Upcycled fashions

Here are some pictures of the upcycled fashions and accessories made from recyclable materials made by our Gr. 7/8 students.  This week we've been working on writing paragraphs about our creations.  This will be read as a script by a partner when the item is modelled at our classroom fashion show.

Our Grade 4-6 students had a quiz on the pizza vocabulary that they have learned, below:

Culture is a very important part of our learning in French class.  Here is a pizzeria website based in Quebec.  If you compare this menu to one of our local pizza menus, what similarities and differences do you observe?

La Pizzeria website

Bonne semaine,

Mme Christensen

Bacon, anyone?

The Grade 4-6 students have been learning vocabulary for pizza toppings as they have been answering the question:

"Qu'est-ce que tu prends sur ta pizza?

As you can see, there was great enthusiasm for le bacon!

We've been surveying our classmates regarding their pizza topping preferences and creating bar graphs on the smartboard.  Here are two graphs, comparing results from the 4/5 classroom and the 5/6 classroom.  (Please ignore the dates at the bottom right corner! Photos were taken last Thursday, April 21, 2016.)

Pepperoni, the second ingredient, came out on top in this round!

Here is graph #2. Once again, the Grade 4/5 graph is first. The winning topping for Gr. 4/5  is...

...you guessed it, bacon!  Tomato sauce was more popular for the 5/6 class, followed by, you guessed it again, le bacon! Other meat toppings also rated very highly.  We'll have to work a little bit more on liking our vegetable toppings!

This week we will also be looking a bit more at an authentic French pizzeria menu and comparing the similarities and differences to a typical North American pizza menu.  Here is a link to the menu we will be using: 

Flam's pizza menu

This week, the Grade 7/8 class will continue to work on the rough copies of their paragraphs describing their fashion creations.

Bonne semaine,

Mme Christensen

Les vêtements et les achats

The past few weeks the Grade 7 and 8 students have been working at home on their projects for our unit, À la mode, a unit about fashion and the environment. The due date for this project was this Friday and a wonderful array of wearable items and accessories made of recycled or repurposed materials was brought in to class! Please stay posted in the upcoming weeks as I post photos of the items that have come in.

This week we have been learning and practicing vocabulary related to clothing as well as to the materials associated with recycling.  We watched the following video to help us describe clothing:
 

Madame fait les achats

The Grade 4, 5 and 6 students have been learning and practicing vocabulary to describe pizza ingredients.  We have been looking at Canada's Food Guide en français.  We sorted our list of pizza ingredients into the four main food groups and we were very pleased to see that it is possible to include all four food groups when we eat pizza!

Here is the document we looked at in class:

Canada's Food Guide (French version)

This week we will be surveying our classmates to see which pizza ingredients are the most popular. Any gueses? We will be asking the question: "Qu'est-ce que tu prends sur ta pizza?" and we will post our results next week; stay tuned!

Bonne semaine!

Mme Christensen

Name that unit

This week all students are well into their term three units.  Grades 4-6 learned sixteen new vocabulary words; some of them (below) are "mots amis" or "word friends" as they are very similar to their translations in English: 


des tomates            du pepperoni               des olives              des oignons        du bacon
                           de la sauce tomate          des saucisses italiennes

Can you guess what yummy dish we will be talking about (or singing about) in our new unit?  The song below will help you remember some of our classroom vocabulary:

Theme song

Grade 7 and 8 students found vocabulary related to our fashion unit and created a word web using vocabulary they researched:

Bonne semaine!

Mme Christensen

A sampling of projects from Term Two

March 15 and 16 we celebrated our students' work during our student-led conferences.  Here are a sampling of projects from grades 4-6.  Though based on the same unit "Les animaux-mythes et réalité", the expectations were scaffolded--expectations increased depending on grade level. 

In their projects, students were to create a mini publicity poster, advocating on behalf of an animal that at times is misunderstood or misrepresented.  Students were to find information from the various texts we explored in class.  This was a good exercise in expressing and supporting one's opinion en français!

Here are some samples of recipes written by the Grade 7 and 8 students for their "Café français" unit. For their project, students were to write recipes based on sample recipes studied in class.  We learned how to speak as well as to write about quantities. We also explored how to use the imperative and learned an abundance of new nouns and verbs!

Our last week of school before Spring Break was spent enjoying a variety of "Country Week" activities and as a school we studied the country of Portugal. We will resume French classes after Spring Break.

I wish all students and families a Blessed Easter as we celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!

Mme Christensen

A debate about fashion

The Grade 7/8 class has begun a unit about fashion and the question arose--is fashion necessary?  The students and I brainstormed and came up with some arguments for or against fashion:

Let the debate, en français,  begin!

On another note, verb conjugation is not taught formally at this level; it is mentioned briefly when it is necessary to communicate our ideas clearly, especially in written work. However, for those who would like extra practice in verb conjugations , there is an excellent site with exercises which I have added on the right side of this page under "French Games"--Verb conjugation game.  For most verbs, the pronunciation can be heard if you hover over a word.  There are excellent examples to show how the conjugated verb would be applied in a sentence.

I've also added a four more sites under "French Games" that you can explore; there are games, stories and activities to enrich your learning of French:

• Games--Clothing vocabulary
• Learn French verbs
• Très bien French games
• 700+ Free French games and activities

We look forward to students sharing their work with their parents this coming week in our student-led conferences.

Enjoy this mild weather! Bonne fin de semaine!

Mme Christensen

French Club

French club has begun; sessions will be held during March and April. French club is open to students in the Grade 4/5 classroom.  This past Wednesday at lunch recess students had a choice of activities:

...the computer game "Sam Amuse" (see link on right side of this page)

as well as "Spot it" in French.   

Students learned the necessary vocabulary for playing this game en français!

 Another student is using the questions and answers we learn in class to create a board game.

We also celebrated the loss of a tooth--le dent qui branle--at the end of our session!  

See you back this Wednesday!

Bonne semaine,

Mme Christensen