Worksheets can be great for scaffolding reading and writing activities in French class, but there are plenty of paperless ways to engage your students too! I’m sharing nine activities for French language learning and three ideas to expand students’ understanding of French cultures.
I love poetry and I want to share how I break down my poetry unit and teach different poetic forms. The upper elementary and middle school years are a great time to dive in and get kids excited about poetry!
I love how whole-class read alouds level the playing field and help build community by letting all the kids share a reading experience. These are some of the books that my fifth-graders have loved best!
I’ve had a few conversations now with educators who firmly believe that their classrooms should be ‘English Only’ zones. We have to stop doing this!
In my first two years of teaching, I made the mistake of marking everything myself… and I mean everything! Don’t make the same mistakes!
It’s important to me that my students learn more than just the core subjects. I try to be intentional about putting routines into place that promote good health.
About three years ago, I moved to a new city. It wasn’t far from where I’d grown up, but a few months in I started feeling really lonely. My husband and I had left the church where we had gone for years and I wasn’t feeling connected in our new one. That changed overnight when we joined a Life Group, and I am so thankful!
In my first year of teaching, I was terrified of teaching art. It was a subject I had always struggled with and that a few of the kids had already decided they HATED. Thankfully, I was able to find some art activities that everyone could be happily engaged in!
When I first started teaching, I didn’t quite know how to approach the drama section of our art curriculum. We would do a few skits, occasionally play a version of Bus Stop where one kid had to make another laugh, and call it a day. I wanted to breathe some life into our drama activities and make things fun again. Improv games were a perfect fit!
When we transitioned rather abruptly to online school last Spring, I wanted to make sure that I kept my students connected with one another in our new virtual classroom. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that, but I knew two things right away:
1) I was NOT going to teach in my meetings.
2) My class meetings needed to be about connection and shared experiences.
I’m a grade five teacher in beautiful B.C. I love teaching fifth graders because they’re old enough to have big conversations but still eager to have fun and use their imaginations. In the classroom, I love talking about social justice, engaging in hands-on math, and sharing great books. At home, you can probably find me creating resources for teachers, reading in a chair by the window, or buying more books.