Every now and then, I come across something awesome from Twitter, Edmodo or some other social media site and I quickly adapt it to my classroom. I absolutely love when I can read about exciting things that other teachers are doing in their classroom and gain inspiration to do something similar. A few months ago, I came across a World Language teacher's goldmine. Amy Lenord's website is amazing; she has so many ready-to-use activities that I spent hours one Saturday morning reading her blog entries and adapting her Spanish activities for use in my French classroom. But what brought me to her website was a re-tweet about a post that had to do with teaching vocabulary in the World Language classroom.
Vocabulary Lists are Not the Way to Go
Yep, she said it, not me. Well, she said it in not so many words. She wrote a fantastic post on how to go "list-less". It really got me to thinking. I learned with vocabulary lists, I have always taught with vocabulary lists, so how do I introduce the necessary vocabulary without a vocabulary list. And...how do I do that in level 1, where the students have such limited knowledge. I have always given the English words that I wanted students to learn and I have had them use their textbook to find the French equivelants and complete the lists themselves. I have seen value in this, and students like the lists, right?
Pictures Speak Louder Than Words
I decided that I would try it. As I started a unit on clothing, I decided I would begin without The List. I started with a class discussion, which, honestly, made me nervous because as a flip-teacher, I am rarely "all eyes on me". My students aren't used to taking notes when I talk and I wasn't sure how engaged students would be with me in front of them.
I prepared a notebook file ahead of time.
I introduced the topic with the words "Les Vêtements" and a picture of a bunch of clothes. I asked if anyone could figure out what we would be talking about next. I explained that we would be creating a list for the words that we would need for this unit, and suggested they they write things down as we continue.
First, we created a short list of words that we already knew that pertained to clothing. (We had learned tee-shirt, tennis shoes, etc--things needed for PE, in an earlier unit.)
Next, I had 5-7 pictures of clothing and words at the bottom on the notebook page. I gave students one minute with their partners to see if they could figure out which word went with each item of clothing. This part was great because I could hear awesome conversations going on. They were using prior knowledge, comparing words to English, and drawing some great conclusions. Then, I chose one pair to go to the Smart Board and move the words under the corresponding picture. When done, I would tell them how many they got correct, but not specifically which ones. Then I would have another pair come up and correct. I loved this because they were hearing the words from me immediately. Before they set out to work with their partners, I had them repeat the words, and after going over the information on the board, they would hear it again, several times. The students were absolutely engaged!! They loved seeing if they were correct or not.
I repeated this same routine several times. Each time, I used 5-7 words, until all of the words that the text was introducing were covered. We stopped after this, and continued with part 2 on the next day, which worked out great because I was able to review at the beginning of the next class period. This allowed the students to hear and see these words, again.
In our textbook, students are taught many expressions, and I always struggle with they best way to have students memorize these expressions. For this unit, I let the students decide the expressions to learn. In my Notebook file, I created the headings "Au Magasin", "Questions de la cliente", "Les Adjectifs". We walked through a shopping experience, where I had students tell me what would be necessary to say if shopping in a boutique in Paris. They would tell me the expression in English, and I would write the equivalent in French. I was able to stay in the target language, so that they were constantly hearing the words.
I was amazed at the level of engagement from the students. I was also amazed at how they were able to cover all of the expressions that I wanted them to learn. Because I want students to have a list of words that they "own", I had students create their own list which they kept in their binder. However, I gave them the choice, they could organize these new words into their own categories or they could label pictures.
While this took quite a bit longer then the traditional list, which I can usually send home for homework, the learning that took place was very meaningful. My kids know these words. I mean...they KNOW these words. And, they can correctly pronounce these words, which is a huge plus.
I have continued to use pictures to teach vocabulary with both level 1 and level 2, and I can see an improvement in vocabulary retention, but even more with pronunciation. Going "list-less" gets a huge HOORAY from me!
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