a chance to review numbers and to use them to talk about statistics. 

The first thing I do is to project the INSEE website so that the students have a chance to look at it and guess what INSEE is. In case you do not know, click here.   I write the question QU'EST-CE QU'ON FAIT SUR CE SITE? on the board.  Once they have looked at the site's homepage on the screen, I may ask them to go to the site on their phones or computers to explore it for a couple of minutes.

Then, they turn to a partner and try to say what you do on this site; after they've reported out, if they don't know what it is, I tell them.  I then show them camembert cheese and a pie chart and tell them that it's the same word, pointing out the cultural significance of cheese in France.

Once this is done, we review the numbers from 1-100 and talk about how to say percentages.  I may use info graphics on the family or other topics we have covered to have them practice using these numbers with percents.

Then, I give them the survey and let them go.  Sometimes we do this in class, but often I let them take it home and ask 5 friends or family members.

Once they are finished with the survey, they must make a simple pie chart saying what percentage of the people they interviewed ate healthy vs. not.  Some of them use computer generated charts and others draw them.  They bring the pie charts to class and present informally.  We then discuss whether we think this data (ces données) is representative or not of the US in general and why or why not.

Bon sondage!

Here is the survey:

Le régime de mon / ma partenaire :

Demande à 5 personnes ce qu’elles ont mangé et ce qu’elles ont bu cette semaine.  Après, marque S pour sain et M pour malsain à côté.

Exemple :

Marc

Poulet frit M

Poulet au four S

Du coca M

De l’eau S

NOM	Ce qu’il/elle a mangé	Ce qu’il/elle devrait manger	Ce qu’il/ elle a bu	Ce qu’il / elle devrait boire
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Faites un camembert (pie chart) indiquant quel pourcentage des gens interviewés mangent sain et malsain.

Ambiguous reading and its place in the classroom

Hello all!  I am posting form my messy desk this morning and so I hope that I make sense!  This will be a short post about reading texts and using contextual clues to figure out the subject.  The subject in this article, freeganisme (as opposed to Veganism in English- although we say végétalien in French...) is a great way to talk about all kinds of non standard paractices related to living our lives and plus, it's just cool to learn all these new words!  Under the paragraph is the blog, which you may choose to direct students to after the activity.

We are working with Agnès Varda's Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse in my French 4 Honors class -for the record I don't like labeling courses Honors and non Honors, as it tends to make the kids internalize either superiority or inferiority, but that's the way my school works at this point!  This is a film about the concept of gleaning.  In order to get my students to think about the range of gleaners and people who repurpose - either through necessity or just being green- I do all kinds of activities.  I have them then write about the things we do in their blogs, which serve as products of individuality for the students and assessments as well.

Here is one on reading a text and figuring out what a word means.  I love doing these kinds of low-stakes, ungraded activities in pairs with all levels, including level 1.  My goal as a language teacher is to help learners be comfortable with ambiguity, in my opinion,  a necessary skill in order to be a great language acquirer.  I normally feel guilty when I use the NL (native language); but this is primarily a reading comprehension activity and so the use of the NL is ok with me.  In addition, students in lower levels who do not understand the complexities of this almost meta activity benefit from reading about what we are really doing.  Hope you enjoy!
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Qu’est-ce que c’est?  Qu’est-ce que j’en pense?

This exercise helps you to become more comfortable with ambiguity, a skill that will serve you not only in language acquisition, but life in general.  Looking at this text, try to answer the questions below in English to show what you understand.  Remember to use cognates and previous knowledge to help you!  Then, when you think you have an idea of the answers, give the article a title in French and write a bit in French at the bottom of the page about your opinion.  Then, share your responses with a partner.  Did you both come up with the same answers?  Why or why not?  Use the text to justify.

Titre: ______________________________________________________________

“Je trouve que le Freeganisme est vraiment génial, pour moi c'est comme le warez mais version bouffe par excellence. Pour un petit rappel warez est une pratique ainsi qu'une communauté très active et controversé par les majors et autres gouvernements avide du billet vert sur le net afin d'avoir des jeux, des logiciels, de la musique, des films et j'en passe gratuitement et tous ça avec un esprit de partage. Le Freeganisme me fait aussi pensées aux logements vainquant que l'ont peu squatter ou encore à l'autostop, des pratiques plus belle et ingénieuse les une que les autres pour vivre sans dépensé quoi que ce soit ou presque ainsi que pour profiter d'un système qui torture les faibles rend l'homme esclave de son pouvoir d'achat ainsi du monde capitaliste.”

(http://www.elrachetcompagnie.info/2013/11/poubelle-la-vie-avec-le-freeganisme.html)

En anglais:

1.     What is Freeganisme?

2.     Who do you think practices it?

3.     What other practice does it remind the writer of?

En français: Parlez avec un partenaire

Qu’est-ce que tu penses de cette pratique?  Pourquoi?

La Soupe tonkinoise au Québec- another way to show diversity in French speakers in the classroom

When we think of concepts and culture to teach in the classroom, sometimes we come up short- short of the classics.  As a French teacher, it is really difficult to move away from the typical fare of textbooks (the Eiffel Tower, Paris, galettes de roi, Crêpes, Centre Pompidou, castles in the Loire, etc.).  It seems like the entire reputation of French class rests on fashion and Paris and Je suis Charlie.  While these are incredibly important elements of Francophone life, there are millions of people running around, living their lives and speaking French who never get air time in our classrooms, and thus our students may only find out about them by chance- not a very good strategy to ensure that these voices of la Francophonie are heard.

This problem can extended to include any world language being taught.  What about the Hakka or the Muslim population in Xi'an when teaching Chinese?  What about the differences between the Oxacans and the people who live in Puebla? What about Nicaragua as opposed to Peru?  Of course, by now I'm sure that your defenses are up and you are thinking that the world is so vaste that no one can possibly teach all of that!

Yes, that is true, but we can change the lens we look through on a daily basis to include whenever possible these "others"; this is not really something that we do once, but a way to teach that compels us to learn alongside our students while we teach.  After all, when we learn as teachers, more often than not, we are more motivated to continue our tenure in the classroom.

So, in the spirit of this post, here is an activity on food in Québec on pho, the Vietnamese soup whose name may or may not have come from the French pot au feu.  In doing this listening activity, it's also important to talk about French Indochina and its legacy.

Bonne dégustation!

Here is a link to how to pronounce the word pho:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgX2q9WPoqo

Here is the link to the listening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zuv6--ryfI&feature=channel

Here are the questions:

Avec un(e) partenaire, divisez les questions en deux parties.  Chaque personne trouve la réponse à 4 questions.  Puis, échangez-les, et vérifiez si les réponses sont correctes.

1.     Il y a combien de tailles de bols?

2.     Comment ils appellent les différentes tailles au resto?

3.     La soupe vient de quelle région?

4.     La version qu’on trouve à Montréal vient surtout du sud ou du nord?  Pourquoi?

5.     Que veut dire le mot « pho »?

6.     Est-ce qu’on peut manger cette soupe au petit déjeuner au Vietnam?

7.     A quelle heure?

8.     Après un party, on s’arrête à un marchand _______________.