A few years ago I started these end of the year blog posts where I share student work from the year. It’s fun to look back on all the things we did, and it gives me an opportunity to share ideas with readers. Here are some highlights:
In the beginning of the year, my students always complete a “C’est moi” mini poster about themselves. I give them a template and some vocabulary, and they fill it in in French and color it in. This is also a good time to introduce how most proper nouns do not need to be translated into French, but common nouns do. So, for example, if they like the music of Taylor Swift, they do not need to learn how to say Taylor Swift in French. During COVID, students did it virtually. Click here to learn more about this activity.
After my students learn how to give basic information about others, they make a “Qui est-ce” poster, describing a mystery person for the class to guess. Click here to learn more about this project.
For National French Week, I give my students the option of participating in a poster contest, illustrating their reason(s) for learning French. Click here to read more about this and other activities I do to reinforce the importance of learning French.
After learning about family members, students make family trees in French. They choose either to make the project about their own family, or a fictional family, which they can make up. There are no specific family members they need to include, since families can come in all shapes and sizes. Some students choose to make it about their “future” family, and gave themselves a spouse and kids, even grandkids!
I first blogged about this activity in one of my Beg Borrow or Steal posts. Liz’s Lessons has a great Pinterest Board featuring student work. On it, she shared a drawing that a student made by writing the words of the colors they were using repeatedly. I have my students complete this activity in groups. It happens to be a great activity to do right before a break when you might be missing a lot of students. Click here to read about more color activities I do with my middle school students and here to read about ones I’ve done with elementary students.
Right before Thanksgiving, I have my students cut out their hands on a piece of construction paper and write things that they are grateful for on each finger. It makes a great bulletin board. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the source of this idea!
After learning about food and meal-taking, students make their own menu in French. They have to choose which type of eatery they want to make and find legally-sourced images on Unsplash and give credit. When they are done, they practice ordering food off each other’s menus. Click here to learn more about this activity and others using PowerPoint.
After learning the parts of the body, students create a crazy creature and label its body parts in French. I first got the idea for this from The Creative Language Class. Click here to learn more about this and other activities for reinforcing parts of the body.
After my students learn how to share their likes and dislikes, we learn about conditions (such as location, weather, people with, etc.) that can make their sentences more sophisticated. Then they complete an assignment showing what they like and don’t like to do in various situations.
After learning how to make, accept, and turn down invitations, students write a short comic strip in French. Comic strips are fun to make and a good building block to eventually writing a story.
Every year, my students make an ABC book as a class. This year, I picked one book to share with my elementary class. The class chooses a theme, then students write sentences in groups for the various letters (choosing a verb that starts with that letter), and then get assigned a letter to illustrate. Below are some of my favorite illustrations from this year. Click here to read more about this project, and click here to view all the ABC books from this year.
After learning to describe what people are doing, students draw or find a picture of themselves or someone else and write what is going on in the picture. While conjugation charts are no longer a part of our 7th grade curriculum, I emphasize in particular the first and third person singular forms of common verbs, since those are the most common.
I love having students use drawings to show what they know. Here, a student illustrates a sentence for a homework assignment.
After learning how to describe people and objects with common adjectives, students work on an assignment where they have to describe two nouns. They have to pay attention to proper adjective placement in the sentence. While I don’t make them memorize which adjectives come before the noun and which come after for a test, I think this activity helps reinforce the idea. My colleague Robin Murray gave me the idea for this assignment. Click here to learn more about this assignment and others which feature illustrations.
This year students learned all about the upcoming Paris Olympics and the official mascot, the phryge. Students created their own phryge and described it in French. This was a great idea from French teacher Chelsea Peeters that I adapted for my own classroom. While this was not spontaneous writing (students had access to vocabulary lists), it really prepared them for future writing tasks. Click here to learn more about this activity.
One of my favorite projects during the year is having the students write poems about themselves. They choose several adjectives to describe themselves with and compose a poem based off a template I provide. They also illustrate the poem, preferably with original artwork and/or photos. Click here to read more about this project.
After writing poems about themselves, students write a poem for someone else, this time in the third person. With Mother’s Day and Father’s Day coming up shortly after we do this, many students make it about a parent.
Here’s another example of a drawing assignment, this time with common problems.
Another place students draw for me is Nearpod. I love the Draw It feature! The sentence prompt for this one was “L’homme a mal au pied” (The man’s foot hurts).
After learning how ask and answer information questions, students practice asking and answering each other’s questions on PowerPoint slides. Students state a hobby in French on their slide, then go to other students’ slides to ask them questions, and then come back to their own slide to answer questions that were left there. After that, students remove the questions, and we play a game where I ask an information question about one of the students and the class has to figure out which of the answers on the slide answers my questions. Click here to learn more about this acitivity and others using PowerPoint.
At the end of the year, my students always make a video for next year’s students. They get into groups, and I give them a topic. Each group makes a short video showcasing some vocabulary about their topic, and I string together all the videos to make one final video. I also interview students about their favorite activities from the year and any advice they may have, and add that to the end. Above is an example of a group’s video, made in Adobe Express. Click here to learn more about this project. Email subscribers, click here to watch the video.
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