Well, I would have to say I am mostly proud and impressed with the level of enthusiasm and positive attitude towards this French programme. That, we as FSL teachers know, is half the battle.
My students always loved my French class, but this is much more long-term engaging.
The short variety of exercises makes it ideal for FSL teachers who have from short 40 minute blocks or longer 60 minutes. I completed the case 1 in about one month but I cheated and used some of my drama blocks. Also, the kids did some extra activities to make connections and to allow for more oral uses of language conventions that I would be teaching but the timing was good..ex I used the chance to bring in possessive pronouns with mon nom est and ton nom est, teaching these were masculin but we will se ma and ta and sa and son.
The thinking that went into this is not taken for granted. Every little detail from having the three missing students' names start with L....and T..... drew conscious effort on the part of the student to READ and LISTEN carefully and they had to participate actively and with cognitive effort...right up to the way the activities will reach all the kinds of learners in the class. All students were successful. All students are confident parts of the lessons and class. It's wonderful to see that.
Every concept and oral vocabulary taught is used now by the students orally. They quickly set up into activities like the introduction games, spelling their names and already they can confidently use the letters in French. They are using the strategy cards SC1-4 vocabulary which are up on my bulletin board and they now use them orally without looking at them as a reference.
In only 3 weeks, we have improved alphabet comprehension. They knew to recite a few letters but had never really been taught. Now, they sing it (traditional melody) in French and can think of, recall and use letters to spell words orally.
They love Hugo and the way I use him, he seems part of the class. One hectic day as I greeted them at their class ( I forgot him!) they yelled : "Où est Hugo?"
They are looking forward to case 2 and asked if we could do this all year. I don't know how I am going to fill those shoes in my class when we are done case 3?!
Well, if I learn from example I am going to minimize my vocabulary and reuse many ways as they have done with Club Mystère. This taught me to give the students more time. But they way that learning concepts ( les lettres) are integrated into the mysteries is key to keeping their engagement.
I always taught with themes, or robust tasks in French but I will never be able to redo the video clips and audio, or on the scale that Club Mystère has done.
I am throughly enjoying using this. I did follow all activities, though admittedly due to things like my PD and supply teachers I moved the order around of some activities that were relevant to whole unit...so that means there is a lot of room for flexibility. There was no real reason to, nor is there any inclination on my part to skip anything. I am used to skimming products...not this one.
Teachers who may feel a little less confident in their pronunciation have all of the audio they need to support the content and even I as a Francophone needed the audio on names of communities.
One day we played autobus and I asked them to make up names. They were asking for more French names. This to me is true to my heart as I feel that the cultural appreciation has been developing during this unit. Kids are all of a sudden PROUD to find out they have French last names and that we can pronounce their names in French ex. Daniel.
Mme Denis
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