Chez Renée

One of the best things I've ever added to my curriculum is something called Manie Musicale . It's designed specifically for French teachers! If you've never heard of it, it's a French song competition modeled after the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament. Students across the world vote for their favorite songs from a bracket of 16 current songs selected from all over the French-speaking world. I started participating a few years ago and have found it to be 100% worth it! Manie Musicale is free, but you do need to register your school to participate.  Brackets must be filled out by March 1 each year.  Teachers create bulletin board materials, games and other activities to use with students and share them with all of the other teachers participating!  Here is my bulletin board from a few years ago. It was made with the shared materials available on the Manie Musicale website. Teachers decide how they will reward the students with the best brackets.  I chose to giv...

 Bonjour! Here is a fun, concrete activity to help students practice description and the use of adjectives.  First, gather random objects from around your classroom. They don't necessarily need to be items that your students can name. Use anything interesting or unusual! This gets them interested before your lesson even begins. Line the objects up on a table and use labels with letters on them to identify each object. I chose to use: A) a pumpkin decoration, B) a metal box with a block of post-it notes inside, C) a small container of yellow play dough, D) an empty Perrier bottle, E) a giant paper weight in the shape of a diamond, and F) a green feather. We were working on describing objects with a specific list of adjectives which describe the shape & texture, size, weight, consistency, general state of the object and the material the object is made of.    Next, ask students to number from 1-6 (adjust the number according to the number of objects you've chos...

Last year I added a new routine to my French III class which I've named Guess what's in Jacques' head?. It was inspired by a wonderful game I purchased on Teachers Pay Teachers called  La Boîte Mystère   from The French Nook (un grand merci, Jennifer, for this great idea!!). The basic idea is that you hide a random object in a mystery box, and students have to guess what's in it. As I pondered using this idea, I remembered that Jacques' head is hollow! I decided that my students might like this activity even more if I hid the mystery object inside his head. So now I do this every Friday and my students practice asking yes/no questions about the shape, size, texture, color and the general use for the item until they guess it. Once they do, I make a big production of tipping Jacques forward so we can all look inside his head.  The activity takes about 5-10 minutes of my lesson. It has been a real hit in my classroom. Everyone loves it! And it has helped them to ...

Bonjour fellow teachers!  I'm excited to share a new idea with you that I tried for the first time last month.  I was inspired by a presentation I attended at a world language conference on creating a "break-out" lesson.  Have you heard of these?  I decided to try one as part of my semester exam review in my French III class. It was a lot of work to create this lesson, and at one point I did wonder if it was going to be worth it.  My students adored it though, and I thought it was fun, creative and a great way to review major concepts from the semester. If you aren't familiar with the concept of a break-out lesson, the basic idea is that groups of students are racing each other to unlock boxes containing clues which lead them to unlock the next box.  Each group is racing to be the first to make it to the final box.  So, one needs to create some sort of story which gives the students a reason for wanting to race to that final box.  That wa...

One of my goals each school year is to find new ways to use my classroom mannequins in my lessons.  I enjoy creating & teaching these lessons, and my students really love them too!  Last week I had a new idea.  In French IV, we've been studying how to talk about accidents and doctor visits.  I decided to dress Jacques up as though he'd had an accident.  Here's what he looked like: Instead of having the students describe what happened in random pictures of people who had suffered various accidents (found in their textbook), I asked them to describe what happened to Jacques.  This was instantly more interesting to them.  And they were interested in the lesson as soon as they entered the classroom...they wanted to know what had happened to Jacques. Students were asked to take photos with their iPads of Jacques' head, neck, hand and leg. Jacques has a bandage on his head, and stitches on his neck!! Jacques has a scar on his ...

I would say that after more than 20 years in the classroom that one of the most important lessons I've learned is this:  If you can get your students interested in what you want to teach them, it will make you instantly more effective as a teacher!  My mentor would agree.  When I was a new teacher, he encouraged me to find out what students wanted, and then repackage my lessons accordingly.  I have found this to be very wise advice.   My students are immediately interested in anything that has to do with my classroom mannequins.  And why wouldn't they be?  Wouldn't it be SO MUCH more interesting to sit in a lesson where a teacher was telling & acting out a story about a life-size department store mannequin than to read a boring dialog in a textbook about Pierre & Anne who went to the grocery store?  I took that textbook dialog meant to teach students how to use the passé composé and threw it out, replacing it with a  story I wro...

Bonjour tout le monde!  I hope everyone has had a great start to their school year! I haven't posted in a while, and I'd like to thank those of you who've recently reminded me that you are reading my blog which has really encouraged me to keep on writing. I'd like to share a successful lesson that I taught last week.  This lesson was used in high school French II and students were learning how to name various professions.  I took a writing activity from my textbook (which described what certain people did in their professions and asked students to guess what it was based on the description), and turned it into a television style game show!  I made index cards on which I wrote the short descriptions and the French name of the person assuming that profession.   Then I made a Power Point presentation to create a game show atmosphere.  The slides of the Power Point showed the same names and descriptions that were on the index cards.  I also inserted game ...

Happy winter from the Mitten!  This weekend I spent a lovely few hours in my kitchen trying a new recipe.  Even though I've had the incredible good fortune to have lived in France, I had never heard of les petits bonhommes  until I saw a French chef preparing them on a cooking show.  They are absolutely adorable, and ever since I saw the show, I've wanted to find time to make them for my students.  You can find the recipe  here . The recipe is not simple and does require some time.  I love to bake though, so for me it was enjoyable and also very satisfying to be able to expose my students and also my own family to this French treat!  Here's how mine turned out: Let me tell you, these things smelled heavenly!  Not only are they cute, but to me they are so very, very French! I would describe the taste and texture as something close to a German soft pretzel, except that the dough is slightly sweet.  They are made in Alsa...

As I write this post, I'm sitting by my swimming pool enjoying the month of July and reflecting on the past school year.  This lesson was one of my favorite lessons, and it was something I'd never tried before.  I think it's so important for teachers to continue to learn, grow, and adapt.  This lesson was born out of a desire to find a more effective and interesting way to introduce the correct use of the passé composé (compound past tense) & the imparfait (imperfect tense) when describing past events.  I used it in my French II class, which for me is the first time the concept is introduced.  The idea I came up with is something that I discovered that many elementary school teachers already use...I first saw the idea on Pinterest.  Here it is:  use a crime scene investigation to get students to recreate a past event.  Brilliant!!!  I have to say that I've learned a lot from elementary school teachers over the years!  If you've ...

Bonjour tout le monde!  I hope you're all having a great school year!  Today is the first day of my spring break, and I'm really looking forward to some rest and relaxation, and some time to catch up on my blogging :).  And it looks like spring is finally arriving here in Michigan!  I feel invigorated already! I've been teaching for a number of years, but for some reason I've never included Le Poisson d'avril (the French equivalent of April Fool's) activities in my classes.  I tried it for the first time this week, and was happy with how it went.  I explained the French tradition of taping paper fish on the backs of others without their knowledge and then yelling "Poisson d'avril" when the prank has been discovered.  My classroom mannequin, Jacques, was decked out with fish in order to draw attention to the activity. The paper fish are traditionally taped on one's back, but I put them on the front here so that students could see them....

Bonjour!  It's been a while since I've blogged because I've been even busier than usual with life at school.  This fall I decided to go ALL OUT celebrating National French Week!  I was able to do this thanks to the fact that I now have a colleague teaching middle school French, and we worked together!  We met over the summer to brainstorm.  We chose the top 5 reasons that students at our school  should study French.  Then we figured out how to get these reasons outside of our classrooms in as many ways as possible. I live in Michigan in the Detroit area.  Here are our top 5 reasons to learn French: French is the official language of approximately 50 countries .  (I have found over the years that very few people understand this.  We French teachers should be shouting it from the mountain tops!  In fact, while we were putting up our display, two parents stopped to observe and told us they had no idea that this was the case!) ...

Bonjour fellow teachers!  I hope you've all had a good start to the year & that you're settling into your routine like I am.  I decided that my bulletin boards needed a fresh look this fall.  So I searched around on Pinterest for some new ideas.  I updated the look of my bulletin board by using a double border in red & blue, and some amazing silver glitter wrapping paper for the background. I've never tried a double border before...it wasn't too hard and I really like the look!  The glittery wrapping paper was purchased at a craft supply store ( Michael's ).  Here's what it looks like up close: I also made the Paris banner.  I found these wonderful free printable letters on Pinterest here , and I love the look!  The banner was so easy to make.  I just printed the letters on white card stock, and then put decorative craft tape around the edges.  I strung them all together on red and white baker's twine, which I also pu...