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I think this is a great app for beginner-level French students, especially young children.  With French Numbers 0 to 10 , children can study the digits, number words, and representations of the number (e.g. 6 leaves for six).  This is a more holistic representation of numbers and the visual images used for pictorial representations can be counted on the screen to practice counting in French.  Another thing I found appealing was that the digits appear with hands showing the number of fingers held up to correspond to the digit shown.    Below are some images of the app: Ads do appear on the app for various products and services.  The user can enable or disable sound on the app.  You can enable quiz mode for your child to test him/herself on knowledge of numbers.  To hear the answers, your child needs to tap the screen There is also a dice icon at the bottom that when selected, will randomly provide an image of the number (e....

Thanks to this great post by one of my favorite teacher bloggers, Ana Maria Menezes, I have learned how to create a quiz using PhotoPeach . This is my first time actually using PhotoPeach but I am not new to using images in the French Immersion classroom.  I see so much potential and benefits to using images as a medium of language instruction.  Images serve as visual aids and can help students more readily form associations between objects/feelings/places and their words in the target language. I have been a big fan of using images as part of my "Image mysterieuse" weekly writing activity in class.  I would put up an image from Flickr and ask students to write about what might be transpiring in the image.  Sometimes I would also use sentence prompts to accompany the images, facilitating the thought process behind this writing exercise. Using PhotoPeach to create Grammar quizzes would undoubtedly be a more refreshing approach to teaching grammar or spelling...

I have blogged about BookBox in the past when I was using it to teach Portuguese to my 4-year old daughter.  I am very elated to see there is also a French version of BookBox as an app you can use to listen to stories and read along in French. The stories are animated with a read-along feature, highlighting the words as they are being read.  It apparently has been scientifically proven that the read-along (SLS) feature strengthens reading skills as words are highlighted in sync with the spoken word. What I really like about BookBox is that the stories are available in several languages.  Although I see the value of an immersive approach to learning a language, I can also see the benefits of supporting the target language acquisition through one's native language.  My daughter, for example, has listened to stories both in English (her native language) and Portuguese and French (target languages).  She has shown an ability to form associations between w...

Storybird is an amazing tool that I blogged about earlier this year when I was using it with my Grade 6 French Immersion students.  It is an art-inspired story-writing tool that can be great for students who have a difficult time getting started with writing. Recently, Storybird has made some changes to its site.  Now children under the age of 13 can create their own Storybird accounts.  The child would need to provide a parent's e-mail address to complete the sign-up process.  Please view my brief tutorial below for further details: IMPORTANT NOTE: Your child should not make their Storybirds public; otherwise, the stories are taken down from the site if they are in any language other than English. To keep it private, your child should select "Menu" once finished with writing his/her story and select "Publish this Storybird": When scrolling down the page, there is an option to make the Storybird public or private.  Select "Private".  Th...

I discovered Conjugate French Verbs, a great app for French language learners that allows students to conjugate and study verb conjugations of several different types of verbs in French.  It would be a great tool for students to use during the summer break, practicing their verb conjugations of "er", "ir", and "re" verbs while also learning new ones! Below are some screenshots of this app (courtesy of the Google Play Store): I tested it by making errors in my conjugations to see what would result.  The app shows your errors and what the correct answers are by either double-tapping your tablet screen or dragging your fingertip over the verb conjugations.   This app also lets students choose "Random", allowing them to randomly conjugate a verb using any given tense and persons (je, tu, il/elle, nous, vous, ils/elles).  It also tracks scores on verbs that students attempted to conjugate as well as verb tenses. I ...