Tracking oral presentations


I just updated my fall book and centre file to include a tracker and a rubric! 




I take notes when my students present their books to me, and find it easier (and faster) to record with a template. Then I transfer the information from the template into the met/not met rubric. I photocopy the rubric to send home and I keep the copy of the rubric with the template (with my notes). 




I keep all the templates and photocopied rubrics together in alphabetical order in pocket protectors in a binder. Each student has their own pocket protector, so I can quickly grab all the rubrics I need for assessments, report cards, or parent meetings! My awesome teaching partner came up with this organization strategy! I've been loving it :) 





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Building sentences with new sentence starters


Happy Friday! 

I hope you survived a week of rain, wind, a full moon, and Halloween excitement! I've been struggling to get over my first cough/cold/etc of the season and I am definitely looking forward to sleeping this weekend. I am probably over-excited for that extra hour of sleep we get on Sunday! 

This week we practiced our verbs of the week and used them to focus on new sentence starters. I used to keep my sentence starters in a pocket chart, but now I keep them on my whiteboard so that we can build sentences with them. When we start a new set of vocabulary, I always copy a second set of flashcards and put them up on magnets so that my kids can grab them off the board if they need them during their writing. Having both of these on magnets means we can use them to practice making sentences! 




My students are really comfortable with "il y a" and "je vois", so we've moved on to "je mange", "je porte" and "j'aime". I've been reading the "C'est l'automne" book from my fall pack every day. I read a sentence and have them repeat it after me. It's a LOT of repetition, but it works :) As we talked in September about the importance of repetition, I haven't had any of them question it or complain about it. They actually get really excited once they know the book well! When they're really familiar with it, they like to show off and read it as a class without my help, while I just hold it up and turn the pages.

Building sentences - starters and word wall cards:

I normally keep my sentence starters off to the side of my whiteboard. As a class, we read each one together as we go through the list of starters we've learned so far. Then one student picks a starter for us and I slide it over. Then we go through the words that are part of our current word wall (it was classroom objects, now it's fall themed). I say each word and they repeat it after me (usually we use different silly voices too, to make it fun!). Then a student chooses a card to complete our sentence.

Sometimes we also use mini whiteboards at the same time, so they can write (or "dwrite" with words and pictures) it out and then "bump up" their sentences with colours and numbers. Then they read their sentence to a partner. 



I love having everything up on magnets. I can save time by not having to draw or write the parts of the sentence they choose! I get my magnets in sheets from Dollarama - they're awesome! You'll just need to practice some self restraint... I did NOT and now almost all my flashcards have magnets on them! 



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Verbs of the week and small group sentence building


Today we began our focus on weekly verbs! We will be slowly adding to our verb list over the next few weeks. 


My pocket chart calendar has space for a few verbs cards. I printed my verb posters really small so that they can fit in the bottom left corner. Once we move on to new verbs, we will keep adding them to the same place in our classroom to build a verb wall. 


The bottom right corner has our words of the week! I've also started building a sight word list with the past two week's word lists. 




This morning we rotated through some centres. We did:
1. Bang 
3. Matching (picture to the word)
4. Magnetic letters/word building (using word wall strips)
5. Writing on whiteboards (with visual dictionaries as guides) 
6. Working with me! 



The cards from the image are from my fall pack! Each time I sat down with a new small group, we went over the sentence starter prompts and sentence structure. With some groups, I talked about specific errors that were being made ("je vois 3 une pomme"), and with others we talked about how we could "bump up" our sentences ("je vois 3 pommes ET 2 citrouilles"). They loved "getting to play all morning!" 


I rotated through to the next centre about every 8ish minutes. Whenever I was done with the group I was working with I tapped my tap bell, and students cleaned up their table and returned to the carpet. Once at the carpet, we looked back at each centre to make sure it was cleaned up the correct way. Students from the whiteboard centres got to share their best sentence (it's the easiest centre for sharing!). Then I told each group where they were moving to next! 



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Centre ideas for FSL





I LOVE using centres with my students! My students love them, and will choose many of the centres to play during indoor recess instead of lego and other toys. It rained this week and one of my boys chose to build with magnets on cookie trays!


Setting clear routines is the most important part. Take the time to teach the games to your students so that they understand how to play properly. If they haven't mastered the French vocab, then you will have behavioural and focus issues come up. With younger students, make sure you practice the game as a whole class many times before you introduce it as a centre.


Set-up:


I use the cards from my "j'ai fini" board as the centre rotation cards, as the centres are all things they can also choose to do if they finish their work early. I recently updated the file to include centre group cards, so you can write their names on the group # cards to set up your groups before they come to class.


Normally my "j'ai fini" board is set up like this:




Since they're on magnets, it's really easy to move them over to the other side of my whiteboard to set up the centres. 

I line them up vertically and put the group # cards beside them. I have each centre set up on a table group (except bug in a rug, they play on the carpet). I review the rules of each centre with them, and the CLEAN UP rules. We talk about what each centre should look like when it's been properly cleaned up. 

They get started at their centres, and I work with my small group at my table. When I'm done with them (about 10 minutes) I ding my bell. This means clean up and come back to the carpet. Once they're all back at the carpet, we look around to check that the room is cleaned up properly. Any groups who wrote on whiteboards are able to read a sentence they wrote to the class. This is our sharing centre.

Then I move the centre cards on the whiteboard down one spot, and tell each group where they are going for their next centre.  


Here are some of the centres I do:

1. Bang game:  Put all the vocab you’re practicing in a container. Students pull out a card. If they can say it in French (or use it in a sentence, to make it harder) then they can keep the card. If they pull a card that says “bang” then they get another turn (or lose all their cards, your choice!) You can use any empty yogurt container or plastic tupperware. Just make sure they can't see through the container! 


Some of my students like to play bang and then write the words they won on a whiteboard! 




2. Bug in a rug: Lay out the vocab in a grid. One student hides the “bug” under a card, while the other students close their eyes. They guess in French which vocab card it’s hidden under. Whoever finds the bug gets to hide it next. This game requires an honest conversation with your students about why cheating will ruin the fun of the game! 



3. Go fish: You can print any of the flashcards you're using in class. Copy them 2 or 4 per page to make them smaller. 

4. Word building: Magnets on cookie trays! My students use our visual dictionaries or word wall strips to choose their words/sentences to build. 










These awesome magnets come from wintergreen. This set is much cheaper, but you'd likely need multiple sets. The cookie trays are from the dollar store. Ideally you want small magnets so they can fit more words on the cookie tray. 

5. Sentence building: Print squares with a variety of sentence starters, numbers, colours, and objects. Students then put the words in order to build sentences. You can extend this by having them read their sentences to a partner, or write their sentences on a whiteboard/in their journals.






6. "Pictionary": One student draws on a whiteboard, the other student has to guess what they are drawing.



7. Matching: Picture to the word. My students use our visual dictionaries to check their work over when they're done! 




8. Cootie catchers/fortune tellers with a partner. 




9. Bingo - 1 group member can be the bingo caller, others put tokens on the words that are called. I use these as the bingo tokens



10. Writing on whiteboards -







11. Hunting for sight words - 






12. Cube game - Roll the cube and answer the question. Extension - write the question! 

I bought the cubes here, and write different prompts on sticky notes to slide under the plastic. 








13. SMACK game - One student says the word, whoever smacks it first gets to say the next word! 


14. Spin and graph sight words - 


15. Stamp the sight words, themed vocab, or sentences!


16. Write the sight words - I bought salt from the dollar store and added a few drops of food colouring, then gave it a good shake. Students use a sharp pencil to write words in the salt! 



17.  Read and clip - 







18. Spinner games - I use these in centres to give my students prompts for oral communication or writing. They can spin the spinner and either say a sentence or write a sentence. They can review vocabulary in partners (one spins, one says the word). 






19. Working with Mlle - The BEST part about centres is that it means I can pull small groups to work with.


Do you have any centres you love? Feel free to share in the comments :) 


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Words of the week & word work


We recently started practicing 4 words of the week per week. It makes for some fun centres that we can add to our rotations, and will help later on when we start focusing more on reading. We aren't doing any weekly assessments, but will do a simple check in after about 7 weeks (28 words). 

We practice the words using silly voices as part of our calendar routine. It isn't a huge focus, but they hear and read the words a few times a day for the week. I've added them to the bottom right corner of my pocket chart calendar!



We've added a few different activities to our centres (I updated my "J'ai fini" file with some new cards!). One is to spin the paperclip and graph the sight words they land on. I found a few of my students had a hard time holding the pencil and paperclip in place, so I attached the paperclip with a clip: *loosely, so it still spins*



The clip went easily through the page protector, which lets us save a TON of paper for these centres! 

We've also added magnets for word work. They take a ring of words and build them using magnets. We use cookie trays from the dollar store! 


*Photo cred to my AWESOME teaching partner!*


Of course, we are still also playing lots of "bang" and "bug in a rug" so that we continue to focus on oral communication!

What centres are your little ones enjoying? I'm always looking to add new centres to our rotation :) Leave a comment to share! 


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