In almost all my classes this year, I tried “Alma“ for Halloween – a short video I found thanks to Michele. Here is the YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irbFBgI0jhM
First, with VLC player, I made 12 snapshots and printed them on normal sheets of paper; these were to be shown on the blackboard. For the students I printed these snapshots, four on one sheet of paper. Using these photos, I asked the whole story, but leaving the end still open: Where are we? Who is in the street? What does she see? Where does she go? What’s she doing on the wall?, and so on. We paused and repeated often. In the end, in some of my classes, the students retold the story, and we had a quiz.
We then watched the film twice, stopping frequently the second time to ask many questions. When watching for the third time, we didn’t use the sound, I told the whole story simultaneously instead. Everybody listened intensely!
For the next one or two classes we did the reading of the story.
7th grade (approximately Level II):
After having read and discussed the story in the present tense, we did some textivate activities: Students filled in the gaps and restored the original text cut in twelve parts. Then I wrote “maintenant” (now) and “avant” (before) on the blackboard and we started to compare:
Now Alma is a puppet. She lives on the shelf of a puppet shop. She can’t move. She can only move her eyes. Before Alma was a little girl. She lived with her parents in a little house in the big city with the cathedral. She had no brother and no sister. But she had two friends, a boy and a girl. (and so on)
I then presented the past tense reading to them. We read and discussed it during two classes and tried to guess why, in French, we sometimes use one past tense, and sometimes the other. (In German, there is not much of a difference.) We found out that we use one for descriptions and the other for things that happened. (Two girls asked for the names of these tenses which are “imparfait” and “passé compose”. No more explications, but grammar me has to do these little things from time to time.)
Now we will start to bring the story to a happy end: “Classe, qui a sauvé Alma?” (Class, who saved Alma?) We’ll see what they come up with.
9th grade (my problem class, Level II):
This class is very skeptical about CI, so, from time to time, I offer them some grammar activities in context. We read and discussed the story in past tense, then found out when to use “imparfait” and “passé composé” and did a few conjugation examples on the blackboard. Then, in a common work, we put the text into the present tense.
To give them more input, I chose some photos showing individuals in different situations: a young man in a crowd, an athlete crying, a father with his daughter. We discussed their situations, i. e. What was his name? How old was he? What about his parents? Where did he live? What did he like?, etc. They wrote down what they remembered afterwards. Today we will do a reading with this and I will have them do a short free write referring to the situation on the photo: What happened one day?
I hope this way they will get a feeling for the past tenses.
10th/11th grade (Level IV, my superstars after more than three years of CI):
Having made up the story in present tense, the students easily retold it to their partners. While watching the film for the third time, I chose a volunteer to start telling the story, and, after a minute or so, called spontaneously on students to continue the story: Almost everybody had to say 5 – 10 sentences. We were thrilled and had a lot of fun.
Then we had the past tense reading – no problem at this level. They were all ready to answer my questions. So we read the text aloud to do some work on pronunciation.
Finally I grinned at them saying: “Et si Alma n’avait pas vu la poupée dans la vitrine? Qu’est-ce qui se serait passé?” (And if Alma hadn’t seen the puppet in the window? What would have happened?) Here I made allusion to the structures of a previous story I had taken from Bryce; it was about Marc having made a series of bad decisions in his life. The students grinned, too, and started to produce a series of sentences: “Si elle n’avait pas vu la poupée, elle n’aurait pas traversé la rue.” (If she hadn’t seen the puppet, she would not have crossed the street.) After a few sentences, they were all into it.
They all had the feeling to be challenged and had no problems doing output. I love this group.