A few more details for the Old Christmas Day

As promised, a few more words on today's activities! I continue to be impressed by the progress the class is making in their oral french-speaking skills. To take advantage of this, I am incorporating grammar, verb and spelling lessons into our usual "Show and Tell" sessions. While the importance of spontaneous written expression cannot be overstated, I subscribe wholeheartedly to current notions that language must come first, in order for written/technical skills to be developed.

I am also happy to see how students have embraced the variety of media I have suggested they use in their book reports. So far, January book reports are taking the form of videos, character sketches, posters, narrations, role-plays and written descriptions.

Tomorrow afternoon I have planned a special fun activity, centered around board games. The class has showed interest in games such as chess, Scrabble, Scattergories, Guess Who and dice, to the extent that I think we could have a lot of fun playing these together in a more organized way. I think it will also be a lot of fun to start discussing strategy, methods and more complicated games in this framework. Oh, and cookies should help ease the whole process....

Thanks to all those that helped students research towns, schools and ideas for our letter-writing project. We will finish final copies tomorrow.