“C’est un… chapeau?” Your student looks up, hopeful. You gently redirect: “Essaie encore. Qu’est-ce que tu vois au début du mot?” If you teach early French readers, you know this moment well. Students guess based on the picture, the first letter, or a familiar word they’ve memorized—anything but actually decoding...
Launching Reading Groups in French Kindergarten with Confidence
Starting reading groups in maternelle can feel mega overwhelming. You want your students to learn how to read, and not just memorize or guess. You want your lessons to be engaging and effective. And if you’re working in French, you know there aren’t many plug-and-play tools that align with the...
How to Effectively Teach Rhymes to Your French Primary Students
Teaching your French primary students how to rhyme as well as the importance of rhymes will give them a gift that they can use for the rest of their lives. Learning rhymes at a young age will provide them with a tool to better express themselves and help them understand...
10 FREE Resources for Teaching the Alphabet en français
I'm sure that we can all agree that learning the alphabet en français is super important for our French Kindergarten students. I am also finding that, since the pandemic, a review for my first grade students in September each year is also now essential! In maternelle especially, some students come...
Homework Activities In the Primary Grades: Should You Be Sending It?
Homework... to send it or not to send it in the primary grades? Do you send homework activities in kindergarten? What about in grade one? Over the years, I have tried a variety of things, and thought a lot about homework activities in the primary grades. What I send home...
The Best Way to Structure Your Writing Block
How many times have you found yourself diving into teaching writing in the primary grades only to be greeted with lots of raised hands and not a lot of actual writing? Probably more times than you can count, if you’re anything like me! This post provides an overview of one...
Putting my guided reading groups together
Bonjour! I am coming up to the end of our second term, and despite the plethora of snow days, being on work to rule here in Nova Scotia since December, protests and a (one-day) strike, I have been thinking a lot about guided reading lately. Work to rule means that...
My favourite French music to play in the classroom
Do you play mainstream French music in your classroom? Looking for some new songs to add to your Youtube playlist? As you may know, I teach in a francophone school. We are in rural Nova Scotia, in a minority community - French is rarely spoken in our community and many...
Notre routine de calligraphie
Do you teach handwriting and proper letter formation to your kindergarten students? Kindergarteners need LOTS of practice correctly forming their letters! It may not seem like a big deal if your students start at the top or start at the bottom or form their letters exactly right, but... it is! Read...
La lecture guidée en maternelle – How to Teach Your Students to Look at the First Letter
Teaching students to read is a complicated process! There are sooo many things that need to be happening in their little brains in order for them to become successful, independent readers. We need our students to both learn and use a whole bunch of problem-solving strategies in order to figure out...