This is the question that I hear all the time as a grade 1 and 2 FI teacher.
It's the hardest one to answer, as we have so little available to us in the classroom, let alone to offer to parents at home.
I've found "weebly" and "shadow puppet" to be the most helpful things for this.
Weebly: I use weebly for my blog/website for parents. It is SO easy, and lets you drag and drop videos and links right into each web page. The embedded videos look great!
Shadow puppet: I use the shadow puppet app to record audio for our songs and poems, so that students can hear pronunciation while at home. We send home French duotangs with new poems each week, but it is hard for parents to know what to do with them if they don't speak French. I've been recording myself reading the poems, leaving time for students to repeat each line after me. I've done the same with different pictures of our word walls. I haven't done it with any songs yet (not sure I'm up for singing on youtube....).
**The app has a really cool feature that let's you touch a spot on your picture and have it light up, however I've experienced some hiccups with this. I have a few videos where the dot has floated away and no longer matches up with the correct words. If anyone knows how to avoid this, I'd love to hear it! It seems to happen somewhere between me making the video on my iphone or ipad, and uploading it to youtube.
Here's an example of a shadow puppet video I made:
This is a book that I read every few days with my class, and have them repeat each page after me. The vocabulary matches the word wall cards and flashcards I use, as well as the words in our Daily 5 centres. My students are immersed in the vocabulary that we are studying.
I'm still new to this, so I haven't had a lot of feedback from parents yet. I know everyone is busy, but hopefully they're able to take a few minutes each day to watch a short video.
What do you have to support parents and students at home? I'm always looking for new ideas!
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