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!