Creativity Challenge Day 2: 2 helicopters, an elephant and a giraffe

In the past little while, I've spent more time focusing on my students' ability to speak French, and  a little less on their ability to understand others when they are speaking French.

Yesterday, we did a short activity which focused on both speaking and listening, all the while allowing everyone to be creative.  Here's what we did!

I took a picture that I thought the students would find intriguing, and instead of showing it to them, I described it to them.

"Il fait très, très noir.  Je vois le ciel, et dans le ciel, il y a deux hélicoptères.  Sous le ciel, il y a de l'eau. De l'eau noire.  Je vois beaucoup de petites étoiles blanches.  Sous chaque hélicoptères, il y a deux cordes.  Ce que je vois maintenant est très bizarre.  Sous une hélicoptère, il y a un éléphant attaché aux cordes.  L'éléphant est triste et veut descendre.  Maintenant, je vois une autre chose bizarre.  Il y a une grande, grande, grande girafe attachée sous l'autre hélicoptère.  Sa tête est basse parce qu'elle aussi est triste.  Il y a une grosse orage qui s'en vient."

While I read this a few times to them, they had to turn what they heard/understood into their own picture.  Here's what some of them came up with!

Notice that this one even added the "narrator" of the description in the image as the boy looking through a telescope!

I think there's a narrator here, too!  

I love that every piece of art turned out completely different!  While working on oral comprehension, the students were given the opportunity to create!  They really enjoyed this task and some of them even asked "Est-ce que je peux faire encore?".  We will be doing more of these, and I will gradually begin to make them slightly more challenging.

After they were done colouring, we put all of the art up on the board.  I then showed the students the picture from which the description came from.  They thought it was the coolest thing!  I asked to them to tell me: "Qu'est-ce que tu vois, penses ou imagines?" (What to do you see, think or imagine?).

I was very pleased with the thinking and responding, the agreeing and disagreeing that was going on.  I love hearing "Je ne suis pas d'accord avec _____, parce que...".

Here are some of the responses (written like they were said by the students):

"Je pense que dans la bas, ça est un volcan et dans le ciel je vois la smoke."

"Je ne suis pas d'accord à Sidney parce que le volcan est vraiment juste la terre et la smoke, la nuit."

"Je vois un petit hélicoptère et un petit éléphant, et un grand hélicoptère et un grand girafe."

"Je ne suis pas d'accord avec Paislee, parce que la petite hélicoptère est plus back dans l'art et la girafe et l'autre hélicoptère est plus avant."

"Je pense que c'est l'hiver dans l'Africa."

Next question:  Où vont les animaux?

"Les animaux escaped le zoo et les personnes dans les hélicoptères sauvent les animaux."

(There were more responses, but I didn't note them.)

We finally talked about whether this art was a photo, a painting or something else.  I was again very pleased with the students' reasoning when responding.  I now regularly hear "parce que", which makes me so happy, since they are telling me WHY they think something.  I know that responses aren't always as deep in a second language, but I think that this is huge progress!

Stay tuned for more creations!!!