Journal writing in Grade 1 French Immersion is so boring! At least it is the way I do it (blush)! Since the children start out with no French at all, it is so often a case of fill-in-the-blanks when it comes to writing in their journals. Okay for calligraphy practice but...boring.
This year's last AIM play was "Les trois petits cochons". My class were pros by the time it was introduced and could recite the entire play along with me from it's very first presentation. Of course they'd done the fantastic scaffolded worksheets and answered tons of questions. They'd presented puppet shows and were just about to perform their "live action" play.
Following an AIM document (sorry - unknown photo copy)
- I began by asking the children if the story I recited verbatim was exactly the same as the play they knew so well. Yes, they agreed it was.
- Then I began to paraphrase the story, adding some juicy details, but essentially telling the same tale. Well! Such delight when they learned that le premier petit cochon adored pizza with fromage while the deuxième petit cochon liked to watch TV.
- First the students were invited to start re-telling the story orally - much appreciated. Mama cochon tells them they are too big for the house etc...
- Then they are shown new cahiers and told that the may write and illustrate their own version of the play.
- The hook is that they are to work in partners and share ideas but essentially write their own tale.
- Huge excitement as they spread out in the classroom two by two.
- The key, of course, is that they now had all the tools they needed to start writing: they were totally comforable with the play, its vocabulary and sentence structure; they knew how to use their word wall and they knew how to use their primary dictionary.
- Add imagination et voila! I couldn't get them to stop writing for recess! :-)
