French culture: celebrating la Chandeleur !

Candlemas is around the corner and I have prepared some fun activities to do in the French class to celebrate this special event. In fact as the activities are mainly centered around crepes and how to make them, you could also use them to celebrate Mardi Gras (which is on the 9th of February this year) or if you are teaching a topic on food.

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Back to school with a song: mi persona favorita

I am back to school after a wonderful summer vacation and in order to get back into the swing of things, I found this catchy song which I played to my grade 8 and 10 classes:

As I mentioned in an earlier post,

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The perfect song to use the past tenses in Spanish!

I love using songs in my lessons and I found out that my students enjoy it too! Apparently some of them even buy some of the songs! When we listen to a song in class, we listen to it several times in the week at the start of each Spanish lesson.

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Civilization project to use the past tense in Spanish

I have covered the past tense in Spanish with my grade 8 students (13-14 years old) this term and I want them to be able to describe past events confidently and accurately. Over my teaching experience I have found out that doing the traditional grammar exercises such as filling in the gaps with the correct verb forms does not really work with students.

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Marceline Loridan-Ivens: a moving account.

When I prepare dinner in the evening, I like to listen to the radio and it usually falls during Le Grand Entretien on France Inter. François Busnel, a journalist spends an hour interviewing different people from authors to comedians to politicians. I like the way this journalist conducts the interviews.

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