French Teacher Resource: How to set-up an immersive French canteen incursion

Think back to your high school days, what are some of your best memories? Is it the French class on the passé composé or the one where your teacher created a space of French immersion and food? Sometimes the hard efforts of a teacher doe pay off when we create teachable moments that our students never forget.

For a few years, I have been teaching using the Canadian AIM program and have needed to think more broadly to cover the Australian Curriculum content area on the 'role of language and culture' for Years 7-8. Yes - I teach them address terms and they see a French Canadian perspective, but it's such an enticing descriptor to go further.

This is where the French canteen experience comes in! The idea was inspired by the AIM play, 'Veux-tu danser?' where one scene is set in a Canadian school cafeteria. Australian students quickly notice that students aren't just eating from their lunch boxes. French and Canadian students get to eat in a dining hall on tables with their friends, and have their lunch provided. This scene creates the perfect launching point for a culturally and linguistically immersive experience.

Here are some ideas on how to set up your own immersion canteen experience for your students:

1. Establish student accountability

- Each student in the group (table) brings one item to the lunch: table cloth, cups, cutlery, plates, serviettes. Bring some spare sets just in case!

- Use class time to establish the language for ordering food. It is best to use 5 minutes from each lesson 2-3 weeks prior, first as repeating language, then as a listening task gradually making it an oral task. Therefore, by the time the canteen incursion is run, your students will feel confident ordering food in French. Also, ordering food in French contains fixed expressions so needs to be memorised - one cannot be creative here!

- You may wish to enforce some clear rules early such as, cancelling the incursion if students do not cooperate to a certain standard or not letting them leave until the room in clean. Perhaps you invite key staff to observe or attend the event (ideally to keep behaviour in check!).

Use this document as a template.

2. Enrich their taste buds

- Choose foods that seems familiar to your students but also enable them to try new foods. For example, I chose a three course menu of:

Plat principal - saucissons, quiche, salade verte

Dessert - yoghurt, fruit

Fromage - fromage d'affinois, Roquefort, chèvre, baguette

- Of course, you will need to alter the menu to suit dietary requirements. Also, make sure you have your first aid packs handy and the school nurse on call. 

3. Create the linguistically immersive environment

- Place students in small groups of 3-4 to ensure that they can manage small conversation. Create conversation cards and instruct them to take it in turns to ask each other questions in French.

- Invite students to come to the comptoir to order their food from you, as the teacher. Ensure they speak in clear, full sentences and help them along the way.

- Ask your older French students to join in and sit at different tables to engage in conversation with your younger students. If you have language assistants, also ask them to wander between tables and engage in simple French conversation. As the teacher, you can also walk around to each table and greet them as the 'waiter' - your students will find this amusing!

Use there conversation cards as a template.

4. Enfin, amusez-vous bien!

Use this document as a template.Use there conversation cards as a template.

COVID, 'confinement' and community

There's nothing quite like a viral pandemic to put actions in to perspective. 

I first started this blog with the ambition to not only share my love of teaching French but to partake in a broad community of teachers. When I first started teaching, I felt that it was quite an isolating occupation. Although you get to meet and work with inspiring teachers in your school community, the sharing of resources and ideas can be particularly restrictive in a small LOTE department. Hence, I Love French Australia blog was born in order to feel connected to other intrepid French teachers out there. Why shouldn't we be working together as a connected community?

When our schools started closing for online delivery due to COVID infections in Melbourne (AUS), I was once again reassured by the tenacity of the online teaching community. Through Facebook, Instagram and other platforms, so many teachers were reaching out to each other, whether to graciously offer resources or just to share in a mutual unease and offer support. 

Like most 'essential' workers, I have been working seven-day weeks since the start of term 1 this year. I took on two VCE classes (which I love), which adds to the workload, but also, it must be recognised that teaching is more than just academic instruction. We get into teaching because we care immensely about the wellbeing and future of our students. I think that most of us teachers are always working to ensure that we do the very best for each individual - of course, this can be an exhausting endeavor even without the COVID context! My blogging hiatus as a consequence of this, so far, unprecedented year.

Exhaustion aside, the pandemic has put my purpose of blogging in to perspective. I started this blog to belong and support my community of dynamic French and language teachers who have supported me through COVID and always. We must stay connected and continue to embrace this fine community!

All my best to my colleagues out there! If you ever need to contact me in regards to resources or just some good banter, send me an email at ilovefrenchaustralia@gmail.com

Flipped French Classroom: Vlog-style and accountability

A few weeks in to term 3, and the Flipped Classroom in Year 9 French is underway. Here are some changes that I have implemented this term:

(1) Vlog-style videos
At the end of last term, I surveyed my students about Flipped classroom outcomes and the videos I was creating. Best not to take anything personally in teaching, as across the board, my students wrote, "Madame, your videos are way too long!"
Alors... I've taken on the constructive criticism and trialled a new style. I've tried to make the videos more professional, and purchased a new microphone for my camera. Take a look at the new vlog-style video below:

Flipped grammar video for homework study on current content

I am sure you would agree that the next step would be to get a better backdrop for the example sections. I have improved in delivering more succinct content and keeping the video short. So far, the students are enjoying this style of content presentation. They are even pronouncing the word 'l'imparfait' beautifully from imitating my voice in the video!

(2) Accountability
The opportunity for student reflection was lacking from my videos last term. To account for this, I am now embedding the video in to a Google Form where students answer questions based on the content in the video:

Flipped Google form for content reflection

An added benefit to the Google Form reflection is that (a) the submission is time stamped allowing me to track when students complete their homework, and (b) I can offer feedback in real-time by reviewing students results and providing comments.

Let me know what you think of this current Flipped pedagogy. Any tips, tricks or ideas, let me know!

Flipped French Classroom: What I have done and what I have learned

Flipping my classroom has been flippin' fantastic.

In today's educational setting of student-centred learning, integrating the flipped learning concept into my classroom has given me such an appreciation of what it means for all of my students to have access to the curriculum.

For those who are unsure of the term, 'flipped learning' or the 'flipped classroom' turns traditional content learning on its head, by getting students to access the content out of the classroom (generally through videos at home) and completing exercises and tasks in the classroom. Ideally, this means that all students can complete their homework by themselves, and can bring in questions to ask the teacher. When the students come to class, they can complete tasks, projects and exercises with the aid of the teacher and their peers.

So, I had a Year 9 French class whom I thought would be the perfect guinea pigs for flipped learning...

Madame, are you Youtube famous? The kids started to cotton on that I have a Youtube channel which I use distribute the videos for homework, and although 'no', I am not Youtube famous, it has been an easy platform to upload my videos and easy access for all students at my school. You can also create playlists for your videos so that students can watch beyond the set video.

I would set the homework to be completed over a one week period. Year 9's, especially at our school, have a ton of commitments! I asked them to watch the grammar video and take detailed notes in the course of a week. It is never my intention to 'dumb down' the work, but to ensure that they are coached on how to prioritise and schedule their work to be done. I have had some great conversations with my Year 9's on using their calendars and organising their schedules to get their work done.

At the start of each week for 1 period, my students would come in to the classroom and sit at a levelled table:

Classroom instructions for flipped learning

Madame, how did I go? Can you work this out with me? Questions and on task conversations were flying around the classroom. Students had their devices open and were completing levelled activities using editable Google Slides. Once an activity was complete, they submitted their work and moved up to the next level. Their enthusiasm was inspiring!

This enthusiasm continued over the course of the term. Yes - some students came into class not having watched the video. They watched the video in class. Yes - some students were tired and confused on the content. They asked other students for help or asked questions in class. Yes - some students were so advanced that I had to form creative tasks for them prior to class or on the fly. Awesome.
The one common thread was that ALL students could access and interact with the content at their own level.

So what have I learned from this initial flipped learning experience?
1) That students do want more guidance. This term, I will still use the flipped learning for grammar with my Year 9's, however I am going to trial embedding the video in to a Google Form and writing some reflection questions for the students to answer. I will then also know who has completed the homework and when.

2) I asked my students to complete a survey, and be brutally honest... there was a unanimous vote that my videos were WAY too long! It is good to understand what kind of media students are familiar with in this day and age. Vlogging, memes, vines... these are all new methods of communication. A 15-20 minute lecture just doesn't cut it anymore. My plan is to make 5 minute videos with more oral content over the holidays, and we'll see how that goes!

3) Flipped learning has awarded me more time to focus on the communicative classroom. By getting the passive content off the board, I can spend more time in class using French by talking and interacting with my students. I plan to spend at least one period a week solely on communicative tasks with my Year 9's. I mean, we learn a language to hopefully be able to speak it one day, yeah?

4) It has opened great conversations with my colleagues from different departments. So many teachers have come up to me and told me great ways of how they might do something similar for science, maths... It is stimulating for us teachers to try new methods, too.

Are you implementing flipped learning or have thought about doing it? Please comment below and let me know your thoughts/methods!

NB: I always forget to take photos of my classroom's in session. I will endeavour to do this in term 3!

Methods to my teaching madness?

We're already starting week 4 in Victorian High Schools... where has the time gone? Now that 3 weeks has passed, I am finally taking a breather to reflect on some goals I had constructed coming into the year.

After a crazy 2017 year - graduating from Masters and working in various schools - it was a nice thought to be starting a new school year. I goals for 2018 were to implement better classroom organisation, increase class participation, and use technology in a smarter way. Over the school holidays, I decided to therefore focus on three programs/methods: (1) Google Classroom, (2) the Flipped classroom, and (3) AIM-based learning.

(1) Google Classroom
Late last year, I overheard some Science teachers talking through the assessments their students were using on Google Classroom (full-time eavesdropper right here). I realised that my school, was a 'Google School'! Yes, Google has officially branded education.

Google Classroom almost mirrors the Facebook look. You post information on a forum, within which students can comment and interact. You can post assessments, which allows for students' own copies, and which a teacher can provide feedback on almost immediately. It also seamlessly works with Youtube and other Google programs, such as Google slides which you can use to make interactive worksheets.

I have also realised that the students love using Google Classroom. Everything is in the one place (no so many bits of paper), and they receive emails to alert them of homework and assessment tasks. For me, there is a quick marking scheme, and if I have created a Google Form, the marks can be automatically uploaded (easy!!).

So far, the sole issue is where the grades are stored. At my school, I also communicate with parents through our Intranet, and therefore must post grades and comments on the school system. This means creating multiple entries - from Google Classroom, to my assessment log, to the SIMON intranet. This seems to be the only downfall so far...

I have decided to start the Google Classroom course online (offered through Google, of course) during the Easter holidays. I will post about this course when I commence.

(2) The Flipped Classroom
I can be quite a chatty bot and can rush through content too, so another aim was to reduce the teacher talk in my classroom. As a French teacher, there can be a fair amount of lecture delivery in the classroom - especially in the grammar domain. The big issue is, if a few students don't understand what you talking about, then they miss the entire delivery! 'So why not turn them into videos!' I thought.

Each Saturday, I have been creating content-rich videos based on grammar topics that I would have usually taught on the board in class. Especially for my Year 10's, who head out of the class for conversation, I am asking them to watch the video at home and then come into class with questions and ready to work with me on the video topic.

Unexpectedly, I had one Year 8 student who was absent for the whole of week 3. When he walked into the classroom on Friday, while I was testing the rest of the class, I got him to log into Google Classroom and watch the video on the current topic. If I didn't have that resource at my fingertips, I'm not sure what I would have had anything for him to do at that time?

I have also realised that my students are respondent to myself being the deliverer of the content in the videos. I guess students like to work with THEIR teacher, not usually a stranger. However, this means that if I make a video for every topic across my 4 years... will there be time for sleep? An issue to contemplate!

(3) AIM-based learning
As a LOTE teacher, I want my classroom to be hyper-communicative! 'Please speak French with me children!'

Mid-2016, I head over to Canada to see 'first-hand' the immersive classroom method, called AIM. As it is a very expensive program that my school does not use, I have decided to implement certain methods and ideas from AIM into my classroom. The first lesson is all about teaching the students, in French, that the expectation is to speak only French in the classroom. You accompany the language with gesture and language repetition. La classe commence en français...

I had two very different responses from my classes. The first were highly engaged, hanging on every word. I was amazed at how much they just wanted to be immersed in the language, and then wanted to involve themselves also. My second class, however, was completely different. The kids were turning to each other and saying, 'What the hell is she saying?', 'Miss, we don't speak French', 'This is stupid.' After a few lessons, I very quickly realised that the 2nd classroom had become less communicative...

I have decided to use this as an interesting measure. How much more might my 1st class learn and/or be able to speak by the end of the semester, in comparison to my 2nd? I will write a more detailed blog post about this test in June, and I will have to think of a few more assessments.

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Quite frankly, I am exhausted, however I am also inspired. We will soon see for just how long I can keep some of my more wacky ideas going, and how long my students will also feel engaged with these methods. Only time will tell...