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Verboten: the Photocopier
May. 4th, 2009 07:07 pmWe're being told at school that we're using too many photocopies. This has resulted in a massive shrug from me - I didn't use that many to begin with, so cutting down really wasn't either an option or an issue. If I hand out two class sets in a week, I've used more than usual.
The problem is French. All of our materials are ten years old, none are complete sets, and all were designed with ample photocopy budgets in mind. Add in the fact that I teach French to the two biggest classes in the school, and that they are not yet adept enough to write more than a few words at a time in French with a model right there, and their difficulty (and mine) in keeping track of papers that are handed out - you see the problem. Any vocabulary-intensive unit I try to teach ends up with reams of paper going through the photocopier, both for first-runs and for re-runs when kids lose them.
I bought some books recently - before the photocopy ban, because they're all photocopiable materials, which is the cheapest way to buy resources by one or two orders of magnitude. One is labelled "beginner-intermediate," which led me to expect some beginner activities and some more advanced ones.
What I got was page after page of vocabulary about shopping, loosely organized by place and type (so all the bakery words are together, and all the butcher words are together, but all the phrases that would string those words together are separate.)
I realized that the amount of scaffolding it would take to teach all the vocabulary would quickly make the unit Not Worth It, so I started cutting it down. I photocopied and cut into sections all the words on one page, and then photocopied several copies of each section onto coloured paper, with the result that I used about six sheets of each colour but got a class set of each strip. Next I'm going to back them all with construction paper and laminate them, then teach one section at a time, starting with that most French of items: bread. Then I wrote skits, one with all the words I wanted them to learn this time, the next with a few words left out so they can fill them in from the list of types of bread, the last with just sentence models for the kids to make up their own skits. I figure those three things will take at least three weeks, and I only have six weeks of regular teaching left to fill. Repeat the process with the boucherie, and I'm set.
And if they don't ruin the cards, I can use them again another year. It's time-intensive and a bit of a crap-shoot, because there's always a chance I'll decide not to use it again or never have the chance to do so. But at least this way I got permission to use the coloured paper.
The problem is French. All of our materials are ten years old, none are complete sets, and all were designed with ample photocopy budgets in mind. Add in the fact that I teach French to the two biggest classes in the school, and that they are not yet adept enough to write more than a few words at a time in French with a model right there, and their difficulty (and mine) in keeping track of papers that are handed out - you see the problem. Any vocabulary-intensive unit I try to teach ends up with reams of paper going through the photocopier, both for first-runs and for re-runs when kids lose them.
I bought some books recently - before the photocopy ban, because they're all photocopiable materials, which is the cheapest way to buy resources by one or two orders of magnitude. One is labelled "beginner-intermediate," which led me to expect some beginner activities and some more advanced ones.
What I got was page after page of vocabulary about shopping, loosely organized by place and type (so all the bakery words are together, and all the butcher words are together, but all the phrases that would string those words together are separate.)
I realized that the amount of scaffolding it would take to teach all the vocabulary would quickly make the unit Not Worth It, so I started cutting it down. I photocopied and cut into sections all the words on one page, and then photocopied several copies of each section onto coloured paper, with the result that I used about six sheets of each colour but got a class set of each strip. Next I'm going to back them all with construction paper and laminate them, then teach one section at a time, starting with that most French of items: bread. Then I wrote skits, one with all the words I wanted them to learn this time, the next with a few words left out so they can fill them in from the list of types of bread, the last with just sentence models for the kids to make up their own skits. I figure those three things will take at least three weeks, and I only have six weeks of regular teaching left to fill. Repeat the process with the boucherie, and I'm set.
And if they don't ruin the cards, I can use them again another year. It's time-intensive and a bit of a crap-shoot, because there's always a chance I'll decide not to use it again or never have the chance to do so. But at least this way I got permission to use the coloured paper.