Chez Renée

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 ...

Bonjour, everyone.  I hope you are all well, and surviving the current weather conditions.  Things have been wild here in Michigan.  We've had a record amount of snow this month, record low temps and a record number of snow days at my school (6 so far!).  Vive la neige!! I have a great speaking activity to share with you.  It seems to work best with my French III class, but it might also work in French II, and it's too easy for French IV.  It's a good game to use if students need to practice speaking more, if they need to review numbers, or if they just need a break from the usual.  This game was shared with me by two wonderful French teachers from Michigan, Marge Mandl and Suzie Martin, in a presentation they gave at our  MiWLA Conference. Everyone is a vache  (cow) in this game.  All vaches  sit in a circle in chairs or at a desk.  One vache  (usually the teacher) stands in the center and is called la vache qui...

We have just completed our second year of a 1:1 iPad program at my high school!  Now that it's summer (hip, hip, hooray!!), I'm reflecting on the apps that I've used in class & trying to determine which ones have been the most useful. One that I seem to keep turning to is called Doodle Buddy .   Doodle Buddy is a FREE white board app.  Students can draw or type in various colors and styles on a blank white board.  They can also change the background of their boards to designs offered within the app, or they can upload their own photos from their camera roll as the background.  I've found this last feature particularly useful. Here's an example of how I used this app while helping students to practice using ordinal numbers.  In the past, I would have had students draw animals, placing them on different levels of Noah's Ark, on a worksheet as they listened to my instructions in French.  This year I tried this instead:...

Popplet Lite is a FREE app for iPad which allows the user to diagram or map ideas with ease.  I've been meaning to try this app with my students all year, and finally did so in my French IV class.  We had just finished reading Le Comte de Monte Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo) as a class.  This was a lot of work and took us a lot of time.  After finishing our study of the book, we watched the film in French.  As is often the case, the film is quite different from the book.  I wanted my students to compare the book with the film in French, and using Popplet to do this worked really well. I asked students to map out the differences and the similarities between the book and the film, and then to share the popple with me.  Here's an example of a student mapping the differences: And here's a popple showing the similarities: I found this app very easy to use and very intuitive.  It is also possible to insert photos into ...

Have you heard about Quizlet? It's a very powerful tool all teachers should know about! Basically, Quizlet is a website that allows you to create flashcards in many languages. Students can access the cards you've created and play games and even take tests in order to learn the words on the cards.  They can also  listen to any word in French and hear how it's pronounced.  And it's FREE. I decided last year to make Quizlet flashcard sets for every unit for each level of French that I teach.  That was a lot of flashcards!!  I put links to all the sets on my class web pages, and now students can go there any time they want to and study for any unit they want to, which I think is a great resource for a teacher to provide.  If you would like to see the sets I've made, or even use them, you can search for my user name ( madamermwood ) at the Quizlet site. The questions becomes, however, how to integrate this tool into a wo...

This year I tried a new project at the end of the semester as a way to review what we'd learned.  My high school is in year #2 of a 1:1 iPad program, and I consider myself lucky to have this amazing tool to work with when considering a new project.  I decided to try an app I'd heard of called PuppetPals HD .  This app allows students to create puppet shows using different backgrounds and different characters, and they are able to record their voices as well.  The possibilities for creativity are endless, and to top it off, the app is free! I asked students to create a puppet show after giving them specific guidelines for what I expected to be included.  Students had a lot of freedom to create whatever sort of story they wanted to.  While creating these projects, I was happy to see lots of smiling and giggling going on.  I was also pleased with the results.  Here's an example. I was delighted to ...

Wow!!  I just learned about a new app called Morfo.  The English teachers at my high school were using it in their classes, and one of my students showed it to me.  This app allows you to animate a photo of a person's face and you can also add audio.  You can cause the face to show different emotions such as surprise, or you can make the face smile.  My mind is spinning with ideas about how I can use this in French class! Naturally, I tried using it to make my classroom mannequin come to life!  In the past, I've used the FaceJack app (which I also LOVE) to bring my mannequins to life.  But Morfo offers even more possibilities!  Here's a quick sample of my classroom mannequin in the Morfo app.     I decided to try using Morfo with my French IV class last week.  We're currently reading Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. I assigned each student a character from the book and asked them to fin...

 Have you ever had your students write and perform puppet shows in your world language class?  I've done it frequently over the years, and it's an activity that I highly recommend if you haven't ever tried it.  I can't believe how excited high school students get over playing with puppets.  We did this in first year French this week, and my students came skipping with joy into the classroom during these days.  I even heard one of them say, "This is the best class ever!"  There was a lot of giggling and laughing going on, but students were also actively engaged in writing and speaking French.  Here are a few photos: I have a rather large collection of interesting puppets and also a puppet stage, but I bet students would have had just as much fun with a humble sock puppet.  Students began by writing scripts in groups of 2.  They had to choose from a list of topics I'd provided and write a conversation between t...

I'm so lucky to be in a high school that has launched a 1:1 iPad program!  If you've been reading this blog, you already know that I've been writing posts about different iPad activities that I've tried.  Today I used the iPad for a listening activity that I used to do on paper.  I was reviewing vocabulary about the house, incorporating other words students have learned in the past such as prepositions, colors and daily objects.  Last year, I gave students a drawing of a house on paper, and told them to draw different objects in different rooms.  Today, I had students take a photo of a dollhouse that I keep in my classroom for this unit.  They used their iPads to take the photo.  Then they imported the photo into an app called ArtStudio Lite .  Basically, this is a drawing app that allows students to use different colors, line styles and photo effects.  Students can also draw on photos they've imported.  So, I ...

I've begun the fabulous adopt-an-escargot  project in my third-year French class this week, and there is definitely excitement in the air!  I love how much this project awakens the interest of all of my students...even those in other levels of French.  Today, students in lower levels of French could be found gathered around  Escargotville in the corner of my classroom :).  It warms my heart to see this. Today I used the iPad2 in conjunction with this project.  Students were asked to write a haiku poem for their dear baby escargot.  After reviewing how to write haiku, students used the StoryKit app to create a page which contained a photo of their baby, the text to the haiku they wrote, and a recording of their own voice reading the haiku.  Students were able to send the link to me through email, and I was then able to project the pages onto the big screen so that everyon...

If you've been reading this blog you know that every student and teacher in my high school has the iPad2 this fall!  I've been using an app called Doodle Buddy quite frequently in many of my classes.  It works well to review any concept quickly.  This app is essentially a whiteboard that students can use to draw on in different colors and styles.  They can vary the thickness and style of their line (brush, chalk, etc.) and they can add effects such as glitter or they can smudge a line they've drawn.    Today I was reviewing for a unit test that students will take tomorrow in French III.  One of the things they learned in this unit was to describe a person physically.  To review this vocabulary with them, I asked them to open their iPads to Doodle Buddy and draw a face that matched the description they heard me give in French.  Here's what they drew (this is a screenshot of a drawing in Doodle Buddy): ...

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...

I mentioned in an earlier post how excited I am about finding ways to use my new iPad2 in the classroom!  I also mentioned my favorite app so far, called Face Jack.  Here's an example of how students could use the Face Jack app on their iPads in conjunction with the adopt an escargot  project which I currently use in my third year French class. If you're unfamiliar with adopt an escargot, it involves students "adopting" a snail shell and inventing the life of the snail.  My students love it!  I used one of the shells that came in my adopt an escargot kit in this video.  I also used one of the profiles that came in the kit to describe this particular snail.  I plan on asking my students to make a video about their adopted snails next year, and to use Face Jack in the video.  Obviously, students would be speaking French in their videos.  What do you think? 

Inserting French accents while typing on the iPad2 couldn't be simpler!  Just start typing... When you come to a letter that needs an accent added to it, just hold your finger on that letter, and then possible accents will appear. Slide your finger from the original letter to the letter containing the accent you wish to use, and then tap the key.  And voila! Stay tuned for more on how to use an iPad in your classroom :).

All students & teachers in my high school will have the new iPad2 next fall!  The teachers were given their iPads last week, and then we had 3 days of training on how to use them.  My amazing colleagues John and Karen shared their vast knowledge with the rest of us and inspired us to figure out how to use them effectively in our classrooms.   My favorite app so far is called FaceJack.  I can't wait to make some new movies about Jacques the mannequin to use in my classroom.  Here's what you can do with FaceJack: It's simple, easy and in my opinion, INCREDIBLE!  In addition to making videos about Jacques, I've thought of a few more ways to use this: Students could make FaceJacks of French or American celebrities or historical or political figures, or even of anonymous people.  They could be asked to say, "hello, my name is...., I'm x years old, I'm american/french..." (or more, for advanced students)....