| Succesful Activities |
|
| I let children pick French names for themselves or said their name in French. |
Having interaction between teacher and student, not just teacher speaking the whole time. |
| They liked learning French greetings using their new French names. |
One thing that I tried was using a movie clip with French voice over and subtitles to review some vocabulary words that I had taught. The movie was entertaining for the children and they actually picked up on some of the words. French songs were also a big hit in the younger age range. |
| Again the movie and songs worked well they also really liked craft projects that related to the subject tFriday, December 8, 2006vocab words to images, as a group they could actually do this about five times with maybe 10 vocab words before they became tired of it. The most enjoyable topic that I chose were pirates, using a pirate book and movie and pulling out vocab from these materials worked really well. |
The kids always seem to like food and they really like to have candy involved in a game, but you have to make sure it will last through the game. One thing that I didn’t try with the kids but I remember from junior high was having each kids choose a French name to adopt while they are studying French. It helps them get in the mood and they can pick up some typically French names (i.e. Jacques instead of Jack or Jean instead of John). This would be good for anyone who might be going back a couple times to the same class. |
| Maybe a list of games that involve vocabulary. For example, one game that I found very successful for working with “classroom objects” vocab was where all of the kids stand in the middle of the room and you say the name of one of the objects in the room in French, such as “desk” and the kids have to run and touch the desk. A list of topics and games may be a good starting point and inspiration for other ideas. |
The kids really enjoyed games. They especially liked the competitive games with prizes (like candy) for the winner. |
| |
|
| Unsuccessful Activities |
|
| They disliked staying on any one topic for too long. |
They got kind of bored with names of places, things, geographic subjects and similar topics. |
| We had trouble with a Bingo game because the ability level of some of the kids was below the rest of the class and when students would shout “I got it!” it became frustrating for some of the others. Some kids had a blast with this so we didn’t want to quit the game, but we just had the second IU student go to each desk and help anyone struggling. |
The kids didn’t like reviewing or learning the vocabulary. It was a little bit too slow for them. |
The songs that we chose didn’t turn out so good, they probably needed more practice. |
|
