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!)
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