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!
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