Mercredi 12 décembre

After orally sharing their week in a few sentences, the students tried to write what they just shared. The objective is to work on spelling, new words and practice with our High-Frequency Words, among other things. It is also to work on expressing ourselves before diving deeper into grammar requirements.

Mercredi o5 décembre

We read a tale everyone knew: Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, and we worked together on how to extract the important ideas to put them on paper. Language experts agree that reading (that is exposure to French sounds) is the key, so read to your child as often as you can. What if you cannot? The Santa Cruz Public Library website offers French books, read online!! that your child can listen to while you are doing something else. They can be found in the Tumblebook section, I will tell you more about it next time. And to finish the day, the kids got their Green-Belt words!!

Mercredi 28 novembre

Today, the children told me what happened to them during their Thanksgiving time, we wrote the new words on the board, and then I asked them to write their stories down, as a little paragraph. Creativity was in the air, and they did a good job. That was the first part, we then individually corrected the texts and they wrote them again, with their mistakes fixed. Again, when you talk with your child, correct as much as you can little glitches like masculine/feminine, singular/plural, liaisons, missing "ne". Preteens can adjust easily before their "bad habits" sink in if nothing is done. And don't forget to read with them.

Mercredi 14 novembre

Thanks to the same story book, we continued working on important concepts of French: the 'liaison' and the negation. If parents happen to have opportunities to have your child read in French, on a regular basis, please do so, if you talk to your child in French, please correct their little mistakes. Some basic language patterns are acquired that way, like the French "liaison", the double negation elements, the pronunciation of vowels. Bad habits die hard, and if they can be kept at bay from the beginning, all the better!! It will be two long weeks away from the classroom, let's use that time wisely.

Mercredi o7 novembre

This afternoon we used a story everybody knew (involving ham and green eggs) to practice reading and to introduce the negation. French requires 2 elements, NE and PAS, and helping your child not to omit the NE part when talking will also help to remember it when writing. Then we discovered the new list of High-Frequency Words, orange belt; they are a little bit harder and you can also help by practicing at home. Those words are the base for fluent reading.

Mercredi 31 octobre

It was Halloween!! We couldn't get a better occasion to talk and write about costumes, trick-or-treating and parties, from the ghost (Nicolas) to Pépi the 2nd (Ari).  We had our French party too, and then the kids were ready and eager to taste it in town. Everybody got the Yellow Belt, next week the next color will be available for them.
Joyeuse Fête de Halloween 2o12!!

Mercredi 24 octobre

Halloween getting closer every day, it was the opportunity to talk about practical subjects regarding pumpkins: vocabulary, sentence building, ... . Ari shared with the group his collection of fantastic maps, and we started to work on the H-F words. Next week IS Halloween, so if your kid wants to come with a costume on, that will be much fun! See you next week.

Mercredi 17 octobre

Although the weather didn't look like it, we're in Autumn and we started learning vocabulary and building sentences around it to practice conjugation.
Also all the students got the Yellow-Belt list of High-Frequency Words, parents can help them during the week in order to master the pronunciation and the spelling.
A la semaine prochaine!

Mercredi 1o octobre

Today we practiced; we practiced the conjugation of -ER verbs in the present tense, and we practiced our first list of High-Frequency Words. These lists come in belt colors and Nicolas, an expert in jujitsu explained to the group how it goes from white to black, and how the difficulty builds up. So next week, our students will get the yellow belt list because they knew all their white-belt words.

Mercredi o3 octobre

We started with a short story of Oui-Oui; Ari already heard of Oui-Oui and could explain to the group who that was. From the story, we learned about action words, the verbs, and introduced the 1st-group verbs, the easy ones ending with -ER. Then we practiced, using the same card game as last week and building sentences from the images. Meaning that we need to learn how to write!
For that purpose, each child walked back home with a short list of High-Frequency Words, starting with short ones. The objective is to have parents working on these words during the week, so that our students know them by heart and can proceed to the next list. Clue: it goes by karate-belt colors, from white to black, white is quite easy, black is not.

Mercredi 26 septembre

After a review of the previous week's activities for each of the students, and especially the flying of the space shuttle over Santa Cruz, we talked about the basics: days of the week, and identification of ÊTRE in a simple sentence as we need to learn how to write it.
To use it in practice, Fabrice took out of his pocket a "Jeu des 7 Familles" and introduced it to the children, some already knew it, others didn't, and we had a few rounds to get used to the new words and to the way to ask questions. It was fun, and Nicolas didn't rush outside when the class was over because he wanted to know who finally had "La Grand-Mère Pêcheur".

La rentrée de septembre

Bonjour, hello!
Today, the advanced children came in to meet their new teacher for this year: Fabrice.
Fabrice also teaches in another school, and with so many names already in his mind, he needed to add some more from his new French class.
So we introduced one another, I told the students who I was, what I do and where, and each of them explained to me the same things. We learned that French and English are not the only languages used by the group members and we wrote down new words for future lessons.
Then for practice and to know them better, I asked the students to pick a preferred animal, and we learned about 'tamanoir' and 'cochon d'Inde', with new words again that the children put together in a sentence of their own. That sentence will be the starting point for coming lessons, so please, don't let them lose the paper they took back home, we will need it next Wednesday.
Oh, I almost forget: we had much fun learning about one another!
à mercredi prochain!