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Do any of these scenarios sound like you and your French primary students during your independent literacy centres? You've carefully explained in detail where to go and what to do at each literacy centre. When you tell students to go and get started, somebody looks at you as if you have three heads. They say they have no idea what to do or where to go. Every! Time! You have your small group at your table and everyone else is off at their literacy centres. Until… you are interrupted by a student who needs to go to the bathroom or forgets what to do. The first round of literacy centres is over and it's time for students to hand in their work… But, at least half of your students have nothing to show for their centre time. They forgot how to do the work for their centre! All of those three literacy centre scenarios used to happen regularly to me. And for awhile, they drove me CRAZY! I knew that I needed to run literacy centres so that I could work with my sma...

One struggle that I've had with les sons composés as a French primary teacher? Teaching them in an effective, systematic way! You might be able to relate to this, depending on your school, but I have actually never been provided with a program or a curriculum to follow when teaching French phonics and sounds to my students. So, when it was time to start introducing les sons composés, I was never really sure where to start. I've tried a BIG variety of routines and activities over the years. I'm so excited to share with you today what I have found works best! A Slight Tangent Before We Start I have never been provided a program or curriculum for teaching the alphabet, either. But a couple of years ago, after the pandemic, I decided to loop my maternelle students into grade one. I knew I would have to review the alphabet with them. So, I created a program myself called « Enseigner l’alphabet en 35 jours ». Basically, it's an interactive notebook for F...

Homework... to send it or not to send it in the primary grades? Do you send homework activities in kindergarten? What about in grade one? Over the years, I have tried a variety of things, and thought a lot about homework activities in the primary grades. What I send home has changed so much since the beginning of my career, and I wanted to talk a bit about how homework looks for my students and me today. Homework in the primary grades can be a BIG debate, and everyone has an opinion. Read on to learn mine! But first, let's rewind a bit and check out my homework journey and see how my beliefs have changed throughout the last ten years. The first 3 years of my career, I did the whole "message du jour" daily homework. I stubbornly claimed that my students needed to practice one-to-one correspondance, high frequency words, and the whole homework "routine" in this way. And guess what? I was SO BORED of writing the messages du jour that I can'...