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? :)
