Theme/topic: La fête –Parties/celebrations in France –This class is designed to last for two sessions
Warm-up: What are some celebrations/French holidays you know or have heard of before?
- Quick cultural overview of the most important French Holidays
- Video screening of a typical French holiday – le 1er Avril – On this day it is customary for a lot of French people to prank others and/or stick a paper fish on their back
- Provide a few expressions in French for specific holidays – New Year, Christmas, etc. –
- project pictures of objects and actions related to either one important holiday – Christmas, etc.- or Birthdays. Ask the class if they can associate what they see on the pictures with any words they know. Then provide them the vocabulary
- Example – Birthdays:
- Activity 1:
- Create groups: Put the students in pairs or groups of 3/4
- The students will have first to individually brainstorm for 5 minutes on the best birthday they had had so far and their best birthday memories. They can jot down some notes and then share them with the rest of their group
- The instructor can also add more questions to ask them in order to make them practice expressing themselves on the topic in relation to their own experience using the past tense and the vocabulary provided beforehand: Quel est l’anniversaire dont vous vous souvenez le plus? (What is your best birthday experience?), Quels sont vos meilleurs souvenirs d’anniversaire ? (What are your best birthday memories?)
- Activity 2: keeping the same groups, ask them to discuss their favorite celebration in their home country/region/where they’re from and tell their group about it and why they like it specifically. They can list various elements -activities, actions, foods, costumes, traditions, music, etc.- they associate with that particular celebration/holiday -.
- Before starting the activity, give an example to guide them: je préfère mon anniversaire parce que ma famille et mes amis m’offrent des cadeaux / parce que il y a un gâteau d’anniversaire OR: ma fête préférée est mon anniversaire parce que…
- I Personally loved how responsive and engaged into the conversation the students were. They put a lot of work in writing about their best birthday’s memories and then when I put them into groups to share what they had written with their classmates, they couldn’t stop talking, and I realized how good their French speaking skills were when they were really into something/interesting into a certain topic, especially when it concerns sharing a personal, intimate story.