alice’s posterous

I am not a big fan of textbooks and was thinking of creating my own exercises this year since my new school has very few resources but I found a brillant textbook called Gente Joven in the school library.

Good points about this textbook:

• Everything is in Spanish, there is no English explanation or translation. For me, it is very important to immerse pupils in the target language. This is how toddlers learn how to speak.
  
• The exercises are fun, engaging and challenging. For example, we were describing how people look like and there was an exercise about a casting for a TV serie. Pupils had to say why they would choose this boy or this girl. So not only, they had to say basic sentences describing people, thay also had to give their opinions using "creo que el chico puede ser ... porque...".
  
• The teacher's book is full of great ideas to get students involved with group and independent work. The collaborative listening activity which I posted earlier on this week is based on the teacher's book.
  
• There are also tasks to assess students such as creating the school website in Spanish or recording a radio show for a speaking assignment, along with sheets to mark pupils and to let them reflect on how they performed (again all in Spanish).
  

I also went on the publishing website "Difusión" and found a list of useful resources for free. So only, you have to register to access them.

What about you? do you use a very good textbook or create your own resources?

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There was a time in France during the summer holidays when children would have a "cahier de vacances" which was an exercise book to revise the curriculum covered during the year and to start the new school year in September well prepared! I can clearly remember myself, my brother and sister and my cousins working on the dining table in the morning  in Arcachon so that we could then go to beach in the afternoon! We would often see some "poorer" children studying their "cahiers de vacances" on their beach towels being watched over by their sadistic parents or even grand-parents!



Well... Times have changed as this year the French government has realized it is the 21st century and is providing resources and exercises online for free (I forgot to mention that our parents had to pay for these "cahiers de vacances")! YES, believe it or not, they have created this online academy. You can access the resources either by subject or by level. I had a look at the exercises and they look fun and engaging although the explanations at the start are a bit tedious! There are lots of resources that might be useful for French teachers and also Spanish teachers.
If you are teaching French phonics to help your students improve their speaking skills, follow this link, there are lots of activities related to sounds. I played them with my 3 years old son and he enjoyed them.
If you cannot find the activities, make sure you scroll down the page and click on "Accéder aux activités".

What about you? did you have to carry on working during holidays when you were a child?

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