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.