Making it real – oral language in French class

This is the first Triad (St. Gregory, St. Daniel, St. Monica) whose work is being featured on this blog.  I sat with them last week as they established their baseline for their inquiry.  The group has already recorded a good deal of student work to act as their baseline.  They do have plans to continue to share work using different forms of social media including Skype.

The oral component is always a priority in second language teaching.  Our goal is to make it authentic and usable in the real world (e.g. salutations, good manners, every day basic vocabulary).If students are engaged in authentic conversations in the class and are taught the necessary vocabulary, then they will feel comfortable and be able to converse amongst themselves in the classroom.  This activity is very rich because it brings language arts components to real life situations.

The FSL Triad met on Friday to discuss our Baseline results. Our junior kids were paired up and they asked each other questions EN FRANCAIS about their family.  Some teachers gave them “sentence starters” such as Quand (When…) Qui (who…) Ou (Where…) Est-ce que (Does…) others chose not to.  We noticed some were easier to use than others.  For our mid-line, we will interview another class in the same school (e.g. Jennifer Kealey’s class will meet with Caroline Ghaffari’s class). And our final activity will be to SKYPE with a class from another school.  The question will vary a bit – we will ask “what does your family do at Christmas”.

The students will converse with a partner and ask one another questions about his/her family. For our midline assessment, the students will have the same conversation but with a student from another class in our school. For our final assessment, the students will have the same conversation but with a student from another class in one of our triad schools, through Skype. Results will be examined to see whether the students are more comfortable speaking and if they are using more complex vocabulary and sentence structures.

Paul McGuire

Safe Place: Record your Kinder Parens

In our classroom we practice, conscious discipline which is a self-regulating program that integrates social-emotional learning and discipline.  According to Dr. Bailey, ”Discipline in not something you do to children.  It is something you develop within them.”  

Through the Shubert’s books, the students are learning that our safe place is a corner where they can go to change the inner state of mind from upset to calm or sad to happy in order to maximize learning.  The children are learning to identify their feelings and choose helpful strategies to calm their bodies.  There are different breathing techniques that they are learning to use, for example they can do the pretzel, the drain, the balloon… Also, the students are learning to identify their emotions and choose to self regulate their behaviour (e.g., I am angry that you don’t want to share with me, instead of hitting you, I am going to go take 5 deep breath, relax and then talk about it to find a solution).  When the students go to the safe place, there is a “calm you body bin” where there are different sensory objects to help them relax.  We have squishy balls for touch; a motion wand for sight; aromatherapy scent bottles for smell; and a recording of an I love you message from parents for sound.  

When, I tweeted in September that I was planning on recording my parents at my Kindergarten meeting saying an "I love you message" with the iPad. Then QR code, print it and insert it in a scrapbook for our safe place. I got many retweets and questions regarding how I did this.   Well, it was very easy and one of the best things I've done this year. Here is what I did:

First, during Kindergarten interviews in September, I recorded the parents in their first language saying an I love you message to their child.  I used the app called Fotobabble to snap a picture of the parents and then the parents recorded their special message for their child.  The parents were thrilled to be able to do this for their child. Some parents had tears in their eyes and all their messages were unique and special.  Some even said: "I wish my parents could of done this for me when I went to Kindergarten! Technology is amazing!"  Next, I used the QR code generator extension in Chrome to QR the Fotobabble link. I printed it and the students had fun making our family scrapbook.  Each student brought in family pictures, drew pictures and glued the QR code on their page in our scrapbook.  Then, the scrapbook was placed in our safe place. When the students were sad or when they were missing their parents, they went to the safe place, scanned the QR code with the i-nigma app and listened to their parents. When the students heard their parents message, they felt better right away. It was so comforting for them to hear their parents voices! It was great to see the children's eye brighten up as they heard and saw their parents. It made them feel instantly better. The scrapbook continues to be in our safe place and is readily available to the students! 

Google Forms at Learning connection

Teddy created a blog for the session in order to guide OCSB teachers through the process of Google forms and calender. Blogging as a platform for engaging and collaborating during a session.

http://lcocsb.blogspot.ca/