Chanson de dimanche... volume #2

Welcome back!  This week, I wanted to take a look at the French version of an old song that the kids still recognize.

If you have any Gossip Girl fans in your class, they may have even heard this version before...These boots are made for walkin'... or in French, Ces Bottes sont faites pour marcher.


This is the French version released the same year as Nancy Sinatra originally sang it in English in 1966.

Here is a fun video lip dub that your students might enjoy watching instead of just looking at the album cover.

Here's what is included in my free download today...

1. The whole set of lyrics (to use as an answer key)
2. A cloze passage with 11 present tense verbs removed and provided in a word bank (includes aller, être, dire, savoir, and a couple of common regular verbs)
3. A challenging cloze passage for immersion with the future tense verbs removed, and a reminder to be listening both for futur proche and futur simple
4. A page with the lyrics broken into sections to be cut into cards & placed in order as a simple listening comprehension practice activity.
5. A page with vocabulary words removed that might be linked to telling the truth or lying, which might be tied into character education in French, or a thematic unit about honesty.

Even more ideas.... when learning about direct objects, you could provide English versions of certain phrases, have the students locate them in the song lyrics  and then compare them to identify the structure.  This song could also be used to practice certain adverbs (souvent, jamais, rien). Other thematic links could be to a clothing unit, or in the upper grades, when talking about relationships.

If you have other ideas for how you'd like to use this song with your class, please tell my readers below!

Great Film Resources (Subscription Giveaway!)

I was very excited to learn about a new, up and coming film resource available online. I love movies, both in my personal life, and to use in the classroom. And I'm all about "leveling the playing field" since allowing more people to get their ideas out into the world and have some recognition for them benefits everyone, in my opinion.

All images in this post used courtesy of indieflix.com

IndieFlix is an on-demand service and has thousands of films. They've given me a free trial subscription and stay tuned for how you can try them out for free as well! IndieFlix wants to spread the word out about a new release documentary called Finding Kind, that's specific to female bullying.

I'd like to tell you about a few other resources there though as well, including one that's a great tie in for social justice and global awareness in the classroom and what you might be able to use in your FSL classroom.

What started as a road-trip documentary across the U.S. to talk about how girls - and women - treat one another ultimately morphed into "Kind Campaign", an internationally recognized movement, documentary, and school assembly program. Finding Kind is written and directed by Lauren Parsekian from Orange County, California. The way girls treat each other is significant to her and finding a way to stop girl bullying in schools has been an important issue for as long as she can remember. Lauren was one of the "popular girls" in middle school. But after her clique turned against her, school became a source of stress, depression, and even frequent thoughts of suicide. Through high school and college, Lauren witnessed the same kind of "mean girl" behaviour around her. As a film student, Lauren realized the enormous good documentaries can do and decided to apply her passion for film to this issue and make a documentary about the way girls treat each other and the way it affects us.  For those of you who want the Hollywood connection, Lauren is marrying Aaron Paul (star of “Breaking Bad”) some time this month.

The other great new film that's available is called Living on One and it's another documentary about what it's like to live on just a dollar a day in Guatemala. You can check out the trailer here. Not all of indieflix's films are documentaries though.

And guess what?  YES, there are French movies included!  Currently, there are 20 movies of varying length from France (with 7 still included once you select the "all ages" criteria). The shortest of these is a cute 4-minute animation called Trevor about a little boy who can't sleep.  It's narrated by a single voice, making it relatively easy to get accustomed to for second language learners and it is subtitled in English if you choose. Although you cannot search by language, you can search by country of origin, as well as explore by themes. There is also some age-filtering options, although standards may vary from country to country, school board to school board, or ever teacher to teacher, so you are always the best judge of what is appropriate for your own students!

There are also Canadian independent films, which I think is tons of fun!  I watched an interesting thing called System of Units that would take less than a period to view and could be used with any kind of futuristic literature, as well as when talking about reliance on social networking or even just human relationships overall.

So how can you check out IndieFlix for yourself? Here's the link to their subscription information. I'm SO stoked because IndieFlix is also allowing me to give away 10 2-month subscriptions. You don't have to be an educator to win, so feel free to pass on a link to this blog to your film aficionado cousin, neighbour or nephew. Please note that the subscriptions must be activated by July 1, so they are perfect for winding up your last few weeks of school or just for your perusal over the summer months.

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Chanson de Dimanche... volume #1

Happy Mother's Day!

I've recently been inspired to make French music a more regular routine in my classroom. La Chanson de Dimanche has been born!

Students have always enjoyed most activities I've tried that incorporated music, yet I still hear from my students that they wouldn't DARE to audition with a French song for our talent contest, or related high-profile school activities that certain teachers at my middle school arrange.

I think this is where I say "The opinions expressed...."

This year, I used an activity I found on the TES Connect website that went over REALLY well with my students. What on earth is that acronym, you ask? Think of it like the Ontario Educational Resource Bank is to teachers in Ontario bur for the UK. Except, here in Ontario we restrict people who are not employed by a publicly-funded school board from accessing the OERB, and TES is available for ANYONE to join (yes, for free!) There are lots of great FFL resources to be found there, including some submitted by Canadian teachers, and teachers of other subjects (English, Math, Science... why not?) should definitely check it out too!

So what did I use? You're dying to know!  I can tell!  I taught my students how "si clauses" in French use the imparfait rather than the conditional when talking about hypothetical situations. We used this resource (I'll try to link directly to it, but if that doesn't work, search for "conditionnel chanson" once you've logged in to TES, and be sure you're searching in the Resources, not the Jobs section. It was shared by SkierMeetsBoarder)

Still image taken from "Si tu n'existais pas" video by Willy Denzey

The original video link provided did not work, but I found an alternative one pretty easily. Maybe it's because I found a different version of the video, but I found that we didn't have the last verse SkierMeetsBoarder had provided in his (or her?) handout.  Here's the version I edited to make it work for me. The "Learning Goal" stuck with most students right away, and almost all of them with a tiny bit of classroom reinforcement of the concept. One student shared the video we watched on his facebook page (LOVE that!) and some of them are still singing or humming the song regularly. My students actually just included "Si tu n'existais pas" by Willy Denzey on their DANCE REQUEST LIST... not even joking!  Both classes that I played it for, and they decided this independently and separately!

Since I'd mentioned that it was a remake, some students inquired about the original, so I shared that video too. They weren't nearly as impressed, to say the least. LOL

So, about this feature... I hope to make it a weekly thing to be released each weekend, hence the name La Chanson de Dimanche. It will build up my bank of activities to use in class. That's my ulterior motive,but feel free to benefit from what I share as well!. At some point, it would be great to make this a weekly linky party, but alas, my French-teacher-blogger network still isn't all that strong, and I'd hate to host a linky party where I was the only participant!

Also, I wish to mention that I came up with the name by myself.  Then I did a little searching, and it doesn't seem there are any other bloggers out there on the "interweb" already using that term.  I did find however, the Chanson du dimanche project, which is two musicians who have challenged themselves to put out a new song every Sunday.  Kind of cool... so check that out too!  I'm hoping that the world of francophone musical appreciation is big enough for the both of us! I'm also not sure if they are still actively doing this, but I certainly won't be writing (or playing and singing!) my own songs any time soon!

Edmodo ... Should I Stay or Should I Go-Go?

This year, I launched into a new technology experience, which I planned to share with you a little earlier, but we teachers know how these things go! My classes each have a group set up on Edmodo. Overall, I think it has been a good thing, but as my board's position on technology and 21st century education changes, I'm not totally certain I'll use it again next year.

I owe a shout-out to my friend and fellow French teacher Dominique, who told me about this tool after attending a workshop at the Spring OMLTA conference last year presented by Nadine Pharand, a French teacher in the Kingston area, whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet.

Some positives from this experience:

I am a teacher ALL THE TIME, and I don't generally mind getting a message from a student at 9 p.m. asking for clarification on something they are struggling with at that moment.  I may not always answer right then, but at least he or she has gotten it off his or her chest, and I've got a heads up that someone needs a little extra support with a concept.

There is a paperless aspect, in that students can submit assignments right through the platform, and can receive a mark and comments back the same way.  I learned a lot about how this can work this year, although I definitely did not leverage it in the way I had hoped.

The student collaboration that I saw happen at times was astounding. One student found and shared plays performed by other students to bring to life the French novel we were reading together.

Students shared pictures of the textbook (and so did I, once I caught on to this trick!) in cases where we did not have enough copies of a resource for everyone to bring home... and they didn't have to lug a textbook to refer to just one diagram or paragraph of information! For a recent quiz, one student made a pretty comprehensive study sheet of her own accord, and after I'd looked it over, I suggested she consider sharing it with her classmates.  They were VERY thankful and some even got a perfect score on the quiz!

Students can also submit attachments, so voice recordings can be passed along to the teacher this way too.  I used that feature only a couple of times this year, but it certainly has promise!!

Also, to put some fears to rest, student to student private interaction in NOT possible, so there's little threat of cyber-intimidation or other nasty stuff going on... the students KNOW everything is in the public view of the teacher.


I also use it for professional development & connecting with other teachers, but not as much as I use other platforms (facebook, blogs and Twitter, in that order).

One surprising challenge has been, as I learn to be a French Immersion teacher, how I feel about parents reading what I've written. My fear at the beginning of the year was "What if I make a mistake... or even TWO in one sentence?" but I've let go of this. I label myself a life-long-learner, and fear hampers learning so I just took a couple of deep breaths and dove in!

I have of course paid attention to what the students are posting, and maybe three times deleted silly stuff that didn't add to the conversation there, especially when my rule was that all posts had to be in French.  (I did PM students in English a couple of times when we were dialoguing back & forth and eventually one or the other of us felt that using the second language was hindering the subtleties we wanted to convey.)  I have had parents question whether the use of this tool was worth it. In my opinion, it certainly was. I AM glad that I tried it out this year, and would recommend it to anyone wanting to try out adding a technological interaction component to his or her classroom.

One feature I wish Edmodo had that it does not... the opportunity to give a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to individual comments.  Over the course of the year, it DID add a few possible reactions, but they are rather limited, and not possible to use for individual replies but only on the main message which kicked off a topic. (Basically, yes, I'm saying I want the facebook "Like" and "Share" features added!)

Give ME a thumbs up if you've tried Edmodo, or use another tool you like better, and tell me what it is!

Four Prizes Unclaimed

Although the sale went fairly well for me, no one decided to leave feedback yet, and the three people I chose to win products from my store didn't come across this blog entry, it seems.  Too bad... or maybe I should say Tant pis!

I can't say that I blame anyone who didn't make an effort to leave feedback right now... I think this is becoming a "draggy" part of the year for many of us (even if I still have too many weeks left to slow down too much!) And I didn't yet leave feedback on anything that I purchased, as I haven't had the time to take a closer look, let alone to actually use it yet!


Oh well... I really did love the idea of this giveaway.  Maybe I'll revisit it again in the future, and reselect feedback then to win a prize.  Be sure to follow my blog if you don't want to miss out next time!

Have a great day!