Are your students struggling to decode French words and sentences, even after months of instruction?You're not alone. Teaching French reading skills, especially decoding, can feel like an uphill battle when your students are relying more on memory or pictures than actual sound knowledge. If you're looking for an engaging, effective...
French Decodable Books: A Stress-Free Way to Teach Complex Sounds
Teaching complex sounds using French decodable books doesn’t have to feel overwhelming — especially for your young or struggling readers. If you've ever introduced a tricky sound like “ou”, “in”, or “eau” and been met with blank stares (or an emotional shut down), you're not alone. These sounds can feel...
How to Boost French Reading Comprehension Without Pictures
Have you ever watched a student “read” a page perfectly… only to realize they weren’t actually reading the words at all? If you’ve taught early French readers, you’ve likely seen it: the heavy reliance on pictures to guess at what the text might say. French reading comprehension isn't always as...
Need An Effective Activity to Help Your French Primary Students Decode New Words?
If you remember my blog post last week, I took a few moments to talk about why giving our students time to practice decoding (reading sound by sound) and encoding (writing sound by sound) is so important for primary students. Understanding decoding and encoding helps with reading skills, phonemic awareness...
Four French Stories Your Students Will Love This Spring
We all know that reading French stories aloud to your students is an excellent way for them to become familiar with the French language—not just the words, but also the nuances of pronunciation and intonation. However, did you know that re-reading a read aloud multiple times can bring even more...
A Simple Blending Activity to Add to Your French Phonics Routine
Let’s talk about blending French sounds a bit today with this engaging blending activity! It’s no secret that, in order to learn to read, our students need to learn how to take a few sounds, string them together, and “say them fast” to turn them into words. It’s also no...
How to Boost Comprehension as Your French Primary Students Decode
Let's talk about reading decoding and comprehension today. Now that the Science of Reading is becoming more and more popular, and we are learning more about how our students’ brains work as they learn to read, we know that we need to better teach our French primary students to decode....
How to Use French Decodable Books to Teach Your Students to REALLY Read
Have you ever had this problem while using levelled, non- decodable books during guided reading with your French primary students? Your students are reading along, using their sight word knowledge, and then they get to the end of the sentence. There, they see a huge word that is something that...
The Best Kind of Word Searches for Early Readers
As a kid, I loved all kinds of word games, word searches, activity packs, etc. I would spend HOURS filling out books full of them. I am so excited to see my four year old daughter begin to enjoy them, too. That is why I decided to make these special...
Take Home Reading Bags Rotating: How to NOT Lose Your Mind!
My first year teaching, I remember switching out the guided reading books in my students’ take home reading bags was the BANE of my existence. Every Monday, I would try to find an activity my students could do independently that would take enough time for me to take out their...