Sabrina also sent this third YouTube clip for French teachers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR4mlLiyjYo
She shares:
If anyone needs ideas on what or how to circle with this ipad versus paper clip: here is what I did today and it worked beautifully.
I first watched the clip thinking about what I’d want to circle with the kids (same process goes on when you think about stories as you main focus are the stuctures you will focus on).
This clip is perfect because the guy repeats the same action over and over again . What action is he repeating? He shows Emma (his wife) the ipad suggesting she switches from paper to Ipad. So knowing I wanted to focus on three structures only, I decided that the first one would be: he shows her (il lui montre).
Then I noticed that Emma grew more and more frustrated as he kept on showing her his ipad. So I decided that the second structure I wanted to focus on would be: and is/feels more and more (est/se sent de plus en plus ____).
All I really had planned for was to circle these two structures because I couldn’t think of a third one. However as I started doing it in class and asking general background info about the characters to set this up, I realized we couldn’t agree on an age for each character. Here was my 3rs structure: is between ___ and ____ years (il a entre ___ et ____ ans). That is what I call winging it, or feeling it (as Ben would say).
I think an important thing we need to be aware when doing this kind of work is that we need to remain flexible and need to accept that changes may occur on the spot. And it really doesn’t matter as long as we know that all we need to do is establish meaning and slowly circle!
I didn’t get as many reps on this last structure (25 per my kid’s count) but that is OK b/c now I know I introduced this structure and every time an age will come up in a story or else I will recycle this one, knowing they are somewhat familiar with it.
That is another really fundamental thing doing CI: when we know what language kids have been exposed to, we can recycle, thus insuring more reps and slow but sure acquisition.
These are some other reflections/observations I wrote in my journal as I did this for 4 different classes today, tweaking it each time so that by my last one I had it down to path.
1 ) This clip was a great way to do thematic review of rooms of a house b/c the actors are always in a different room : cuisine (kitchen) , salon (living room) , bureau (office), chambre à coucher (bedroom), salle de bain ( bathroom) /toilettes (toilets). Also nice way to talk about culture since toilets in France are not in bathrooms. I cannot imagine teaching this boring stuff ( thematic units) out of a book, but here it was: effortless and the kids didn’t look bored or minded at all because there was a context and they were emotionally connected.
2) Since there were always two or three people in each still frame of the clip, I enjoyed practicing third person plural as I kept on asking questions such as :qu’est-ce qu’ils font (what are they doing), où sont-ils (where are they), dans quelle pièce sont-ils (in what room of the house are they, comment ils se sentent ( how do they feel), etc… It was a nice change from stories where you get to practice mostly 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular most of the time.
3) With my second structure (feels more and more), it was a great way to review adjectives related to feelings: frustrée (frustrated), enervée (annoyed), exaspérée (exasperated), angry (fachée), amused, chocked (choquée) etc….. And it was great contrasting how she got angrier and angrier while he was more and more amused. I even taught them how to say she was revenged (vengée) in the last scene. And I couldn’t help to talk about gender roles and sexism (I couldn’t resist that one!).
I hope this is helpful for anyone wanting to do this with their kids.