This marks my third year as a French teacher using comprehensible input in the same school. My first year, I began not really knowing what to expect (and also not completely sold on teaching with CI), so I set up my shared French classroom haphazardly. My second year, I was a “traveling teacher,” so I shared a space with a junior high science teacher. The teacher I shared with was kind enough to give me some wall space for visuals, but I did not have much space and could not put up all I really wanted. To make matters more difficult, I had the back wall, so often I felt like my kids were at a tennis match trying to negotiate meaning from what I was saying up front to reading visuals in the back of the room. I am happy that this year, they found a spot for French to exist without iguanas and graduated cylinders. I share with another French teacher and a few resource classes in a small, windowless room. But it is OUR space, and I was so excited to set up the room very intentionally this year with a little experience in this whole CI business. Come take a tour of our little home. Our school is a college prep school, so teachers all have pennants of their colleges hanging in the hall to show kids that college is attainable. We are also located more on the elementary school side of our building, so I wanted to be sure that students could identify our class as a French class from the hall, hence the flag. Every day, I greet students at the door in French, so having a few reminders on the door, helps students learn this process. I want the classroom to appear inviting from the hall for those passing by (French teachers are always trying to recruit new students)! Having the Eiffel Tower and my comfy reading nook visible from the hall helps appeal to potential students’ aspirations of visiting France (and hopefully my classroom). This desk is where the upper level French teacher works from as well. French quotes from great French and francophone figures surround the reading nook. I found my book shelf for French readers on craigslist. Authentic reading materials are in the other shelf for upper level students as well. Finally, most kids don’t realize the number of places French is spoken—a map is a must in my classroom as we explore the French speaking world—I found this tapestry map on Amazon for cheap which not only looks nice but should hold up better than paper. The front of the classroom showcases daily objectives, sweet 16 verbs, rejoinders, and question words. I refer to these constantly during storytelling and class in general. I keep my classroom rules short and sweet, and à la Tina Hargaden, I will wander over to these silently when necessary. I think discussing emotions is a great way to build classroom community. Cecile Lainé was my inspiration here. We refer to these a lot not only in stories but in our daily chats as well. By my desk, I keep all of my props for storytelling for easy access. I also use the ivory chairs for my actors in stories and special person interviews—it’s nice to give students a fancier chair when they are brave enough to come up front. I do calendar talk every day in every class. I begin the year leading it, but my students soon take over this responsibility. I created a simple, laminated poster that makes them write the information each time. I thought about pocket charts, but I like the act of writing in French every day. The side wall, aside from the calendar also has a map of France, numbers (which help in calendar talk), and negations and small words which help more advanced students and even beginners in free writes. There is a lot of space for student work as well; I can’t wait to put up their fun creations. The back wall has the alphabet in French and AP theme posters. Materials students don’t need to refer to as often are relegated to the back. Super 7 verbs in present make another appearance back there (they are at the front too) as well as colors, prepositions, animals, body parts, and noun endings. By the door, I keep supply drawers (no excuses, no barriers to learning) where students can help themselves to paper, pens, pencils, and décollage (do now) sheets. Bathroom passes are also here by the door (and of course, hand sanitizer and tissues). Thanks for visiting. This is a work in progress. I would love to try deskless, but with 4 teachers using one space, it is not feasible at this time. Maybe in the future, I will transition to deskless, but I think it is still possible to be a successful CI teacher with desks.
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When I accepted a job teaching middle school and high school kids, I was nervous about pacing (having only taught college at that point); I was nervous about not having the safety net of a textbook at this CI-only school; but mostly, I was nervous about classroom management. The pacing I am still getting the hang of (sometimes, I still find that I need to slow down a little), but mostly I just expect my students to perform to higher level, which most of them do. And, the lack of textbook, while initially scary, has been one of the most freeing parts about the job.
As for classroom management, I am still learning. I remember my own eighth grade class torturing a new teacher to the point he left education after his first year. I was determined not to let that happen to me. In my first year, I was rigid in routines and procedures. I had scoured pinterest in search of the perfect rules that would make my classroom run like clockwork. There were procedures for just about every daily activity in class. As we moved through the year, I learned to lighten up a bit on the rules and procedures and found what worked best for me and my students. (I still use callbacks for quieting the class and getting attention; the kids know my expectations for when they enter the classroom and for all of our different CI activities; and my only rule is RESPECT which covers just about everything). I am not a disciplinarian. I lead my class in a relaxed and even way. Kids know what is expected of them, and for the most part, they behave well. I have found that the most important part of classroom management is developing a safe environment for all of my students. I work hard at getting to know each and every one of the kids in my class. I greet them each day at the door; I ask them how they are doing; I keep up-to-date on their activities and what they love and hate. I also share my life with them--they know what I did last weekend, and they know about my family. I think relationships are the key to classroom management, and CI allows me to learn about my kids while staying on topic (PQA for the win). All of my students know I care about them, and it leads them to do and be better in class. This is not to say that I do not have my challenges. I have students push boundaries. The difficult students are the ones I try to identify from day 1. These are the students I work the hardest at building relationships. I also try to find the reason behind their misbehavior, because usually these kids are not acting up with no reason. This year's class has been one of my most difficult. The first few weeks, I had to set rigid boundaries while learning about my students. It took well into October before I started to feel like I had won over most of the kids in the class. It's still a work in progress, but I do believe that this method of teaching leads to positive relationships with students which in turn leads to more easily managed classes. I think one of the best tools in my classroom is illustration. When we do a story (movie talk, ask a story, novels, character creation, etc.), I often have my students illustrating as I like it better than translating (kids are thinking more in the L2), and I think the kids enjoy it more as well.
After a story, I have students do a flow map or story board which summarizes the plot. I can increase input by having them reread a written version and choosing sentences for each frame. When I am shorter on time, students just draw their favorite scene, and then I have all of the students line up together with their drawings. They have to put themselves in order (summarizing the story), and we fill in the missing scenes together (more input!). Even just listening as we read a good paragraph and having the kids illustrate on white boards what is going on has been effective and fun. One of my favorite activities is what I call partner illustration. This activity works really well for those teachers who wish to target or review certain vocabulary (I usually target verbs in my beginner classes). I write up 10 sentences with similar subjects (the crazier the better--make them hard to draw)--they are not related to class stories except in vocabulary. Then each group gets a copy of the ten sentences. The partners take turns choosing one sentence and illustrating it for their partner who then has to guess which sentence it was. They continue until they have done all 10 sentences. I have had stoic football players reduced to giggle fits over this activity. My students LOVE it. Furthermore, it only requires the teacher to write 10 sentences, so it's a low-prep activity that gives the students about 20 minutes of solid input on their own. Below is an example of one set of sentences we used recently in French 1. 1) L’éléphant donne un biscuit au bonhomme de neige. 2) Le bonhomme de neige met un tee-shirt et l’éléphant met un jean. 3) Quand le bonhomme de neige voit le ver, il a peur et s’en va. 4) L’éléphant a faim et cherche un biscuit. 5) Le bonhomme de neige prend le jean de l’éléphant. 6) L’éléphant met un ver sur le nez du bonhomme de neige. 7) Le bonhomme de neige donne un ver à l’éléphant. 8) Le bonhomme de neige a volé le nez de l’éléphant ! 9) Le bonhomme de neige cherche son ami l’éléphant. 10) L’éléphant prend le portable de sa maman. In these, we had just done a couple stories with snowmen as well as one with worms (oddly...), and elephant is a nice cognate (and also hilarious for students to try to draw). Verbs we were working on were donner, chercher, mettre (prendre, s'en aller, and voler are review from Brandon Brown dit la vérité which we had just finished). I am always looking to add more illustration in my classroom; I am intrigued by smashdoodles, but I have not yet implemented them. I would love to hear what you are doing in your classes. Bonjour! Welcome to my blog. I have been teaching French in one way or another for years. I hold a masters degree in French literature, and I am a self-professed grammar nerd. Unfortunately, when I started teaching, not all of my students were as thrilled about conjugation and drills and discussing the many grammar rules in my beloved language.
When I started as a junior high and high school teacher at a CI school, I was initially panicked when I realized THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A TEXTBOOK! Luckily, the school who hired me sent me to a couple of trainings to learn different CI strategies. I have been fortunate to attend conferences with Blaine Ray (who completely changed the way I think about teaching language), Carol Gaab (who gave me so many tools to enliven reading in even the novice foreign language classroom), and even Stephen Krashen himself. My approach to teaching French has shifted from stressing grammatical perfection to stressing COMMUNICATION (isn't that why we study langauge in the first place?). I use any comprehensible input strategy that works with my students: movie talk, TPRS, special person, story listening, card talk, readers--basically anything with which I can deliver CI in an engaging way to my classes. My goal is for students to acquire the language through fun stories. I rarely force output, but the results in my class show that these methods work and have higher rates of success across all students. My intention with this blog is to share ideas of what works in my classes. I have found, that while they are slowly and steadily increasing, the CI materials available to French teachers are very much behind those of our Spanish colleagues. I look forward to collaborating with other CI teachers and growing the online community of CI teachers in French and other languages! |
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