One Teacher's Adventures

  French is one of my favourite subjects to teach, especially at the Middle School level. In BC, students begin taking French in Grade 5. When I get them in Grade 6, they have an initial understanding of vocabulary, and it's amazing to see how much growth can occur in just one year. Last year, my class was so excited in February to be reading (and understanding) this French text during our study of Francophone communities in Canada. This text comes from the TpT store Les Ressources de Mme Bedard Here are 10 tried and true activities and games that can bring some variety and fun to your FSL classroom! 1. Question du Jour (Question of the Day) What? (purpose of the activity) This activity gives a low-stress way for every student to speak French everyday, practice asking and answering questions, and connect letter patterns with pronunciation. How? (steps) Create a question.  I like to ask questions that fit in with the theme of the unit we’re studying at the time. I usually ...

Teaching systems of government has never been my favourite subject to cover in the Social Studies curriculum. It tends to be a dry topic with very little student engagement. To try and make it more engaging and interesting for our students, a colleague and I came up with a game to introduce the idea of different systems of government. Materials You'll Need: 10 pieces of paper 10 glue sticks 10 pairs of scissors government cards, downloadable here Overview: Students are arranged into 5 different groups. Each group represents a different country with a different system of government. The teacher will distribute a red government card to each group. Each card represents a different system of government. They are: anarchy, dictatorship, direct democracy, republic, and constitutional monarchy. Each group follows the rules on their card to make the longest paper chain possible with just one piece of paper. After each group has begun, there will be a coup in ...