Year End Review

The end of the year has finally come and I am soooooooooo (maybe a few more o's...) glad it is summer!  I was really blessed this year to have such great students and will miss my 8th graders tremendously next year!  With the end of the year came some great (yet stressful) news!  My principle let me know that I will be offered some English courses next year and this will bring me up to full time!  I am super excited to be full time but also nervous about teaching English classes next year.  I student taught in an English class but have not stayed current on the methodology or the testing that is used in the English classroom...

So this summer I will be researching and working on English materials AS WELL AS perfecting and getting creative with my French materials!

So here is summary of what I really enjoyed about my first year as a French teacher:

1.  The competition versus me and the students to see who could speak more French (I loved the cards they all had to write to me about how great I am because they lost the competition)

2.  TPRS story-telling with the students

3.  BINGO homework (the students hated it, but it really did produce some of their greatest work!)

4.  Oral Proficiency Interviews (mini-OPI's) - Again not a student favorite, but it was great to have an opportunity to just sit and have a conversation with each student in French.

5.  PBL - project based learning - my favorite project had to be the wanted poster project that worked with adjectives, preferences and the verb avoir!  I got some great posters for this project!

6.  Free Writes- giving students 10 minutes to write a story all in French and see the growth in my students!

7.  Freeze Frame - although I only used it once, I LOVED this activity and it really got the students speaking!

8.  End of the year movie trailer project - KIDS LOVED THIS!

9.  Sharing French popular music and having kids tell me they bought French songs on iTunes!

10.  My small class size (won't be small next year....)

11.  Stations - loved having games and differentiation available to my students with station days

With so many great activities and memories from my first year, I also see many places where I need to grow.

1.  I need to focus on quality rather than quantity.  I wanted to try so many new ideas this last year that I often didn't give students enough time to actually benefit from each activity.  Next year I need to whittle down what I do each day and give the students more time to complete activities.

2.  I need to be harder.  I have high expectations for students but I let them get away with too much.  Next year I need to start off harder and stick to my guns so that by the end of the year I don't have so much of a problem.

3.  I need to stick with my classroom management procedures.  I started the year with certain ideas on how I would run my class and then changed those ideas several times when my procedures weren't working out.  Next year I will have my knowledge of my faults and preferences for my classroom procedures and I will need to stick them!

4.  Grading... this year I often got behind and did not keep a regular schedule for grading papers.  I really need to get a system into place and stick with it!

5.  More listening activities!

6.  More culture brought into the lessons.  I don't know that I want to do "themed" units, but I would like to bring in more history and culture into my class with authentic resources!

7.  Give a daily objective to students and do more exit tickets/pop-quizzes to enforce the importance of those daily objectives.

8.  USE MORE TECHNOLOGY!  All students will have iPads next year and I am pumped to find as many ways to utilize these great resources in the classroom!

So here is my goal for the summer.  Each week I would like to blog about one of these goals and how I am progressing in researching and planning for next year.  I will do my best to stay on track and hopefully have a weekly blog!  I also joined a great Google group that will be doing some fantastic sessions this summer and I plan to blog my reflections for each session I attend!  So here's to a summer of blogging and planning (and hopefully house buying!)

 

Open Ended Drama

Photo from http://bit.ly/1jXEHWx

So I have been a little overwhelmed here at the end of the year and have relied on the textbook more than I care to admit.  Of course I can see the engagement in my classes going down and the students getting that "zombie" look on their faces but I just haven't have the energy or time to create authentic and creative lessons.  Last week I told myself I needed to get out of this rut and try something new. We haven't had a story lately and we didn't do much with the reader that we just finished so I wanted spice up my presenting of new vocabulary with story-telling methods So I decided to bring a little drama into the classroom.   .

I had originally planned on creating an entire play for the students to act out and focus on the new vocabulary in the play.  This seemed like a good idea (and still is) if I had the time to do all that!  After realizing that the play was not going to be finished on time I started thinking of what to do.  I didn't want to waste all my work I had put into the play so far and I enjoyed the idea of having the students act out a play instead of just watching an old movie clip from our text or watching me present the new vocabulary.  Then it hit me!  Why does the play have to ended by me?  Why not have the students write their own ending to the play.

The play consisted of a few friends shopping for new clothes (our unit is on clothing and shopping vocabulary).  2 people hated each other and 1 of these two is a real jerk the entire play.  The other 2 liked each other but hadn't acted upon their feelings  The end of the written play leaves the reader saying "what?!" and leaves the story wide open for possibilities.  I didn't want this to be too overwhelming for the students so I separated the class into two groups (about 6-7 students in each group) and told them they must end the story.  I gave them 3 basic plot questions that they had to answer by the end of the play.  When they finished they were required to act out their play for the rest of the group.

Here are my thoughts on the activity:

PROS:

- Students had more fun reading the play and using the new vocabulary in context rather than just me presenting the new vocabulary and then us doing activities to practice it.
- Students were able to get creative and collaborate on the end of the play
- Culture was easy to introduce into the play as I wrote it.  I was able to get a few extra vocabulary words that the book doesn't teach as well as some common phrases that don't translate well from French to English.
- Students were engaged and enjoyed the play
- It had students speaking and reading in French for the majority of the hour

CONS:

- Next time I think I will use smaller groups for creating the endings.  6-7 was too many and not all students were helping with their group's new ending
- The focus on using the new vocabulary was lost when students started to re-write the ending.  Next time I will need to have a set list of words I expect to be used in the ending so that they focus on the key vocabulary.
- I underestimated how much time the students would need for this activity.  They were very much so engaged but they were only given 15 minutes to complete this activity.  To actually get quality endings I would guess the students need double that time.
- I had only one person write out the ending for the entire group, but I think that when we have iPads next year I will have the students create a googledoc and collaborate on the same document.   This way I can see who contributed what to the play.

Overall this activity turned out really well for a last minute lesson plan idea.  I plan to use it again and hopefully embellish and improve it next time.  The students enjoyed it and they were using the language for a creative writing assignment.

La maison et la mort TPRS Story telling

So last week I had one of those days that I left school unable to stop smiling!  I was just so proud of my FRN 1 students!  We are learning rooms of the house and I was at a loss for how to present the new vocabulary.  My first idea was to show a dream floor plan of my "dream" house and then comment on it with the students, but I really wanted to find a way to get the TPRS technique into this presentation.  We haven't had a story in a few weeks and the students have been asking when we would spin a story again.  So I changed up my plan.  I created a Prezi that focused on a "haunted house" and found creepy pictures of all the rooms I was focusing on.  I then put a small jpeg of a goofy/cute little ghost in all the rooms.  So I started out telling the class that we were going to visit/explore a haunted house.  I showed them a picture of the house and had them describe the house (we just finished adjectives).  From there I showed them the first room and the ghost in the room. Of course I hammed it up and pretended that it was really scary and I had one student go along with my acting.  (of course I rewarded this acting with a euro) and when the class saw that I would reward a gasping and scary look on their faces I had the entire class going along with it (so much fun!!!)  Anyways, it was their job to explain what happened in that room to the person (who is now a ghost).  They loved this!  One of their favorite parts of spinning a story is always the ending (deciding if it is a happy, sad, or weird ending).  Our main characters normally meet weird/funny endings.  So coming up with all endings of characters was right up their alley.  Both classes did a good job with this, but one class rocked it out!  They talked completely in French for the entire 50 minute class and the vocabulary they used during the story was amazing!  We ended up spinning the story for the majority of the class instead of doing the other activities I had planned.  Although it wasn't the TPRS method exactly, the students used so much French and their level of engagement was remarkable!  I really enjoyed the class and didn't want it to end!  The students did not focus completely on the rooms but when I went through the rooms and checked for comprehension, the students knew the rooms and could pronounce them and identify them.  They went home with homework of reading two "petites annonces" and using the new vocabulary to decipher what each house had in them.  I LOVED the ghost stories and so did the students!  Although we didn't get the repetition of the target words that we normally get in spinning a story, the students really connected with the stories and the "ghosts" and remembered the vocabulary!  I hope to have more days like this, as they make it all worth it!

New Trimester, New Unit Plan

I am so ready for this trimester to be over!  After so many snow days and poor planning on my part, I am done with trimester 2!  So after feeling quite lost after this last trimester at times, I started going through some of my books from my methods classes to look over methods on planning.  After reading/reviewing some of the methods I felt like quite the dummy.  I have been planning by lesson rather than by unit and I have been lacking on the student objectives.  Using the textbook has proven to be actually hindering rather than a help.  Instead of looking at the big picture and figuring out what I want the students to be able to do at the END of a unit, I have been looking at each individual lesson and not thinking about how they all connect.  To say the least the last unit I did felt haphazard and poorly planned.

To compete against this feeling I made a Unit plan for my next unit.  It has helped immensely!  Although I am using the textbook to guide me, I am looking at the big picture more.  In my unit plan I included the following:

1) The main goals (ACTFL language goals) that I plan to touch on in this unit
2) The standards I will be covering in the unit
3) What the expected/desired outcome for the unit is
4) Progress Indicators (what the students should be able to do)
5) The essential skills and knowledge the students will need to accomplish the desired outcome
6) The assessments I will use in the unit
7) Instructional strategies I will use throughout the unit
8) Resources I think will be helpful/necessary
9) And the Performance Task the students will complete at the end of the unit to show they have acquired the desired outcome for the unit

This plan has really helped my daily lesson planning.  I look back at my unit plan often to make sure that my lessons are meeting my own goals and when I look in the textbook, I can decide what pieces of the textbook are necessary to include and which parts are not that important to accomplish the desired outcome (which is often as my book is poorly designed!!!).  The textbook has been my downfall for the last few units.  I felt I needed to cover all material that was in the book, but I didn't like the order or the way that it presented the material so I got lost in how to present the topics in the order presented.  Having the unit plan is really helping me get-over this "drill and kill" rut I was in for the last unit.  I am looking to the textbook for a general guide of when to teach the necessary skills, but because I have the Unit Plan I can now change things up and introduce skills/vocabulary at a time that makes sense.  I lost sight of the comprehensible input method during this last unit and I want to get back on the horse and really try to get more authentic texts into their hands and provide more opportunities to get the students speaking.

I found a blog about a conversation circle that I might bring into this unit a little farther down the road.  Thanks you to amylenord for this great idea and rubric! (Check out her website!  It is FULL of great resources!!)  I have very small classes this year so this could be a quick conversation activity.  Maybe even a warm-up idea.... hmmm  I really hope this activity will help my students speak more.  They just completed their 2nd Oral Proficiency Interview and the problem I am having with some of my students is that they are very hesitant to answer any questions and to speak in the language still scares/worries them.  I want more natural conversation in my classroom instead of goal driven classroom questions/discussions...


FOLLOW UP on previous post about the competition (I talked about it here on another of my posts).  I had students fill out an Exit Ticket on their thoughts of the competition and I was actually quite surprised.  Where I thought students were not liking the competition, I found that all of my students liked the competition but had a few tweeks that I loved!
Tweeks my students suggested that I have incorporated:
1) Have an emergency escape card- student suggested that they have a certain number of "Emergency" cards that they can use in a class period when they need clarification of something in English.
2)  I win a point if someone asks me how to say a word they should already know - I REALLY LIKE THIS ONE!

The competition is going really well.  I lost the first week (my own mistakes....I kept saying the word "blank" in English...grrr) Students told me (via their Exit Tickets) that they really felt the competition was helping them and that it really pushed them to think about what they were saying and figure out a way to say it in French.  The level of French in my students has sky-rocketed!  I am just amazed at how well they can communicate in the TL when they want to!

Now on to planning and getting my next unit complete.  I will write a post soon about how the unit is progressing and how I am incorporating comprehensible input into my classroom!  Leave any comments or ideas you have!  Thanks for reading!

Teacher vs Students and Bingo Homework

So one of my goals recently has been to get the students to speak completely in French and for myself to speak completely in French everyday.  This is hard for me and the students, but I know we can do it!  So, I started a little competition between myself and the students.  We have one "police officer" in each hour that is responsible for the point giving.  The students get one point if I speak in English and I get a point when they speak in English.  It is really helping me stay in the target language (which is great for comprehensible input) but the students are now just not saying anything....  Yesterday (as we don't have school again today...) I told them that if I ask a question and no one in the class responds then I get a point.  This seemed to make an improvement, but I am not sure if I will keep the competition going.  Any ideas or advice would be welcome!

I like that I am speaking in French the entire class period, but I was hoping this would get the students to speak more French in the classroom.  I am getting into the grammar portions of the class now and I feel as if they are speaking less and less... Hmmm... I am getting frustrated.  Some of my students are accomplishing things I didn't believe a first year student could do, but others are really struggling to keep up.  I am trying my best to keep both sets of students involved and working but I am having difficulty with this.


One way I tried to balance out the levels in my students was to do BINGO homework.  (Download a copy here.)  I made a bingo sheet of homework assignments that focused on the content we are covering at this time.  Each column has a different focus
B - vocabulary practice
I - Reading
N - writing
G - speaking
O - random

The students must do one assignment from each column and the must have a bingo line when finished (loss of 1 point for every assignment outside the bingo line).

I LOVE this assignment because it produces some of the best work out of my students and the assignments are (for the most part) real world situations. The problem I am having with it is that my lower students are not doing the work so they fall farther behind...

I have assigned this 2 ways.
1) I have a due date for each column and check off each column as they turn them in (liked it because I knew students were doing homework and keeping up in the class, but I didn't like it because it took time out of class and required fast grading)
2) I have a due date for the entire bingo sheet and they turn every thing in at one time. (Liked this because it was easier to keep track of all the assignments, but I didn't like it because students left it to the last minute and didn't have any other homework for about a week and a half.)

I want to improve on the assignment, but I'm not really sure how.  Maybe make the bingo sheet smaller or do like a tic tac toe board instead....  Hmmm....

Anyways, things are going well in the classroom.  We are really getting behind though due to all these snow days!  We had a total of 2 days this week!  Crazy huh!? I keep trying to improve my methods and delivery but there are just some days that I feel like I am not going down the right road.  Mais c'est la vie d'un professeur non? :)

Le jeu de la bouteille (Spin the bottle)

Spin the Bottle in Class?  What?!

Photo from http://www.rankopedia.com/CandidatePix/30092.gif

So for my formal observation I had this last week I decided to go for two riskier activities.  This first being Freeze Frame (read about here) and the second being a simple review game that the kids love.  Of course the first time you play the kids are a little weirded out by the fact that you are going to play spin the bottle in class.  You can assure them there will be no kissing or making out in class today though!  

There are two ways you can do this for setup.

1.You make up the commands or questions. (Takes prep time but you are insuring the students are practicing exactly what you want)  Print them out in a large font and then cut each question/command into individual slips of paper.  Fold them up and put them in a container.

2. The students make up the commands or questions. (Takes more time but allows them to get creative and reinforces their writing skills!)  I usually have each student write 2 (but I have unusually small classes) but you could do more (probably no more than 4 though for sake of time)

How to play:

If you had students write their own commands/questions have them put them in the cup/container that goes with their group.  Sometimes I switch the cups up and no group gets their original questions/commands.  The students liked this as they get to see what their classmates wrote.  If you wrote the commands then just have the questions/commands separated equally into the containers before the activity.

Split students into groups of 5-6.  Each group gets a container with questions/commands and a bottle. (I prefer liter or 2-liter pop bottles and Perrier glass bottles)

Have a rule of who goes first.  I usually do birthday or age rules (they then have to discuss in French who has the closest birthday date or age and this reviews numbers and dates!)

Once they have figured out who goes first, that person spins the bottle.  When the bottle stops on someone the spinner takes a question or command and and asks their classmate that the bottle stopped on the question.  The other student must then answer the question in French or complete the action if it is a command.  If the student cannot answer the question or complete the command they can ask their classmates for help (in French).  Every question or command must be completed though!  The person that the bottle landed on gets to spin the bottle if they were able to answer the question or complete the command.  If not, the original spinner must spin again.  Play continues for as long as you would like it to.  I usually only play for about 15 minutes or so depending on how the students are reacting to the game.

Different Versions:

• To practice inviting people to events I had students write out 2 rejections and 1 acceptance.  They put these into the cup and instead of the spinner pulling out a question, the spinner would have to make-up an invitation for the person the bottle stopped on.  That person then pulls out on of the replies and reads it to the spinner.  If it is a rejection the spinner must spin again until they find someone who can go to their activity.  When someone accepts the invite they become the new spinner.
• Prepositions: Have certain props for each group and have students write 2 sentences about where those props could be in the room using prepositions.  The spinner reads one of the slips of paper and puts the prop where the paper is says it is at.  Then the spinner spins the bottle and asks the person where the object is at.  If the person gets it right they get to keep the slip of paper and then spin the bottle.  This is a competition to see who can win the most slips of paper by then end of the game. 
• Commands:  To practice the imperative, have students write funny commands for their classmates and play spin the bottle.  The spinner gets to read the command to the person the bottle lands on and that person must act out whatever the command is.  This could also be done as a competition and have students try to win the slip of paper as they play.
• Truth or Dare + Spin the Bottle:  To mix commands and questions for an overall review you can mix-up these two classic games into one game.  You will need two containers for each group though.  One container to hold commands (the Dare container) and the other to hold questions (The Truth container).  When a bottle lands on a person they get to choose between the two options and try to win their slip of paper.  

Well hope you like these ideas!  I will update the Different Versions section as I come up with more ways to change up this simple game.  If you have any ideas or comments or you try it in your classroom I would love to hear about it!

TPRS Troubles

So TPRS is a fantastic technique that I believe has great merits in the FL classroom.  On the other hand I have been getting bored and frustrated with this technique.  After having talked to my Spanish colleague I figured I would go out of my comfort zone and try to find or makeup activities that could extend the TPRS technique.  Here are some of the issues I was having with the method:

1. I am the one talking for the majority of the class period.  Students will get one or two word phrases for ideas for the story, but for the most part it is me that is talking (Which I know they need to hear the language as much as possible but in a 50 minute class the technique leaves little time for my students to talk after we spin a story together)

2. Students (and myself) are losing interest in the stories and the entire routine.  We have told 10 stories now and it is only half -way through the year!

3.  I have a hard time balancing the stories with the required content.  I get behind in the curriculum content often because we spend 2 or more days on TPRS stuff.  Luckily our stories do have phrases and grammar that show up later in the textbook so it is like front-loading, but I am behind at the moment on where I should be for the my class in the curriculum.

4.  We have pre-written stories and as the class and I spin the story I hate having to direct their story to be more like the written story as this does not really feel like their story in the end.  Also, I think the students are starting to think that it doesn't matter what they suggest for the story telling as I will direct the story a certain way anyways.

With that said, here are the things I really like about the method:

1. The students get to be funny and creative using the language in context.

2. Students get to hear a lot of target language in one class period and it isn't just grammar and new vocabulary the entire class period.

3.  It gives teachers a non-traditional method to do grammar highlights instead of having the students do exercises or worksheets out of a book.

4.  Students get to learn vocabulary that is important/interesting to them by asking for certain words to add to the story.

So after looking online for the knowledge and advice of some TPRS pros I decided to try to come up with an activity that would involve story telling but not have me do any of the speaking. Here is what I came up with:

FREEZE FRAME!

The activity is played as a class (but you could do it in small groups of 5-6).  You pick a random student to be an actor and another student to be the first narrator.  These two students stand in the front of the classroom and begin a story.  The narrator starts telling the story and the actor has to listen and act out whatever the narrator is saying.  (I did a practice run through of this activity in English so that they had an idea of what it would be like in French and this seemed to really help the students understand what was expected of them)  The narrator is required to speak at least 1 full sentence before anyone is allowed to interrupt them.  Why would people interrupt them you ask?  Because as the narrator is telling the story the class is listening and trying to find a way to insert their own ideas into the story.  They do this by calling out "Freeze!" ("Congèlez" en français).  When the student calls out "Freeze" the narrator stops talking and the actor continues to do the action that they were doing last.  The student that calls freeze then comes up to the front of the room and takes the place of the narrator and continues the story adding in new actions/details and the actor must follow along.  I required that every student in the class must be the narrator at least once and that when everyone has been the narrator it is the actor that gets to decide the fate of the story.  As a side note I did offer myself up as a tag-team helper if a narrator got stuck in front of the class and ran out of things to say.  The students were warned though that if a narrator had to tag-team me into the story the entire class would have a pop quiz right after the Freeze Frame activity.  This was just a little motivation for the class to not allow one of their classmates to get stranded up front without anything to say.  If a student came up front and could not put together an entire sentence and was just standing their I would start making my ways towards them to give them the opportunity to tag me in but this usually just spurred the student to get their thoughts in order and say at least one sentence. None of my classes had to tag me in.

My first group of students did a pretty good job with this.  They focused on the vocabulary that we were learning at the time so their story was not as cohesive or as interesting as I was hoping but they did speak all in French for about 15-20 minutes without my help.  My second group of French 1 students though rocked it!  Their story was cohesive and continued smoothly.  They used a lot of other vocabulary instead of what I was aiming for, but I didn't care about that when I had 4 students not using their note cards and just improvising completely in French! (I assigned them homework of writing a few sentences down that could be added to the story on a note card and then they could use that notecard if they needed when they went up to add to the story) This group spoke completely in French for about 30 minutes and really kept the story going!  I was giddy with excitement all the way home that night as I was so proud of my students!

What I liked about the activity:

1. This gives me a chance to hear everyone speak and grade their proficiency level.

2.  Everyone is included in the story telling process.

3.  It requires students to be able to listen and comprehend the story and then think of ways to extend what they are understanding with more details.

4.  It allows some of the more advanced students to push themselves (my improvisers!) but it doesn't put too much pressure on my students with special needs.

If you have questions about this activity or you do it in your classroom I would love to hear about it! I did this activity with a French 1 group about half way through the year but this would be a great activity for more advanced students so that they could practice the different tenses (maybe have signs for the actor to use to show past, present, and future)

Thanks for reading and hope to hear some ideas/feedback/or experiences with this method!