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...

"If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect." ~Benjamin Franklin I saw this quote on a poster on the Persuasive Writing teacher's classroom door this week, and it got me to thinking about how, in my experience, teenagers do need a lot of persuasion to be convinced that studying any particular subject is worth their while.  So how do we persuade them in a World Language class?  Appeal to their interests, such as: Music Food Entertainment Cultural Differences All of the above are easy to weave into French class if you're willing to exert a little extra effort.  Let's take music, for example.  Over the years I've developed a list of French music that I use to  teach listening skills and to reinforce grammatical concepts at appropriate times.  Students also learn cultural information when they listen to authentic French music, so they're really learning on so many levels when a teacher ...