Monday, September 3, 2012

French Freebie

I have been working away, trying to prepare my rooms. I have meetings over the next two days and then school starts with the kiddos on Thursday. 

Looking ahead to the rest of this first week, I have mostly french classes. Since there are only two days this week, I don't want to start anything labour intensive. I also like to get to know my kids a little bit better.

So the first couple of days we will be doing some fun activities. I made up this cute Introduction Sheet for our bulletin boards. I plan on collecting them and reading the information, without the name, allowing the students to try and guess their classmates. 

Click here to get the freebie.
We will also be doing a French-English Dictionary search. We have cute picture dictionaries, so I used them to write out easy to find English words. They need to find the French words to match. Each section is divided into the topic page where the words can be found. I plan on letting them work in partners for this activity, since I know we do not have enough dictionaries for each person to have their own.

Well, that is all for now. I will post pictures of my rooms when they are done.

See you soon!





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Saturday, September 1, 2012

A New Adventure

What a summer! Today is September the first and this summer has FLOWN! Along with moving 2000km home, we were in two weddings, did a Pre-War car tour weekend, AND I managed to apply for many jobs, interview for four and finally snag one on TUESDAY. Yup, school starts this week. Eeek!

My new job is teaching Music and French in two different schools. I start every morning in one school and then drive 15 minutes to the other school to finish my days. I will have a total of about 90 students at both schools in grades primary to six. I will teach Music to all grades and French to grades four to six.

This means that I have three classrooms to decorate (I have separate French and Music rooms at one school). I have taught Music as a specialist before, but not French. I have taught French to my own students in Ontario. The whole concept is a little overwhelming! But classes don't begin until Thursday, so we only have two days this week to worry about, so that helps. 

Here are a few before pics of my rooms.

 School #1: Multipurpose room. This room is used by others when I am not there, so I only really get about half of the room to decorate, etc. Three big tables with chairs for French (I only have about 14 students at a time here).
 School #1: View from the other side. This open space will be the music side of the room. This school is also very picky about things being stuck on the walls. They insist you stick to bulletin boards to appease the Fire Inspectors.
 School #2: Music Room. Big open space... with four large columns. Still, it is a great room. In the basement, so I won't disturb anyone with our "noise"! Piano in the corner.
School #2: Full set of Ukeleles. I might just have to teach myself to play! lol There is also about a half set of guitars, so I will need to wrap my head around that.









I forgot to take before pics of my French room at School #2. It was a storage room, so I pulled in my husband and he helped me clean it out and move furniture. It's a huge room, but the back third is still full of "stuff" that the admin team is going to sort through by the end of September, to make things neater!

I am really excited and really nervous taking on this new job. The staff at both schools seem really supportive and nice. I even have a French teacher from a neighbour school who is willing to sit down and go through curriculum with me! I LOVE small towns!

I will be posting more "specials"-type lessons and strategies here now, as that is my new world. I have learned there are not a lot of blogs dedicated to that area of the education world, so hopefully mine will help someone!

See you soon!


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