French Immersion
- Giulia Lato
- Apr 21, 2015
- 4 min read
As a student in the program Pédagogie de l’Immersion Française, I’m taking several classes in teaching French as a Second Language. I decided to enter this program because I know that many elementary schools in Montreal are French Immersion, and school boards often look for teachers to be certified to teach this specialty. I also did it simply because I wanted to continue taking French classes and keep practicing my French. I speak French every day at home and at work, but I wanted to practice my French reading, writing, and speaking at a university level. I’m learning a lot about teaching a second language and teaching French, which is really interesting because I didn’t think that I would be taking these classes when I first started university.
Afin d’apprendre comment enseigner dans un contexte de l’Immersion Française , j’au déjà complété plusieurs travaux qui me permet de développer mes compétences dans ce domaine. Par exemple, mon amie et moi avons créé une Situation d’Apprentissage et d’Évaluation qui vise les étudiants de la 4e année. Cette SAÉ travaille le trait langagier de l’imparfait et peut être intégrée dans le thème des contes et des légendes. On a écrit six leçons qui incluent des activités de perception, de conscientisation et de pratique. De plus, on a crée un jeu linguistique de Jeopardy dans une
présentation Powerpoint qui permet aux élèves de mettre en pratiques les connaissances acquises et de pratiquer la conjugaison à l’imparfait. Le voici! Pour le jouer, télécharger la présentation et mettez le en plein écran. J’ai appris comment faire ce jeu sur Powerpoint pour ce travail, et je suis très contente avec le résultat! C’est un jeu interactif et je crois que les élèves aimeraient bien le jouer. De plus, c’est un nouveau outil que je pourrais employé dans ma salle de classe afin de motiver les élèves qui ne sont pas facilement motivés. Cela m’a aidé à développer Compétence 8 puisque j’ai appris comment utiliser une autre forme de technologie. Même si je savais déjà comment utiliser Powerpoint, je ne savais pas comment créer ce jeu. En plus, c’est un jeu que je pourrais créer dans plusieurs cours et pour plusieurs matières.
Apart from the Jeopardy game, I developed a Kindergarten Learning Centre that was aimed at developing French skills in young children. The theme of our centre was “La Mer” and it explored the sea in interactive ways. In order to make this an effective centre, my group and I created six literacy based activities that involved a song, some french books on the sea/ocean, natural objects to observe, sea animal vocabulary, verbs related to the sea, an experiment involving floating and non-floating objects, and creating colours with food colouring in water. We created an ocean exploration book that allowed students to document their work. Click here to take a look at some of the pages. Students had many opportunities to write and to draw, since not all children in Kindergarten can write yet. Here’s what the centre looked like:
Creating this learning was very educational because I got to develop activities for very young children, which is not something I had the chance to do yet. We also came up with ways of differentiating every activity, which touched upon Competency 7. One of the ways in which we did this was to create a Help Desk that offered audio recording of the books that were available at the centre. In addition, we recorded bilingual instructions for the centre that students could use if they were unsure about what to do. I really liked this idea of a Help Centre because it provides support to those who may not have the strongest language skills. Creating this centre also helped me work on Competency 6 because it took a lot of organization and planning. When I was working on it, I wanted to make it as realistic as possible, so I though a lot about how I would introduce it into my classroom. I would set rules and expectations for behaviour at the centre in order to ensure a positive classroom environment that is conducive to learning. Next, learning centres should be routinely used and student should develop the habit of choosing a centre, listening to the instructions, and then completing the activities on their own. That being said, an activity like this one requires supervision, but not direct involvement by the teacher, since the learning should be mostly self-directed.
Training in French Immersion makes me very aware of the importance of Competency 2 because I have to model correct use of the French language for students who are learning the language and trying to perfect their use of it. Many different communication strategies can be used to teach a second language in the classroom. I hope to learn more about online resources targeted at learning a second language. In a previous post, I already talked a little bit about using some translation resources and audio books that can be played in different languages. Other online resources include but are definitely not limited to Allo Prof, CCDMD, Lingolia, Les genres.
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