When we read a novel, breaks are needed. So every few chapters, or every few days, whenever the kids don’t want to do R & D or cRD any more, I put up a painting of some French artist.
I don’t go with the YouTube option – I need a static image because it allows a much more concentrated focus. The paintings seem to work best. I want to give the kids a total break from the novel for a day or two before we return to it.
So in one class recently we finished a novel – this is an upper level class. What to do? If it were a lower level class, no problem because we have tons of options. But a lot of the options at the lower level classes don’t work at the upper level classes. The kids don’t seem to want to do stories for three or four years in a row.
I just find it very easy to put up a French painting. There is something about the image that brings the class instantly together. I have no prep here. I just look at the painting and talk. I look and see some French kids from the 19th century playing with a cerceau (a hoop) in a pastoral setting. I start talking.
What happens when I do that? All the comprehensible input that for days had been in the form of the hard work of reading, so visual, becomes instantly audible again.
But the auditory input, the discussion about the image, now comes with a twist. Every third or fourth sentence I have them write down the last sentence I said as they do in a regular dictée.
Now they are looking at a picture, answering my questions in the target language (outputting speech as well, by the way), and when I dictate every third or fourth sentence to them they are writing. So in this model the kids are doing exactly the things (listening, writing and speaking) that they weren’t doing in the long days of reading before.
The result? A flowing class that requires no effort from me, no prep, and one that goes by very fast. Time flies with this activity, where the auditory beasts that the students are, which understand everything but can’t really write it that well, practice their writing every few minutes during a CI discussion class.
I hope that is a clear description. After they take dictation on ten sentences (generally takes two class periods), I collect that and put it in the book. If you are new to how we use dictée in comprehension based classes, click on the category.
For now the acronym I am using for this is dOLD – Dictée Option to Look and Discuss classes. Any other ideas for a name or how to make this nascent idea better are welcome.
To me, dOLD is a good solid response to the pesky question of how to deal with upper level classes that have done lots of stories for two years and now need reading simply because reading is what they need most at those levels.
And they are not ready for authentic texts. Everybody has tons of Blaine novels around. Read one of those. Read the one that contains the grammar you want to teach them.
For example, Le Voyage de Sa Vie teaches the future and conditional. So if you want your kids to know those verb tenses, teach that book.