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...

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...

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!) ...

Attention fellow teachers!  If you're a teacher of French & you've not yet investigated  adopt an escargot , I urge you to do so tout de suite!  Adopt an escargot is a brilliant idea invented by a retired teacher.  It involves students adopting a baby escargot (a shell!) & inventing the life of their child.  To have your students participate, you need to email Nancy (the creator of this wonderful program).  On the site, click on the image Pour le prof de français  and then you will see a link to contact Le Grand Escargot.  You can purchase everything necessary from her for about $25 per kit (which is enough for a whole class).  Each kit includes beautiful escargot shells (unique colors & shapes) and each shell comes with a unique profile.  The kit also includes other activities such as a game, a template for a baby book, official adoption certificates and the right for your students to email Le Grand Escargot (the big s...

Enrich your classes and teach French culture at the same time by including some fun French Christmas activities!  I enjoy teaching students about the bûche de noël  (Yule Log cake) eaten in France in December.  I like to bring a cake in as a surprise and let students eat it after I've explained what it is.  My students really enjoy this and even remember it years later.    Some years, I've made the cake.  And sometimes I buy a cake when I can find one.  This year I found a beautiful bûche at Holiday Market  in Royal Oak.  Here's a photo: I always make sure to provide students with a recipe and encourage them to try and make one if they like to cook.  It seems like there are always a few students for whom this ignites an interest in French on a new level.  Because the cakes are expensive to buy & time-consuming to make, it's not practical for me to share this in every level of French th...

If you've been reading this blog, you know that I use antique department store mannequins in my classroom as a way to teach French creatively and with pizazz.  My students love the stories I write about Jacques and his girlfriend, Suzette.  I often act out these stories, which are written to reinforce whatever I'm trying to teach at the moment.  In my opinion, the use of these mannequins is one of my best ideas for keeping my classroom exciting & stimulating.  You can imagine my excitement when I recently discovered 2 antique mannequin children for sale!  I knew that these mannequins would be Jacques & Suzette's children, and would provide inspiration for me to write new stories.  It didn't take me long to decide to buy them, knowing that I might never find mannequin children again. Here they are! I love the detail on these...they have real eyelashes!  It will be one of my goals for this new school year to write...

One way to keep your students interested and excited about learning a language is to celebrate various holidays important to that culture in your classroom.  Not only that, but students do learn important cultural information as a result of doing this.   I typically celebrate different holidays in different levels of French in order to spread it out and to give students something to look forward to in each level.  I usually celebrate Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) in French II.  This year I explained a little bit of the history behind the holiday, showed a video of some of the parades in New Orleans, had students complete a Mardi Gras Maze and gave away beads to the winner, decorated the classroom, and made a traditional King Cake.   Here are some photos. The King Cake takes a while to make and is not a simple process, but any doubt about whether or not it was worth the effort was removed when I saw this: Translation for non...

I just returned from a 10-day educational tour to France & Spain with my students, and it was truly one of the best student trips that I've been on yet.  This was only my second time leading a tour as the head teacher, and the first time was quite a few years ago with a different travel company.  I've also traveled on other tours as an assistant teacher.  The travel company I used this time is called NETC , and I could not have been happier with the service they provided!  All of my students came back so excited about what they'd experienced, and most of all, with renewed resolve to work harder at learning French or Spanish.  What music to my ears!  I had a wonderful time as well, and found that even I was inspired in new ways. Here are some of the reasons that I love NETC: Tour directors who live in Europe.   This person meets you when you arrive and directs the entire trip.  Having such a person in this role gives your stu...

I'm in the middle of planning a trip to France & Spain for the world language students at my high school!  When school starts again in a few weeks, I want to promote the trip as widely as I can because the registration for the trip will close in September.  Since I only announced the possibility of the trip on the last day of school in June, I really need to advertise as much as possible!  So I decided to make this video.  We took this exact same trip a few years ago, so I used photos from that trip.  This movie was made on my iPad  with iMovie , and with photos only...no video clips at all.  It was easy to make!  Really!  Here are the results:  The video will be shown on the first day of school to the whole student body.  I also decided that it would help me spread the news if I created a QR code (Quick Response code) of this video and put it up around the hallways.  If you aren't familiar with QR code...

 Cultivate the Element of Surprise!   Plan surprises and then tell your students to look forward to them...on a particular day or at the end of the hour, for example.  I've used films, games, French treats and special skits (performed by me :). Build Anticipation   Tell students about all the exciting things you have planned for them this year, next week, next month and especially in the next level of your class.  Students need to have things to look forward to. Deliver the Unexpected   Find ways to "repackage" your content.  Be unconventional.  Close your textbooks more often.  Think outside the box.  My best idea has been to create stories about a department store mannequin named Jacques, who lives in my classroom.  (See posts on "How to Use a Mannequin in Your Classroom!)  Make your Classroom Inviting   Place interesting objects on your desk, and change them once in a while.  Ha...

Part of the adopt an escargot  project which I've spoken of in earlier posts involves students creating a dwelling for their baby snails.  Dwellings can be made of virtually anything the student desires to use!  So, the variety tends to be endless, which I greatly enjoy.  Here are some of the houses my students made. This baby, named Pickle, lives in an empty pickle jar. A closer view of baby Pickle in her cosy bed! Marcel the Shell lives here.  If you've seen the video of Marcel the Shell, you'll understand the significance of this house.  (See my earlier posts for the video!) This next snail is named Destiny's Child :). If you look closely, you can see the baby snail on the far right.  The student cut a hole where the face should be so the  snail could be inserted.  The head of the woman in the middle is a photo of the mother of this snail. This baby lives in a mailbox! We built the city of Escargotvill...

I am incredibly fortunate to work only a few miles away from one of the most authentic French pastry shops I've ever visited outside of France.  Owned and run by a French family, Le Petit Prince pastry shop in Birmingham, MI is without a doubt worth the trip!  They also sell bread and chocolate. The front window is a refrigerated showcase for their chocolate.  Check out this Easter hen...and yes, it's made entirely of chocolate! Naturally, I take my students here on field trips.  The owners are always very gracious and patient with the large groups I bring, and they very kindly speak French with anyone who makes an attempt.  Here's some video of my French III & IV students at the shop just last week.      And here's more video of an amazing chocolate Easter bunny.  The glass case that the owner is opening for me is filled with more Easter chocolate.  And I absolutely love the little party...