Verbs - love them or hate them, they’re here to stay so it’s time to give some thought to how to make them manageable for our students. My starting point has to be pronouns as these are what cause the verbs to change their spelling and sound. Here's how I plan to make our first steps.
Pronouns - Start by asking the class what pronouns are. In my experience, it can take a while before anyone comes up with the right answer. Next, ask for examples of pronouns in English and then ask for any they have met in French. At this point, as you repeat their suggestions, do the actions that were taught when you first introduced them. (Pointing to self for ‘je’, at an individual for ‘tu’ etc.) You could ask the children to come up with actions but as I teach in more than one school, I need to have a common set. Which ones don’t we know how to say yet? As these are listed in English, demonstrate the new pronouns with their corresponding actions. Then play some of the flashcard and repetition games found here and here.
I’ve been experimenting with iPad apps and like the potential of Make Dice Lite for pronoun work, and later for work with verbs. I’ve customised the dice with the pronouns we are going to use and when it finishes rolling, we can join in with the action and/or say the word. With sets of individual word cards, other games could include Turn Away, Quiz Quiz Trade and Snowballing. To practise writing, we could predict which one we think will appear next on Make Dice Lite by writing it on our mini-boards. No prize, but kudos to the best computer mind-reader. If you don’t have access to iPads, or don’t want to use them, you could achieve the same effect with a random powerpoint selector from here or here. We are then going to use these to make our own dice to continue work on tables.
And finally, we will finish off with this song. I’m going to use the music without the visuals first of all, as I want the children to repeat the same pronoun for longer before moving on the next one. You could include the singular pronouns, the plurals or both. My plan is to get the children into groups of 4, link arms à la zorba, and repeat the pronouns along our line to the rhythm of the music.
Enjoy!
I'd be grateful to hear what you plan to do too.
Many of these ideas and resources were thought through and gathered over the past few months. However I am grateful to Elaine Minett, whose presentation I attended at Language World 2014, for firing me up to put fingers to keyboard and share with colleagues.
I'd be grateful to hear what you plan to do too.
Many of these ideas and resources were thought through and gathered over the past few months. However I am grateful to Elaine Minett, whose presentation I attended at Language World 2014, for firing me up to put fingers to keyboard and share with colleagues.