For Educators
Literacy Centers
Ladybug's new home
In my classroom I find that students are most engaged when they are given the ability to make choices about their learning. In order to accomplish this with a 3-grade split class I have been working towards implementing daily literacy centers. This allows students to work at their own levels, in a meaningful way, while giving me the freedom to do mini-lessons and guided reading with smaller groups. I am currently introducing the "Daily 5" to my class and so far it has been very successful! I would love to share ideas with other educators using literacy centers in their classrooms, so feel free to send me a comment on the "contact me" page. The most challening part of literacy centers is finding enough books in French at the appropriate level for my students. I am working on building my classroom library. I've been printing out books from Reading AtoZ and laminating the covers, so they stand-up to being well used. However, I advise being careful with the Reading AtoZ books as some of the translations may have grammatical errors. I have started creating my own books and audiobooks so that my students have more appropriate reading material to choose from but this is a slow process. I have also found some resources and supplies that I will be adding to my wishlist.
Lapbooks
Lapbooks are like scrapbooks for school. They are a great way for students to show their learning and make excellent evidence for student-led conferences. Lapbooks are also a lot of fun to make! This term my students made lapbooks detailing our "Roadtrip Across Canada." For every Social Studies lesson I created a PowerPoint presentation about a province or region of Canada which was followed by various kinds of worksheet activities. As students completed each activity we added the pieces into their lapbooks. They were so engaged in the activities we did that they were reluctant to stop even for recess and gym! We made recipe cards, learned about famous explorers, compared aboriginal houses, practiced printing the provinces and their capitals, learned how to remember the Great Lakes (HOMES), compared daily life in our Northern BC town to life in my coastal Vancouver Island town, drew landforms and more.
Creating lapbooks was quite planning intensive for me as I pre-cut the booklet and created the worksheets from scratch. It was worth it to see my students so excited about the project. Here are some links:
Creating lapbooks was quite planning intensive for me as I pre-cut the booklet and created the worksheets from scratch. It was worth it to see my students so excited about the project. Here are some links:
Songs
Chante comme si personne n'écoutait!
As a classically trained opera singer, songs and music play a major role in my personal life and in my classroom. Students in my class love to sing and songs are always part of our daily routines. Sometimes songs help us get the 'ants' out of our pants and sometimes songs help us calm down and relax after a busy morning. Singing is an excellent way to aquire a second language. This academic paper also discusses the benefits of using songs and music to teach French Immersion learners.
Songs, Music and Rhymes:
Useful Links
|
Performers:
|
Under Investigation
- Jump Math
- Edmonton Public School Board publications in French - Math, Science, Socials
- International Baccalaureate - Primary Years Program
- Fred Jones - Classroom Management
- Nouvelle orthographe francaise
- Learn Alberta
- Marzano - best instructional practices, summary of his big 9
- John Hattie - New Zealand
- Math: Peter Lilljedahl, Marian Small, John van de Walle