Chez Renée

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!) ...

I've wanted to participate in celebrating National French Week for several years, but have had difficulty finding the time to plan & prepare.  So this year I decided that I'd try just a few simple ideas just to get myself started.  I began by putting up posters up in the hallways.  My French I students participated by making mini-posters of the flags of the French-speaking world.  Here are some photos. Then I planned and promoted 3 give-aways that the whole high school could participate in.  On Monday, I gave away free croissants and Nutella at lunch.  I was worried that students wouldn't really be interested, but by the time I got to the lunchroom, a crowd was waiting for me, and the croissants were gone in under one minute.  This created quite a buzz in the lunchroom...everyone noticed!  I was very pleased. On Wednesday, I had a raffle to give away some French & Swiss chocolate (2 GIANT Toblerone ba...