Our « phrases fantastiques » Routine

Has this ever happened to you?

I LOVE TpT (obviously), and I LOVE buying resources from there and supporting fellow teachers.

But, sometimes, I buy something, and I think I know what I’m doing with that resource, and then I stumble across a blog post or a social media post from the actual teacher-author and realize that I’ve been totally off base, and they are using it in a WAY better way.

Sometimes, when we create resources, we think that the best way to use them is super obvious.

But, of course, it’s really only super obvious to the person who created it, haha!

Have you ever experienced that?

Since I started Club du primaire, my membership for French primary teachers, I’ve had this happen a few times.

I post a video training on one of my resources, and everyone goes “Oh my gosh, I NEVER thought of using it like that!”

OOPS!

One such resource is my Phrases fantastiques resource (Not sure what I’m talking about? I posted about them last week – click here to read!)

Since that resource is such a big seller, and it can help your students is SO MANY ways, I want to be sure that everyone is getting their money’s worth and using it to its full potential!

So, today, I will be sharing with you my EXACT Phrases fantastiques routine, start to finish.

Let’s dive in!

(Side note: if you don’t already own my Phrases fantastiques resource, but you want to, you can see all of the themes in one big bundle on TPT, right here. You can click on any of the individual resources inside the bundle to purchase them separately, too!)

Here is a peek at our Phrases fantastiques routine:

Then, I ask them for the second word, we find it, etc. If they are restless, I will sometimes place the words myself. I will just point to each sight word, one at a time, until they tell me that yes, that’s the right one!

When it comes to adding a vocabulary word, I always choose a few myself to start. I might start with some easy ones, to build confidence in my kiddos, and help them have more brainpower to focus on their new sight words. I also add the punctuation at the end (a period, a question mark, or an exclamation mark).

I get a few students to come up and read the sentence, using a « bâton magique » to point to each word as they read them. Then, I will switch something up. Sometimes just the vocabulary word, sometimes the article as well. And, sometimes, I will switch out the punctuation, if I’m really trying to be tricky!

I always tell them that I *know* I can trick them this time, and they get really excited to prove me wrong!

What About the Tricky Vocabulary Words?

For the trickier vocabulary words that my students aren’t all familiar with yet, I might ask stronger students with a knack for vocabulary to come up and read those ones first, and then get any students who might struggle to repeat the same one.

I want everyone to be successful, and our students improve quickly when they feel confident. Even my students who know barely any French are usually able to repeat if I chose them to come up closer to the end.

Another trick I do if no one seems to know the word is to “accidentally” let the word slip. My students are always eagerly listening for me to slip up like that!

If I put I tricky word, I will say something like: « Je sais que PERSONNE ne va savoir le mot cache-oreilles! »… and then, of course, they all know it as they have just heard me say it! Everyone starts piping up « je sais, c’est cache-oreilles! »… and little do they know, but that extra repetition is helping cement that new word into their little brains ;)

After a few switches, I ask my chef du jour to come up and make the final switch. They put a new vocabulary card of their choice, and a punctuation mark.

We don’t get to every vocabulary card each day – that’s fine! The sentence that the chef du jour builds is the sentence that we will write together. They also get to ask a friend to come read their sentence.

Writing the Sentence

We all write the sentence together at the tapis, too!

To facilitate this, everyone goes and gets a clipboard and a pencil. While they are doing that, I make it “snow” by basically dropping the recording sheets (included with each theme) onto their carpet squares. This is faster than having a student hand them out, and also we practice saying « IL neige » instead of saying « ÇA neige », aka one of my biggest pet peeves, ha!

Students come back to the tapis with their supplies, clip their paper on, and write their names. That’s IT. Once they write their name, they do unicorn or narwhal with their pencil on their head. That’s how I know they are ready!

One word at a time, one letter at a time, we write the sentence. I ask my students where I start (here? here?), and what the first letter of the first word is.

I remind them that it’s a lettre majuscule, and we always start at the top. We write each letter one by one, until that word is done. Then I ask them what comes next.

A space comes next!

I show them how to do a finger space. Then we continue. We write the whole sentence, left to right.

If I run out of room on my line, I ask them to tell me what to do. We all write differently, so we don’t all run out of room at the same time, but we do our best to remember where to go when we do run out.

At the end of the sentence, I ask them how we know that the sentence is finished – what do we need to put? A punctuation mark! We add it. 

Finally, we draw a picture to match. I usually try to incorporate someone in the class, but also have it make sense for the sentence we are working on.

So if our sentence is « J’aime le cadeau », I might draw me, with a present, and a lot of hearts to show that I like it.

If we were doing « Le cadeau est grand », I might draw a tiny version of a student in my class and then a huge present beside them.

I explain how adding the student makes it really clear for my reader just how big the present is! Even if they don’t know how to read, they could probably guess what I’m trying to tell them!

Finishing Up

When finished, the sheets go in a cahier. My students put their own sheets in their cahiers. We don’t usually colour our pictures at this time. After students start to finish up, I put on a Just Dance for the transition.

If students want to finish up their pictures during some of the dance time, that’s fine – they may also choose to quickly colour them then. They know that after the dance is over, we will be moving on to something else, so they are pretty quick. Papers must be put away by the time the song is over. 

We do this activity first thing in the morning, after our first few minutes of « communication orale ». To extend our « communication orale » block a bit into this activity, I should mention that I do like to get them to do a turn and talk sometimes, where they will say a few versions of the sentences we build to a partner.

This is sprinkled in between getting a student to come up and read it with the bâton.

So, if I had Jayden come up and read a sentence and he read it correctly and clearly, I might say « wow! Incroyable! Tout le monde, tourne et dis à ton partenaire ce que Jayden vient de lire! » and they would turn and repeat what he had read.

Just a little extra practice to get EVERYONE saying the sentence structure + new vocabulary word correctly, and keep them engaged and listening actively!

What About the Mini-books?

The Phrases fantastiques resources that I’ve created do all include two mini-books, that practice two of the target sentences from each pack even more.

But, in my class, we don’t do the mini-books together at this time – they aren’t part of my “whole group” routine at all, actually. But, if you’re curious about how & when I use them, you can read all about it in *this blog post*!

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