Ms. Laurence's French Class

Yesterday I went to visit my new friend Ilana Laurence (aka "Ms. Laurence" to her elementary school students) at the Grace Church School where she teaches French. I was struck by how lucky the kids are who have her as a teacher - she is not only delightful and smart, she has also integrated new technologies into her classroom in a way that makes language learning easier, more fun, and more connected to the kids' lives. In addition to her blog where she posts songs and video clips (she films her students in class with her Flip), she uses a SmartBoard in her classroom, which is kind of like a big iPhone touch screen projected on the wall. This allows her to grab images off the Internet to illustrate words they are learning (the day i visited I saw a train station in Paris) and her students can come up to the screen and match the on screen words with the images by dragging them with their finger. I can tell you nothing that cool ever happened in my French class! First of all, I didn't even have French until seventh grade and my French teachers all seemed to be out of central casting and varied from cranky to mean. One threw chalk at us regularly. Though some of you were probably luckier, I suspect many of you had language teachers who were more like mine than like Ms. Laurence. I hope my sons will be able to learn from a Ms. Laurence one day, and I truly hope there are hundreds of other like her, a new generation of teachers making foreign language learning fun and relevant for today's global kids.

Alouette

Emmett loves to sing Alouette, the popular French nursery song. “Alouette, gentille alouette, alouette, je te plumerai…” (http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/alouette.htm ). It’s a great song for teaching parts of the body because you point to different parts of your face, head and body throughout the song. Now Emmett has been singing it to his little brother, Adrian, almost eight months old. Adrian just laughs and laughs! I beam and beam to see my little boy passing on our French traditions.

"I speak French and Korean."

Emmett is really proud that he speaks French. He will tell anyone who asks, “I speak French and my mom speaks French but my dad doesn’t.” Speaking French is probably the only thing our four year old can do that his dad can’t -- and he is milking it for all its Oedipal worth! Emmett also took a Tai Kwon Do martial arts class for a few months last year and they taught him to count in Korean. He still likes to do the push ups, yelling out the push up numbers in Korean. When people ask if he speaks French he says “Yes, and Korean!” Even though that is a bit of a stretch, I love that he is excited and proud about his language skills.

Homemade language flash cards not pretty but they work!

Emmett and I made our own flash cards and have been having a great time with them. First, we draw six boxes on a piece of regular paper with a thick black pen. Then, following Emmett’s instructions, I drew a picture in each of the boxes with the word written under it in French. We laughed a lot over my bad drawings (the orange juice picture looked like a UFO landing). Emmett has never really liked store-bought flash cards and always got bored and restless right away when I tried to bring them out, so this was a great way to turn reviewing vocabulary into a fun game.

To play, I point to a box and he has to say in French what the picture is of. If he is having trouble remembering them, I say a word and he has to point to the one it is. Before we start I read through the words again, pointing to each picture and asking him to repeat after me so it sinks into his memory. If he gets five right he gets a gummy bear! We have about six sheets like this and they are really easy to carry around in my purse and bring out when we’re on a long subway ride, or waiting for food at a restaurant.

After much thought and work (and input from children like Emmett) we've finally developed a fun series of Little Pim flash cards in Spanish and French.