My Old Blog

Please view this tutorial about Edmodo, a safe learning management system for students. I have used Edmodo with French language learners (online teaching) and with my Grade 6 French Immersion Students as part of our Harry Potter Book Project with students from Cairo, Egypt. It is a very useful tool if you don't have Moodle or an affordable (or free) Moodle hosting service. I am a strong advocate for the open source movement :-)

Leçon sur l'imparfait (Bonjour de France) Leçon sur l'imparfait avec vidéo et test (Français facile) 

Voici quelques activités de quoi vous pouvez en profiter au sujet de la baguette (ou le pain français ici au Canada).  Vous pouvez aussi trouvez les réponses aux questions pour ensurer que vous avez bien compris les activités. Bonne journée!

Someone recently shared this gem of a website  containing several images that are ideal for foreign language instruction.  I have been using images to encourage conversations and to be used as springboards in writing in my French class.  Often, I have turned to Flickr for photos, providing students with question prompts to help them focus in their responses to the images. Visuals can evoke different reactions in students, ranging from confusion to laughter.  What I have loved most about using visuals is that they solicit a multitude of responses from students!  This experience always reminds me of the importance of appreciating that there are several interpretations of one image and that there isn't one response that is the only correct answer. The images in the website "Visuals for Foreign Language Instruction" remind me of comic books, a favorite among my students.  They invite children to write dialogue on them and to consider what events might be...

La grammaire -l'accord -l'imparfait -la capitalisation -la négation -la ponctuation -la possession - les accents - les adjectifs -les adverbes -les articles définis et indéfinis -les articles partitifs -les conjonctions -les déterminants -les homonymes -les noms - les prépositions -les pronoms -les verbes L'écriture La lecture Le vocabulaire Les chansons Les citations Les dictées   Les compétences orales

Le chat colla... par Cordell Barker , Office national du film du Canada Écrire un court résumé de ce film avec le passé composé et l'imparfait .   Qu'est-ce que tu changerais au sujet du film ?

I have used videos in the classroom in the past to promote writing skills development.  I have also used videos to promote oral language development.  For more details, please read this earlier post . Recently, I read a great blog post by one of my favorite online language educators, Sylvia Guinan, on using movies to teach English.  This prompted me to revisit some old Mr. Bean videos, now readily available for viewing on Youtube.  Apart from getting a good chuckle from them, they also gave me some inspiration for future classroom activities.  While watching them, I wrote down some starter sentences that students could use to prompt discussion on scenes from Mr. Bean.  Because it is important to increase fluency among language learners, I think that we should encourage students to communicate with one another in the target language.  Discussion also helps students articulate their ideas and can be a good pre-cursor to a writing activity. Belo...