A few years ago, I retired from my position as head of Modern Languages, a bit fearful of the "R" word. But to date, it has been nothing but fun! Canadian law requires school-aged actors to study with a qualified teacher when they’re off-camera. Many of our young actors are in immersion French so I've found a happy little niche, teaching a few days a week as an on-set tutor and moving in inspiring and creative circles! Furthermore, I get to share resources here! Vive la retraite!
A few years ago, I retired from my position as head of Modern Languages, a bit fearful of the "R" word. But to date, it has been nothing but fun! Canadian law requires school-aged actors to study with a qualified teacher when they’re off-camera. Many of our young actors are in immersion French so I've found a happy little niche, teaching a few days a week as an on-set tutor and moving in inspiring and creative circles! Furthermore, I get to share resources here! Vive la retraite!
Designed to help beginners master their ”clothes” vocabulary, this game is for independent work and study buddy activity. Once players have finished matching each vocabulary card with its corresponding picture card, they flip over all the pairs to check their own work. Matching icons on the back of flipped pairs confirm that the task has been well done. Icons that don’t match tell players that it’s time to try again.
This file includes two 28-card decks.
To get an idea of "GET THE PICTURE?” cards work, download the free resource, “GET THE PICTURE? (multiplication game)” at:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/taming-the-6-times-tables-without-tears-get-the-picture-multiplication-game-11309613
Designed to help beginners master their ”animal” vocabulary, this game is for independent work and study buddy activity. Once players have finished matching each vocabulary card with its corresponding picture card, they flip over all the pairs to check their own work. Matching icons on the back of flipped pairs confirm that the task has been well done. Icons that don’t match tell players that it’s time to try again.
This file includes two decks:
"GET THE PICTURE? (Pets and farm animals”) and
"GET THE PICTURE? (Wild animals”).
For a taste of how "GET THE PICTURE?” cards work, download the free resource, "Taming the 6 Times Tables without Tears (GET THE PICTURE? multiplication game)"
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/taming-the-6-times-tables-without-tears-get-the-picture-multiplication-game-11309613
Designed to help beginners master their ”kleren” vocabulary, this game is for independent work and study buddy activity. Once players have finished matching each vocabulary card with its corresponding picture card, they flip over all the pairs to check their own work. Matching icons on the back of flipped pairs confirm that the task has been well done. Icons that don’t match tell players that it’s time to try again.
This file includes two 28-card decks.
To get an idea of how "GET THE PICTURE?” cards work, download the free resource, “GET THE PICTURE? (multiplication game)” at:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/taming-the-6-times-tables-without-tears-get-the-picture-multiplication-game-11309613
If you are a fan of Taboo®, YOU DON’T SAY! might just be the game for you. It can be played in two very different ways.
If your students are confident and articulate, have them play YOU DON’T SAY! like traditional Taboo®. If, however, you have students who are uncomfortable speaking in public, turn the rules upside down. Tell them to use some or all of the words beneath the orange and black banner in their descriptions! This topsy-turvy approach encourages and empowers everyone to participate. You won’t believe what a positive game-changer it is.
This file includes 32 Hallowe’en-themed cards and a template for students to make their own YOU DON’T SAY! deck.
YOU DON’T SAY! is a themed variation of Taboo® that can be played in two very different ways.
If your students are confident and articulate, they can play YOU DON’T SAY! following traditional Taboo® rules. If, however, you have students who are uncomfortable giving clues, turn the rules upside down. Tell them to use some or all of the words beneath the pink and white banner in their descriptions! This topsy-turvy approach encourages and empowers everyone to participate. You won’t believe what a positive game-changer it is.
This file includes 40 “Valentine” cards about friendship, relationships and love. I’ve also appended a template for students to make their own YOU DON’T SAY! deck.
Originally designed as a Modern Language tool, this virtual scavenger hunt encourages even students who are usually reluctant to participate in class to jump right in and to speak in full sentences. You’ll experience the phenomenon of an entire class listening “actively” because no one wants to waste a guess choosing a square from which the gift has already been claimed.
After the oral treasure hunt, assign a handful of co-ordinates for an instant written assignment that will reinforce verb conjugations and vocabulary acquisition.
“Where are my Valentine’s gifts?” has been designed to review virtually any tense. I have appended answer keys for four of them: the present, the simple past, the simple future and the conditional perfect.
In this co-operative review activity, students who have studied Hamlet are asked to match the text on the edges of sixteen triangles to reconstitute the following quotes:
- This above all: to thine own self be true.
- There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
- Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
- To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream . . .
- There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt
of in your philosophy.
- Brevity is the soul of wit.
- I must be cruel only to be kind; thus bad begins, and worse remains behind
- Get thee to a nunnery.
- The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
- O that this too too solid flesh would melt …
- Good night, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
- When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.
- Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
- One may smile and smile and be a villain
- Happy in that we are not overhappy; on Fortune's cap we are not the very button.
- Neither a borrower nor a lender be: for loan oft loses both itself and friend.
To generate “rien que du blabla” in the target language, try using chatterboxes. These two cocottes en papier offer your students relaxed starting points for discussing their “tâches ménagères”.
The “all text” cocotte gives students the security of choosing from a number of pre-fabricated answers. The less prescriptive, illustrated cocotte uses visual prompts to guide their answers.
An “ALL TEXT” cocotte sample:
Question: Quelle tâche ménagère dois-tu faire tous les jours?
Choix de réponses
• Je dois faire mon lit.
• Je dois nourrir le chien et le chat.
• Je dois vider le lave-vaisselle.
An ILLUSTRATED cocotte sample:
Question: “Quelle tâche ménagère fais-tu chaque matin?”
The picture of a bed will prompt answers like, “Je fais mon lit chaque matin.”
A short “tâches ménagères” exercise is also included.
When students match the sentence fragments printed on the edges of the triangles, they will reconstitute the 25 Easter facts and “sculpt” the Easter Bunny’s head.
Although designed as a co-operative activity, the EASTER TRIANGLE puzzle also works well as an enrichment task for individual students.
Here are 7 of the 25 Easter facts embedded in this puzzle:
• Monks made the first pretzels for Lent. They shaped them like arms crossed in prayer!
• A baby rabbit is a “kitten” or a “kit”.
• This is a moai: (image) a giant Easter Island sculpture.
• The Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny are imaginary characters.
• In the movie, HOP, the Easter Bunny’s son wants to leave the family business to drum in a rock band.
• North Americans eat 90 million chocolate bunnies every year!
• A Ukrainian Easter egg decorated with intricate traditional folk designs is called a “pysanka”.
After you’ve introduced LE SUBJONCTIF, here’s an active listening game that will have all your students participating enthusiastically. “LET’S GET TO THE BOTTOM (OR TOP) OF LE SUBJONCTIF” works bilingually and in the target language only. And, thanks to its competitive and repetitive elements, your students will pick up many of the key expressions through the process of osmosis.
To be sure that “LET’S GET TO THE BOTTOM (OR TOP) OF LE SUBJONCTIF” is the right kind of activity for your students, try the free sister resource,“LET’S GET TO THE BOTTOM (OR TOP) OF LES EXPRESSIONS AVOIR”: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/dashboard/resource-management/uploads
In this co-operative review activity, students who have studied A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM match the texts on the edges of sixteen triangles to reconstitute the following quotes:
Sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye, seal me awhile from mine own company.
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear.
The course of true love never did run smooth.
Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Never harm, nor spell nor charm, come our lovely lady nigh.
The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.
Thus have I, Wall, my part dischargèd so. And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.
Come, blade, my breast imbrue. And, farewell, friends. Thus Thisbe ends. Adieu.
Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! Vile thing, let loose.
In the temple, by and by, with us, these couples shall eternally be knit.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact.
Never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it.
We cannot fight for love, as men may do;
we should be wooed and were not made to woo.
When in that moment, so it came to pass, Titania waked and straightway loved an ass.
Sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye, seal me awhile from mine own company.
Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander? I am as fair now as I was erewhile.
Sur les bords de chaque triangle, on trouve soit le début, soit la fin d’un énoncé au sujet de Pâques. Vos étudiants doivent les jumeller afin de reconstituer les 25 énoncés et la tête du lapin de Pâque.
Cette activité coopérative encouragera vos étudiants à se focaliser et à s’entraider pour trouver des faits comme . . .
• Un jeune lapin est un lapereau.
• Dans le film, HOP, le fils du Lapin de Pâques veut devenir batteur dans un groupe de rock.
• Que cherches-tu dans le jardin à Pâques? Des oeufs au chocolat!
• Le lis de Pâques est une fleur blanche.
• La fée des dents & le lapin de Pâques sont des personnages
imaginaires.
Déchiffre ce message: 7 1 9 ! C’est un oeuf!
Students have to match the sentence fragments printed on the edges of the triangles to reconstitute the 25 statements about Easter and to “sculpt” the Easter Bunny’s head. Although designed as a co-operative activity, it will also work well as an enrichment task for individual students.
Suitable for francophone, immersion, and advanced core French students.
To be sure that this activity is right for your students, download the free "futur simple triangle puzzle at:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-6450469
These twelve (I know, I know, I should have done thirteen) illustrated Hallowe'en Vocabulary
bingo cards will work well in your Language Arts or ESL classroom.
Print, laminate and cut out the bingo (GHOST) cards on pages 3 through 8.
Call one of the words or phrases listed under each letter of the Call Sheet,
cycling through G, H, O, S and T until there’s a “bingo” (or in this case, a “ghost”).
Cross out each word as you call it.
In the Trouvé (Les vêtements) game, students try to be the first to find the matching expression on any two cards. The game encourages students to concentrate, to read attentively and to pronounce the thematic vocabulary carefully.
The featured vocabulary includes:
des baskets
des bottes
un chandail de hockey
un chandail jaune
un chapeau
une chaussette violette
des chaussettes dépareillées
des chaussures
une chemise
une cravate
des gants
un imperméable
un jean
une jupe
des mitaines
une mitaine perdue
un pantalon
une robe
un sac à dos
des sous-vêtements
un survêtement
un sweat à capuche
un tee-shirt
une écharpe
To extend the lesson, download the free companion activity, a crossword puzzle illustrated with the same symbols found on the "Trouvé" cards.
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/an-illustrated-crossword-puzzle-to-complement-trouv-les-v-tements-11237465
As your students complete these MOTDOKU6: JOUR DE LA TERRE game grids, they “write out” and learn their Earth Day vocabulary without even realizing it!
The file comprises two 6x6 word sudoku puzzles, a simple version and a slightly more challenging one.
If you’re not sure if this game is right for your students, please do a test run by trying a free MOTDOKU6 puzzle:
MOTDOKU6: LA SAINT-VALENTIN
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12068245
MOTDOKU6: NOËL
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-11448787
MOTDOKU6: JOUR DE LA TERRE comprend deux jeux MOTDOKU simplifiés. Veuillez, s.v.p., téléchargez un MOTDOKU6 gratuit (voir ci-dessus) pour vous assurer que ces jeux conviennent à vos élèves.
Le jeu de NIVEAU 1 fait travailler le vocabulaire suivant.
1 le soleil
2 l’eau
3 les arbres (m.)
4 recyclable
5 le vent
6 la Terre
Le jeu de NIVEAU 2 fait travailler le vocabulaire ci-dessous:
1 un sac réutilisable
2 l’énergie éolienne
3 composter
4 l’énergie solaire
5 renouvelable
6 l’énergie verte
As your students complete these WORDOKU6: EARTH DAY game grids, they “write out” and review their Earth Day vocabulary without even realizing it!
The file comprises two 6x6 word sudoku puzzles, a simple version and a slightly more challenging one.
If you’re not sure if this game is right for your students, please do a test run by trying the free MOTDOKU6 CHRISTMAS puzzle: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-11448792
The LEVEL 1 game uses the following vocabulary:
1 sun
2 water
3 trees
4 recyclable
5 wind
6 Earth
In LEVEL 2, the focus is on the following vocabulary:
1 geothermal energy
2 wind power
3 composting
4 solar power
5 renewable
6 reusable bag
Here are 12 more rebus puzzles for students who enjoyed the free rebus “A little Christmas Rebus to decipher! (The Little Drummer Boy)”:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/another-little-christmas-rebus-to-decipher-6454697
Thanks to their texting skills, today’s kids “get” the principle behind rebus puzzles intuitively.
The “Twelve Christmas Rebus Puzzles” start with simple thematic phrases like “baking gingerbread cookies” and builds to a 3-page invitation to students to make their own rebus. The invitation is, of course, in rebus format!
An activity tailored for the run-up to the holidays.
COUP DE COEUR (jeu tarsia pour la Saint-Valentin) is a cooperative activity that has a lot of heart! Students have to match the sentence fragments and Q and As printed along the edges of the triangles in order to reconstitute the 25 sentences below and to “build” a heart.
CITATIONS ET EXPRESSIONS IDIOMATIQUES
1 Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connalt pas. (Blaise Pascal)
2. On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
3. Le coeur n’est pas une voiture qu’on peut dirigier. (Sivi)
4. II faut avoir un coeur pour comprendre celui d’autrui. (Gustave Flaubert)
5 avoir le coeur sur la main = être généreux
6. avoir un coeur d’artichaut = tomber vite et souvent amoureux
7. Vous faites vos devoirs à contrecoeur; vous n’avez pas envie de les faire.
8. Le mot “courage” dérive du mot “coeur”.
9. au coeur de = en plein milieu
10. avoir mal au coeur = avoir envie de vomir
11. Selon moi, Ia restauration rapide est écoeurante . . . vraiment dégoûtante!
12. Dès qu’il a vu Juliette, Romeo a eu un coup de coeur.
13. du fond du coeur = très sincèrement
14. le coeur me manque = je suis découragé.
15. Il y a quelqu’un que tu ne portes pas dans ton coeur. Tu le détestes.
16. apprendre par coeur = mémoriser
17. être de tout cceur avec quelqu’un = partager ses sentiments
18. prendre une critique trop à coeur = Ia prendre trop personnellemt
19. ouvrir son coeur = révéler ses sentiments secrets
20. en avoir gros sur le coeur = être triste
21. un chouur (illustré)
22. un coeur (illustré)
23. Un sourire cordial vient du coeur.
24. Tu es comme une calculatrice; je peux toujours compter sur toi!
25. Ce petit bonbon est un coeur de conversation (illustré)
COUP DE COEUR (jeu tarsia pour la Saint-Valentin) est une activité coopérative. Sur les bords de chaque triangle, il y a soit le début, soit la fin d’un énoncé qui a pour thème, “le coeur”. Vos étudiants doivent les jumeler afin de reconstituer les 25 énoncés et . . . l’image du coeur.
To be sure that tarsia puzzles are right for your students, please judge for yourself by downloading the free “futur simple” triangle puzzle at: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-6450469
LUPIN 1 is based on the hit series whose modern hero is obsessed with
Marcel Leblanc’s gentleman-cambioleur.
Students will match the sentence fragments printed on the edges of the triangles to reconstitute the 18 statements about episode 1 and to “build” their pyramid.
A cooperative activity suitable for francophone, immersion students and advanced students in core French.
To be sure that this activity is right for your students by, try the free "futur simple” triangle puzzle at:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/le-futur-simple-a-triangle-puzzle-6450469
There are a dozen puzzles in this file, including ten Christmas carol titles in rebus format. They are intended for francophone, advanced FSL and gifted students. I've also included a list of links to audio and video files of the songs featured in the puzzles.
Joyeux Noël!