Chez Renée

 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 ...

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...