Purposeful Ramblings Through My Mind

Any illustrator types want to join me in a summer project?

I need some new French plays, which I'm prepared to write myself based on fables and fairy tales. I'd love to have them illustrated into a storybook that I could use to introduce the play, and some vocabulary cards with parts of the same illustrations for the major vocabulary. I'd pay to get them printed in colour and to get the storybooks bound. If I could drum up some interest in them, I'd then approach an educational publisher about publishing them as a series.

Anyone interested? I could use a francophone editor, too.

I've been racking my brains trying to figure out how to do a French program I can live with, without exponentially increasing my planning time or creating too much noise for the environment with which I'm stuck. I think I've found a way.

For those who are unfamiliar with the details, my principal decided last spring to give up the two portables at my school. She was not asked to do so - it was her idea. Our school is open-concept, consisting of two large rooms, called pods, that have classroom areas in each quadrant. Separating these from each other are thin partitions that go all the way from floor to ceiling but do not block off the entire space - there are areas at each end where the classes can see each other, the soundproofing is non-existent, and to get out of the two back quads requires students to walk within sight of the kids in my room. It's a distracting set-up for any subject, but in subjects where noise is a prerequisite - like French and Music, both of which I teach - it's pure hell. The two portables were designed to give enclosed space for the use of whichever class needed them. One had desks and chairs and was set up for French, the other had a carpet and a piano and was set up for music or drama. I used them both at least a quarter of my total classroom time - I like teaching in ways that make for noise, and the kids like learning that way. But with the portables gone, I've had to start thinking about how to do my French program without the portables.

Now, I knew that if I had to, I could simply go to the book room, pick out a pre-fabricated unit about families, or food, or clothing, or some such, and do a half-decent job of teaching French just like any other subject - lists of vocabulary, spelling tests, contrived mini-dialogues, little cartoons with sentences that serve as reading material for those with almost no vocabulary - that kind of thing. I hate those units, for several reasons. The first is that they take a fair amount of preparation. They require having CDs, photocopies, booklets, little listening sheets, and a host of other materials, most of which are included in the bought unit but which must be assembled before each class. I prefer to work more simply than that. The second reason is that they don't work. Kids need to hear words and phrases in contexts that are meaningful to them, and they need to hear, see, use those words and phrases in that context over and over and over again in order to acquire them - that is, about thirty times to really get it, for an average student, and about fifty times for a lot of kids. The units don't allow for enough repetition, they don't present enough context or basic sentences, and they aren't very good at giving reasons why kids should put those words into what few sentences they present as possibilities. In short, it's taught with the same methods used for science vocabulary lessons, and while that might work for science in English (doubtful - I don't teach it that way in English, either) it sure as hell doesn't work in a second language.

When I had an enclosed classroom, I achieved this with stories and plays. We would spend the first ten minutes of class on vocabulary practice - calendar, numbers, prepositions of place, and other things that are easy to learn by rote and take very little time. It's amazing how even the kids who have ants in their pants can manage to focus on a lesson that teaches over, under, up, down, beside, etc, by making the kids move over, under, up, down, and beside their desks. :) Then we moved into one of three kinds of activities. Either we were working on a play, or we were working on a storybook, or we were learning new vocabulary that would lead to one or the other. Sometimes I'd throw in a song or game to keep them on their toes, and if the week went well, I always left Friday to be games day. Most of the time, it took months for them to notice that all the games we played were teaching them to ask questions in whole sentences and use a bunch of vocabulary words until they didn't have to think about them.

To start with, I would choose a play with a story they knew. There was the Three Little Pigs, or Goldilocks and the Three Bears, or the Little Red Hen. I would go to the library and get a picture book of that story, and I'd tell them the story using the English picture book and the words from the French play. I'd act it out, and I'd use hand gestures for most of the big lines. (Their favourite is always, "Tu n'entres pas, Monsieur le Loup! Je ne suis pas fou!" The last word is accompanied by one finger circling in the area of the temple, and rolled eyes. I've never yet had to translate it.) Over the next few days, I'd tell the story several more times, getting kids to act out the lines they knew, getting the rest of the class to chime in whenever possible, and generally getting them comfortable with it. When I was sure they knew most of the play, I'd divide them into groups and let them begin rehearsals, always going over the entire play once per day so they could hear it and correct their pronunciation. (This was the really noisy part - twenty-five kids divided into five groups in one classroom, all rehearsing the same play, is not a quiet activity.) Periodically, we'd break up rehearsing for a day or so to do some written activities or draw some pictures. The rehearsal phase generally lasted about two weeks, and then they'd present their plays, first to the class for marks, and then to another class in the school. If I didn't think they'd give that one their best effort, I'd tell them that one counted for marks, too.

The story activities were much simpler. I have a set of photocopiable booklets with a simple sentence at the bottom of the page and space for the kids to do a picture above it. We would memorize the booklets by reading them all the time, the kids would draw the pictures to go along with the sentences, and they'd be marked on their understanding and on their pronunciation and effort in the drawings.

Well, I'm going to combine the two activities. I have three weeks, and I have had those plays memorized - all three of them - for several years now. A brief memory session should have me recalling them without difficulty. I'll make up booklets with the lines from the play, and I'll have most of the kids working on their booklets while one group rehearses. I'll let two groups each get in fifteen-minute rehearsals each day, so each group should get two rehearsals per week. Meanwhile, the other kids will do their illustrations. They'll be left with a booklet I can "mark" - though the booklet is almost a throwaway mark compared to the performance, their read-alouds, and the questions for understanding - and they'll still get to do the play. One group rehearsing at a time shouldn't put unbearable strain on the noise level, and the whole system will run itself, almost, after I set it up and teach the story. I'll do my well-rehearsed song-and-dance routine every day for two weeks, then have two weeks of managing their song-and-dance routines, and then go on to a week-long interim unit (clothing, probably - it's easy and fun, and works well with "I spy.") Then I'll do the whole thing again with a different play.

All of which means I need to get cracking and make the prototype booklets before I go back to work. If that's done, the actual prep per lesson will involve writing down which group is rehearsing on which day, and what illustration the class should be at by the end of each week. That's about ten minutes of prep per week, and that is pretty much ideal for an effective unit.

Want to know if it's effective? A teacher i worked with at my last school was teaching grade seven there last year, and she had the kids who had been in my first grade four class, where I first taught the Three Little Pigs.

In the first week of class, five of them got up and spontaneously performed the play for their new teacher, almost word-perfect. They hadn't seen or heard it in two and a half years, and they weren't all doing the parts that they'd done with me.