Category Archives: french 3

Gamifying the French Classroom

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Last year, I attended a workshop put on by the French Consulate entitled “Gamifying the French Classroom.” It was interesting but not as practical as I would have liked–most of the games were for purchase or required software I don’t have.

Ever since attending that workshop last April, I’ve been trying to think of how to bring more of a gamified feel to my projects and units. Students respond well to Quizlet Live, Kahoot, and Jeopardy! in my classroom, so why not make learning more entertaining and ultimately more engaging? After reading Amanda’s blog in the fall about her final exam review passport (and also attending her group’s Grab-and-Go PD session last month), I felt compelled to rethink my finals review as we wind down the year and make the push towards exam week.

Let me back up a few steps first. For the final unit of the year in French 3, I’ve decided to modify the traditional food unit and teach students about food trucks, regional French cuisine, and the food truck culture in Paris which I experienced firsthand over the past three summers working in Paris.

I called my unit “The Great Food Truck Race.” To determine their groups for this final unit and project, students selected from random cards I made with French regions written on them. Earlier this week, they researched their assigned regions, local cuisine, and points of interest. From there, each group designed an origial food truck and a logo after learning about their regional cuisine. I think they’ve been having fun with the project-based learning aspects of this unit, but I wanted to tap into the “race” aspect of this unit as we make our way to finals week.

And that’s when it struck me. Instead of doing a “finals review” week or a few random days here and there, why not design an entire unit around a series of review activities?

The idea is simple: each week, I am hosting a series of competitions that really aren’t much different from the typical language exercises, activities, and worksheets we’ve been working on all year. The only difference is how I’m framing these competitions.

I’ve set up a Google Spreadsheet that the students have access to in order to keep a running tally of how many points they score during each competition which constitutes the ongoing “food truck race.” By the end of these next three weeks, the group with the most amount of points will earn a small bonus on the final exam. I introduced the rules earlier this week and the excitement which greeted my announcement was unlike anything I’ve seen all year. You would have thought I’d told them they could be on their phones every class from here on out…

The “competitions” include the following activities (along with several more I’m still mentally figuring out):

  • The Price is Right game in French to review food words, quantities, and numbers
  • A Jeopardy! review of food vocab from French 1-2
  • An upcoming quiz on the conditional mood we covered during the fall semester (which I’ll let them take in partners and score purely for race points and not for the overall grade)
  • Subjunctive verb conjugation speed races to review material from two units ago
  • Instagram challenges in which I’ll assign a task and judge the videos based on creativity and use of language
  • Speaking quizzes (formerly known as “oral exams”)
  • And then more traditional assignments for this current food truck unit such as creating a realistic menu, hosting an “interview” with a local journalist and their food truck, writing up an in-class business proposal without the assistance of Google Translate or a French-English dictionary, researching French outdoor games and proposing a special Happy Hour with games of their choosing, and so forth.

After only two in-class competitions, I’m already seeing more participation and engagement than I’ve seen in past classes. I hope the momentum continues into the remaining weeks, but so far it’s been fun to teach and keeps me on my toes in terms of thinking about how to make each review session more successful, engaging, and fun!

And best of all, I’m tricking my students into studying and fully participating in French.

For now, I leave you with some of their initial food truck designs as their posts are trickling in all weekend.

Carondelet News Channel (en français!)

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I had originally planned to begin a new unit in my French 3 classes this past week and a half leading up to Spring Break, but everyone was showing signs of exhaustion after the completion of our last chapter, projects, and oral quizzes (on a light topic such as environmental issues and endangered animals in Francophone countries). They did a great job, so I wanted to reward them with something different than usual as we transitioned into Spring Break. I wanted a creative challenge that we could successfully complete in a week, and the pressure was on–I honestly had no idea how it would turn out, but I was excited to tap into my journalism background and do a journalism mini-project-based unit.
Over the past week, I taught my students all they might want to know about the news and media in French. I helped them expand their vocabulary in French after reading recent headlines, listening to topical news podcasts, watching daily news broadcasts, and parsing through satirical news sites in French to see if students could figure out what headlines were real and what were parodies (ask me if you want to see the presentation–the headlines are hilarious). We even debated current events and students defended their opinions about the news and journalistic integrity.
During our final long block period (today’s class), I charged the students with creating a class-wide 15-minute news broadcast. Running through some modified design thinking exercises, students in my 5th period (sole Carondelet-only) class pitched and then voted on their ideas for the show, concept, title, and logo and came up with the following:

In groups of 2-3, the girls were responsible for the following 2-minute segments: 

  • Introduction and Carondelet-local news (including Mr. Cushing’s departure from the school as he prepares to go on tour with the Spice Girls)
  • San Francisco Bay Area news about a local scammer and Anne Hathaway impersonator
  • International news chronicling the Carondelet trip to France next week in the wake of today’s Notre Dame Cathedral fire in Paris
  • Sports covering the Carondelet swimming, rugby, and lacrosse teams
  • Arts and lifestyle covering the construction of the art class’s school bus in the inner court that was tragically stolen overnight and replaced with a gigantic croissant
  • And the broadcast closes out on a very high note covering the erratic weather we’ve been experiencing recently.
They quickly edited their videos using either iMovie or the Apple Clips app which Karina and I presented about on Friday (and I’m looking forward to creating a screencast or future blog entry showcasing all the cool features Clips has to offer if you weren’t able to attend our Grab-and-Go session last week). 
Here is the folder of all their videos if you’re at all curious to see what they were able to produce with the quick 80-minute turnaround during today’s class. I had a lot of fun helping them think through their scripts and watching the final production (which we won’t get to watch as a class until after break), and I am so proud of them for their creativity and sensitivity and attention to world news as it relates to this class.
This was one of my most favorite long block periods of the entire year, and I am looking forward to getting even more creative next month when I roll out a food truck race competition in my French 3 classes.
That’s it for this blog, see you on the other side of Spring Break, everyone!