Are you looking for video clips that connect students with current events, see things from their perspective, and help them do so in French? Well, CBC’s webzine MAJ is a great resource!
There are a number of topics covered here and it is easy to change the speed of the audio, hear different accents to raise your students’ awareness of dialects and accents, and the videos are wonderful conversation starters for in class discussions.
In my classes we have used some of the environment videos as a way of introducing a topic, starting a unit, start off brainstorming, sharing ideas and guiding us to other topics that might be related.
Students have been able to listen to accents that are different from mine, but also hear a few that have similarities. This has led to conversations and more awareness to the variety of accents in Canada and abroad.
The fact that videos can be slowed down or played at normal speed has been helpful for students of all abilities, and then the URL is easy to post on our school online ports to enable students to access is outside of school.
Friday, October 7 marked the ACSI Teacher Conference 2022 in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada.
This was an opportunity for me to share with fellow educators the research I have been doing over the last 2.5 years as I have studied culture, identity, and language acquisition. The goals for the session were to share the researchers I have been reading, the theories that are being discussed in our field, and to give some examples of how we can incorporate these into our classrooms so that we can go beyond grammar and vocabulary to include the vast culture of the Francophone world, as well as prepare our students for a plurilingual and pluracultural world.
The 2022-2023 school year is just taking off! Lesson plans and unit goals to be uploaded in the coming months.
I’m currently in Montréal, Québec for three weeks as I complete a course related to my M.Ed. Besides meeting my cohort, who I have been learning with for 2 years now via Zoom, I have really enjoyed walking around and discovering the city.
As I walk, I pay attention to how the shop windows are dressed up or down, the way slogans are written, I pay attention to what people around me are saying and how they are saying it (example “ouais!”). I also pay attention to graffiti and murals. To be honest between doorways, bees, and streets, I likely take as many photos of painted walls.
What I’ve noticed in Montréal is there is a strong creative vibe, there is also a vibe that is calling out for justice. Specifically speaking, I have noticed a few murals that cry out the injustice experienced by the Indigenous women and girls in Canada.
This, like many other topics that are woven into the history of Canada, is raw, and is difficult. A question teachers may have is how can we present this topic to our students in a way that is respectful, that brings them into the conversation, and also age appropriate (as some of you may teach younger students).
As a high school teacher, I have been talking about May 5 and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls for years now. I can do that. They have the capacity and usually are mature enough to recognize this is a serious topic and one that deserves respect. Primary teachers should take into consideration the age of your students and how you would approach it. However, I don’t believe it means it’s a topic that can’t be discussed with young students. Like with the topic of residential schools, it should be approached with care.
For May 5, I usually hang red dresses around my classroom, this is a change to the class environment students notice right away and so they begin to have questions and chat amongst themselves about what it might be fore. I can start conversations in French with them with questions such as “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a de different dans notre salle de classe?” “Pourquoi pensez-vous que les robes rouges sont utilisées?”
This week in my course we discussed the different ways of responding to something, like in this case an idea or an experience. These are physically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually. You can ask your students, « Quand vous êtes entrés dans la classe, et vous avez vus les robes, qu’est-ce que vous avez senti? Avez-vous eu une réaction émotive? Avez-vous eu une réaction physique? Voulez-vous la décrire pour nous? » And here is the opportunity for you to help students find the words in French for the answers they are giving. They can use English words as they need, and you can help them to fill in the blanks with the French words. Here the students are thinking of a topic that is complex and complicated, using the French they know and hearing and seeing you model the French they are grasping for in their answers.
I can’t wait to show these photos to my classes and ask them if they have noticed such murals in our community. Think of the conversations we can have on whether they feel this is an important topic to be presented on a mural, perhaps there are other ways they think would be more effective. I can’t wait to open the space for the students to think about this topic, the impact it may have on our own community, and what they can do to advocate for this topic. Students will be able to work together, practice their French together and with the teacher circulating they can be helped to fill in the gaps with the French they are grasping for.
To learn more about Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls:
Interview on DissectEd with Dr. Michaela Keegan Jedele
This week I am thrilled to be the guest of Dr. Michaela Keegan Jedele on her podcast DissectEd.
Michaela is currently doing a series speaking with teachers who find joy in teaching especially taking into account, and in spite of, the world events of the past few years.
I came across Michaela’s TikTok account shortly after one of my students said “Mrs. Drew, you need to be on TikTok”. From my first silly videos with students my followers have grown. More importantly, my teacher connections grew. I have seen what other teachers do in their classrooms. I’ve seen things I look forward to implementing next year and things that aren’t my style. I try to post messages of funny community building things that happen with my students (drinking corn milk for example, or tagging one of my favourite French Canadian singers so my students didn’t have to do a grammar test), and always want to encourage other teachers in their teaching practice.
Like Michaela, I have also seen and heard the struggles educators across North America are facing, the investments they make into their teaching and students, and the despair some have that have led to them leaving the profession. I respect teachers no matter whether they decide to stay or change directions.
Michaela reached out to me saying she enjoys my content and hoped I would agree to an interview. I was starstruck! She is someone I follow on TikTok! And she was reaching out to me! We each have stories, we all are on journeys, we all have something to contribute to the conversation about education, community, and growth. I am so honoured I was asked to contribute to her podcast.
Michaela is presenting a free summer seminar, “Self Taught: Teach the year you want”. It takes place online, with three evening sessions, starting July 14. The keynote speaker will be Daryl Williams (@mypursuitofexcellence – TikTok). You can easily register on her website. See you there!
I’ve been a language teacher for 16 years now, and I will admit that two words that automatically come to mind when I think about language learning are ‘grammar’ and ‘vocabulary’. I often share with my students that I was never very good at remembering vocabulary on quizzes. I dreaded those quizzes; I still do when I am taking a course and there is vocabulary to memorize. Having said that, I also share the importance of broadening our vocabulary. Grammar on the other hand, when not being tested on it, I love! But should these two items take centre stage as we plan and teach our lessons? After much research by myself and others, I would say a firm ‘no’.
The centre of our lessons should be curiosity, discovery, and patience. Understanding a language goes beyond knowing how to conjugate verbs and identify random nouns, rather, it is understanding a people, valuing their perspective, and ideally, being able to interact with people from a different culture than one’s own.
In fact, this idea of being able to interact between cultures has been called ‘Intercultural Communicative Competency’ or ICC. A researcher by the name of Michael Byram is known as the originator of this theory in 1997, and it is his research on which many other researchers have based their studies. In this theory, there are 5 ‘savoirs’. You can often see and hear Byram being cited in podcasts, on websites, and in articles. See below for a list of these.
ICC is “the ability to navigate intercultural differences in order to communicate successfully and can be defined as a set of knowledge, skills and attitude which are considered essential for successful intercultural communication”. (Byram, 1997). ICC has been successfully used in both K-12 schools and post-secondary schools around the globe. I have personally been looking at my units for my high school Core French classes to see where I can put less emphasis on the grammar and vocabulary and more on the discovery and inquiry of other Francophone cultures. I’ve included below a well written article by Byram, Gribkova, and Starky (2002) which explains ICC well and gives examples to frequently asked questions about implementation in the classroom.
As always, please reach out should you have resources to suggest or questions about today’s blog topic.
Mme. Drew
References
Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Byram. M., Gribkova, B., & Starkey, H. (2002). Developing the Intercultural Dimension inLanguage Teaching: A Practical Introduction for Teachers. Strasbourg: Council in Europe
