Let's get down to business

My grade 6 immersion students have started a project a couple of weeks ago.  This is a project that they beg me to work on on a daily basis and a project that they truly love to be a part of.  Each member of our class is creating their own business, and I'm psyched!  Our business projects have given us so many opportunities to just talk, and have meaningful, engaging conversations about types of businesses, their products, etc.

It all started when a students asked me about my new necklace.  My husband bought me this gorgeous necklace when we were in PEI this summer, made by an amazing artist and owner of Happy Glass in Charlottetown, PEI (happyglass.ca).  She hand makes all of her glass beads and creates incredible earrings, bracelets and necklaces.  One of my students loved my necklace and asked where it came from, which turned into a few minutes of looking through the artist's website.  Even the boys were interested in the jewelry, how it's made (it takes 6 hours to make one glass bead), the cost, etc.  Then it got me thinking.  How can I turn this type of discussion into an authentic and meaningful project for the kids?

BAM!  Business projects!  We spent a couple of weeks talking about different types of businesses, private businesses like Happy Glass and ginormous businesses like Wal-Mart and Costco.  We also discussed how some businesses sell products and others offer services like spas, art galleries or art schools, restaurants, etc.  All of these discussions are taking place in French and the students are engaged!

The students then brainstormed what they wanted their own business to be and the name of their business.  I have allowed them to have an English name for their business if they want, but that was the ONLY thing that could be in English in this entire project.  The students have come up with such clever names and concepts for this business.  This is allowing them to work on something and talking about something that they are truly passionate about.  My student who loves photography is now developing her own photography business!  Another who is passionate about music now has a music school called Music Man!  THIS is why I love project-based learning!  And, projects don't HAVE to be all written work.  So far in the month we've been working on this, the students have written a very short, general description of their business.  That is all!  We've spent loads of time talking, designing logos (integrating the arts, yay!), making a plan of all of the products and/or services available, and looking at numerous websites (FRENCH websites), such as indigo.ca, apple.ca, subway.ca, theflourshoppe.ca (not in French, but started many discussions), and many more.  We even played Devine le logo, where I save a picture of a popular logo and zoom it in up close and the kids have to guess what logo it is and explain their reasoning.  This project has endless opportunities!!!

Hard at work on brainstorming ideas! 

These two girls just want to work on their business 24/7!  Here they are writing their descriptions!  The one on the left has a paper business (she loves paper, like me!) and the one on the right couldn't decide for a while!  She is now working on her own stable where she saves abused or unwanted horses and rehabilitates them.

We use "entreprise" and "business" interchangeably in class!  

Qu'as-tu besoin pour que ton entreprise aie le succès?

Comment rendons-nous notre entreprise "awesome"???

This young man has amazingly clever and hilarious ideas, but his next step is to translate them! :)

My future goals with this project are to have each student design their own website, to create business cards, to digitalize logos, to design models of some of their products and figure out how to advertise their businesses using commercials (using the iPads), pamphlets, their website, etc.  I also want to have a Business Fair where the students can check out each other's businesses.  This will lead us to then look for employees.  The students will have to apply to different jobs, as well as hire people for their own business.  There are so, so, SO many opportunities for oral communication, reading, writing, drama, visual arts and media literacy here!

Stay tuned for updates on our business projects!

Enjoy!

Mme Stéphanie

Music!!!

Music has always been another area of fear for me in terms of teaching.  My voice is terrible, and musical instruments, as much as I would love to play one, they scare me!  However, I am now learning how to play the ukulele, and I think I'm rockin' it! I'm hoping that this will help me then learn how to play the guitar!  This year, I have found a love and passion for teaching music, regardless of my lack of technique.

The 2/3 class and I had a long chat about how everyone can create music, and that I'm learning with them about Music.  They are very patient with me when I try to play a song on the ukulele for them to sing along to and I make a few mistakes.  They are encouraging and still show that they are very excited to have a teacher who "plays an instrument".

A couple of weeks ago, I brought in, with the help of many, many parents and staff members, a whole bunch of recyclables (boxes, jars, buckets, toilet paper rolls, cans, etc.).

I also brought in balloons, string, duct tape, tissu paper, scrapbook paper and a few other supplies, on top of what we have available in class.  Before I said the highly anticipated word "GO", the class researched instruments to see what kind of musical instruments the students could then create, using the supplies available to them.  We look at everything from drums, to shakers, to guitars, to flutes, etc.  Then, I said it.  I said the word "GO" and I just let them go and create their own instruments...  As many as they wanted.  No specific guidelines or instructions, except for "they must make music", which is what the students agreed on.

Here they are hard at work!

The students really seemed to enjoy the freedom of creating their own instruments and then playing them their own way!  We as a class set specific expectations in terms of their behaviour during this activity, since they did have so much freedom.  They were incredibly well behaved and so passionate about this projects, which is ongoing.  We are currently composing music and the students are creating their own ways of writing/drawing their music!  Stay tuned for more on our music adventure!  

P.S.  Once I can figure out why my computer won't let me upload videos, you'll get to see and hear some of the students' creations!  Stay tuned!

On rentre à la maison (Part 2)

My 2/3 class and I LOVE art!  I wanted to make sure that the kids had the chance to do some art related to On rentre à la maison, since Oliver Jeffers' illustrations are beautiful and so unique!  The students and I spent a long time talking about story boards and what they are used for, since Jeffers put many of them in this book.  We talked about how they are used when planning a movie, and I illustrated an example for them.

This is Gru from Despicable Me getting into his spaceship.  The kids got a laugh out of my highly impressive drawing skills here...

This gave me to opportunity to talk about action and action words, since in a storyboard, you're often drawing a character or many characters doing an action.  We went through our book once again on a hunt for story boards and talked about each one (these kids really like to talk).  We then looked at other pieces of art that are like a story board, for example Eadweard Muybridge's work.

After everyone was clear on what a story board was, we created our own!

Here are the kids hard at work on their story boards!

"Je fais du zip line."

"Je danse."

On rentre à la maison by Oliver Jeffers (Part 1)

A while ago, my husband introduced me to an amazing author and illustrator.  Oliver Jeffers is extremely talented at what he does, and also quite good looking!  :)  I managed to find copies of his books in French on Amazon and I don't regret spending the money.  Although, French copies are much pricier and than English copies.  

This is my first year teaching grade 2.  Up to now, I have taught grades 3,4 and 5 (and now 6 this year as well).  I am used to having students come to me with sufficient French vocabulary to converse in French in the classroom.  This year is not the case.  They are very eager and bright students!  They're just younger than what I'm used to!  So, I am now constantly trying to find the best way to gradually expand the students' vocabulary, while still making learning engaging and fun for everyone.  

Back to Oliver Jeffers!  I spent all of last week reading On rentre à la maison (The Way Back Home) with the 2/3 class.  They loved it!  And so did I!  I decided to use the two funny and adorable characters from the book (the boy and the martian) to explore vocabulary and conversation between people when they first meet - which I thought was appropriate for the first few days of school and for this age group.  

The day after we read the book, I asked the students to think about what the two characters would have said when they first met, since it was not really shown in the book.  I wrote their ideas on speech bubbles.  

We read all of the speech bubbles together a few times and I also introduced the AIM gestures for each and every word.  The students are now using this vocabulary regularly when they see me and each other.  

Some ideas were directly related to the story, for example "ça va mal".  They made sure to think of how the character actually felt in the book, instead of saying "ça va bien", which is ALWAYS what they yell when I asked them "Comment ça va?".  

I'm hoping that activities like these will keep the students engaged and learning vocabulary that will allow them to eventually converse with me and others in class in French on a regular basis.

Stay tuned for more to do with this AWESOME book - On rentre à la maison by Oliver Jeffers!  Art projects and much more!

Tweet!

First blog of the school year!  How exciting!  The first week was a tough one for me.  Although I have taught grade 3 before, I have never taught grade 2 or grade 6, and adjusting to these age groups seemed to be a bit challenging that originally expected.  Grade 2 is so excited about everything, which is wonderful!  Grade 6 is much harder to impress.  So, my week with the 2/3 class went very well, but my time with the grade 6 students was a bit tough.  However, I think I finally got them with something!

I started a class Twitter account and made a Tweet bulletin board in the hallway outside our room.  This past Friday, I loaded Twitter onto the SmartBoard and showed the student our twitter page.  They were quite excited, but many were not sure what Twitter was or how Twitter worked.  But still, they were excited!  We spent a long time talking about the purpose of Twitter, how it works, what a hashtag is, how to use the @ symbol, etc.  Finally, these students were impressed!  Or I think they were!

My dog Mavis, who came to school to set up with me, posing for the camera!

We are only following 5 people right now; my personal Twitter (also used for school purposes), my husband (also their old English teacher from last year, whom they miss so much!), our principal, and two school board Twitter accounts.  My intention is to eventually choose with the students who to follow.  We will follow authors, artists, as well as other people studied in class.  I don't want to make any decisions on who to follow, how to design our Twitter page, what to put as our profile picture without them!

Since I can't have 24 students type and post their tweets at the same time on the account, I decided to give them all a dry-erase sentence strip and a dry-erase marker, where they would write their tweet and post it on our Tweet bulletin board.  From there, they would be typed up and posted on our Twitter page a few at a time.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, we as French teachers are looking for authentic, meaningful learning opportunities for our students.  Social Media has become such a big part of everyone's life and this is my chance to not only show these kids how to use Social Media for learning and networking, but how to use it responsibly and safely!  So many of my students have their own Facebook and/or Twitter accounts, and I hope that what we are doing in class with me will help them make responsible and smart decisions when posting photos, adding new friends/followers, updating their status, etc.

This Twitter "project" doesn't stop at writing one French sentence on a sentence strip.  It gives us numerous discussion topics.  The students worked in groups of two to write their tweets and with some reminders (since it was still week one), they were discussing in FRENCH what to write, where to place their @s and #s, how to spell a word, etc.  THIS is authentic for kids of this generation!  (I'm talking like I was a child a million years ago, but you get my drift!).

We all learned in Teacher's College that reflecting back on a task helps us learn and solidifies the concepts presented in class.  Tweeting about what we did in class is just another engaging way to do exactly this.  They are asked to think back on what we did in class, and respond in one sentence.

Please follow MmeStephanieIPS on Twitter to see our tweets as well as pictures that the students have selected to put on our page!
Note that it will take another week or so before our page gets busy!  I'm still waiting on photo permission information!

Madame Stéphanie :)

P.S.  Enjoy the pictures below!