My Old Blog

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 recently installed the app for BookBox on my Android tablet.   This free app consists of several stories in multiple languages (English, Portuguese, Spanish, French).  Stories can be viewed on Youtube while words spoken are highlighted on the bottom of the screen to indicate which word is being read. My 4-year old daughter is enjoying these stories, listening to them in both English and Portuguese.  She listened to the story in English first (in which she is fully conversant), then in Portuguese (her target language).  I would highly recommend using Bookbox as an Android App for any language learner.  You can install Bookbox on your Android tablet or phone by visiting Google Play store at this link.

This is a video tutorial introducing Il était une histoire , one of my favorite literacy sites for children in French. I am currently using this site in my class with Grade 6 French Immersion students for our Guided Reading sessions.