Thursday, April 25, 2013

Moroccan Food Festival

'Best lunch ever!'  That's exactly what I heard from one of my students about our Moroccan food festival in class this week, and she wasn't even speaking to me!  My students are finishing up a unit on Morocco and I wanted to allow them to have a fun way to further experience what they have been learning about.  I carefully chose recipes that my students would be able to make (Some had parental help) that would be easy enough and not too expensive to make and also "youth friendly".  The "secret" to Moroccan cooking is in the spices but these are easily found at our local grocery stores. We ate "family style" in the classroom and sat around a large table made by pushing together many of our desks. Since utensils are not typically used in Morocco my students knew they would have to use their "bread" to help eat their food. We had such an amazing time! Try it out!  It was so much fun!

For the recipes used:  Recipes of Morocco 

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Practising Reflexive Verbs?

Mr. Bean - getting up late for the dentist on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VumrpkL6RS0

This is a great video for humour and for practising "reflexive verbs"!  Today I used this to review how to use reflexive verbs in the passé composé.  After much laughter, the students viewed the video while making a list of what verbs they could use to retell the story.  Afterwards, they were to write the story in the passé composé using the reflexive verbs pertinent to the story.  They will later read their paragraphs aloud to me. 

Monday, April 15, 2013

Faisons des achats en France!

If you can't go shopping in Paris,  France the next best thing is to go on a "virtual shopping spree"!  On-line shopping is becoming an everyday occurence for many people and even my own son does this on a regular basis.  Although not from a Parisien store he certainly shops as diligently as anyone who would go into a store at the mall!  Galeries Lafayettes a very popular department store in France also has an on-line shopping site where my students did their own shopping today with "virtual euros".  :)  Although they certainly could not finish the activity that is found at my store within an hour, they certainly had a great time trying to do so.  "I still need shoes!" - "Are you comfortable spending almost $300 on boots?"  - These are only two of the comments that I heard my students making while I glanced and listened around the room.  The chatter was totally "on task" and they were having a great time at the same time.  "Would you really wear that camping?" and the comments continued.  "This is the kind of work I like to do.  It's not like work at all!"  What better way to have students talk about your lesson than like that?  :)  Give it a try!

Shopping in Paris, France - an internet activity