Since one of my goals is to get more language structure in my lessons, I've been giving myself and the students a focus when doing our shared readings. Many students are currently struggling with distinguishing é, è, ê and e when reading out loud, so that was our focus in the article Des Emplois cool: Plonger dans les crottes (Cool Jobs: Diving in poop). This article is about scientists using dogs to track the droppings of different endangered animals in order to study them, without causing them the stress of being captured and taking blood samples. At first, some of the students were giggly and unsure about this topic, but they ended up enjoying it. Every time we stumbled upon one of the sounds mentioned above, we'd quickly stop and make sure that every one was saying it properly. Obviously, this isn't a special or revolutionary strategy, but the high level of engagement due to the topic helped! After we were done reading a good chunk of the article, I wanted to work on adjectives (recognizing them, using them, changing them to féminin when necessary, etc.). So, to introduce this, I simply asked each student to make an idea web of adjectives to describe poop. Once everyone have a pencil and paper, I noticed that not many we're writing or looking in the dictionary... I had a couple of blank stares, some puzzled looks, a couple of hands raised. I quickly noticed that some were afraid of getting in trouble if they were to get really descriptive and graphic. "I WANT DETAILS!" Is what I responded. I eventually got some disgustingly awesome adjectives!
Check out some of the pictures below. The students were just getting started. Notice one of the students wrote some of her words in English... Some of my students tend to take some notes in English before they forget what they want to write and then go back and translate with the use of the dictionary.
I will soon be uploading the articles that I have translated from the National Geographic Kids website. Feel free to use them!
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