Getting students interested in French class while adhering to the concepts set out in Quebec’s Programme de progression des apprentissages (PDA) (or the Progression of Learning) can certainly be a challenge. To make things easier, Alloprof has come up with five ideas you can try to mix things up in your classroom and get students excited about French class!
As you already know, a person’s love of reading develops in a non-linear way; sometimes you have to try different literary genres and read many different books until you find the one that unlocks the door to the wonderful world of reading. With this in mind, it might be useful to think of your class’s daily reading period as a quest for fun. Here are a few ideas to encourage your students to explore a variety of literary genres:
One creative way to incorporate French writing into your students’ daily lives is to form writers’ circles. Budding writers can use this time to write a text about a given theme or based on a particular literary genre, with certain constraints, for example. Next, form small teams (three to five students) who will share what they have written and workshop each others’ texts (through comments and revisions). This activity will allow students to become more autonomous while they learn from each other and highlight everyone’s strengths. It will also allow students to practice all three French language skills: speaking, writing, and reading!
If you are looking for a bewitching way to make learning vocabulary words more fun, check out our game Magimot! This educational video game provides students with an entertaining way to learn how to spell French words. You can even add your very own lists of vocabulary words to the game and generate codes your class can use. Students can add their own spelling lists, too.
Guess what? You can use our handy codes to access recommended vocabulary lists from the Quebec education program. Just give your students the code, and they will be good to go! These lists can be used over and over again as part of our interactive vocabulary exercise. You can download the vocabulary and code lists here:
Looking for ways to mix things up when it comes to teaching new concepts in French class? You might consider giving Alloprof’s wide array of videos a try! Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Improving your reading skills can be a lot of fun! By playing our popular video game Book of Spells (Grimoire in French), students get to read short stories and answer reading comprehension questions about them. Along the way, they will earn resources to take care of an adorable little monster. This game is so much fun; your students will want to go back and play it again and again! And that means less work for you, since we also take care of the answer key.
Writing : The Alloprof Teachers' team