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Let's talk a bit about teaching our French primary students important French reading skills (not guessing skills!!) today. Remember this blog post from last year, where I talked about my vowel sound blending books and routine? Those books have been such a hit with my students! I know they’ve been a hit with many of yours, as well. After I taught my students those books last year, they needed more to help take their French reading skills to the next level. I also had a lot of requests for son composé books to be done in the same way. (In fact, I got a request for those books just last week. But the books have actually been created and posted to TPT since July!) So, I figured I’d better make a quick blog post about the son composé books as well. I want to be sure that anyone looking for them can find them. They can really make a difference when teaching reading skills to your French students! :) As I said, these books are kind of a “next step” for students...

Let’s take a second and talk about one of my biggest nemesis today… proper letter/numeral formation ! My students have SUCH  a hard time writing top to bottom, right to left. They always seem to come to me (in maternelle or in première année) writing in the most inefficient ways… like making five different movements to write the number 4, for example (that’s an example from this year in grade one haha). Or, they will insist on telling me that they counted “P” or “Z” objects, when there are in fact 9 or 2 ;). Our students’ brains have enough to worry about… We NEED to get them to write their letters and numbers with automaticity and efficiently so that they can focus on the other parts (like content, spelling, counting, etc.). Teaching students proper letter/numeral formation requires two things: explicit teaching and lots and lots of PRACTICE. You might also find that you need to closely supervise that practice to ensure that your students are practicing t...