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Alice Ayel: French the natural way


Teacher Alice Ayel has a YouTube channel which you may find useful. In each video Alice talks through, at slow speed, a simple 5-6 minute account ("story") illustrated with line drawings and words she creates on a mini-whiteboard. It's like a teacher working with a full size whiteboard from the front of the class or pre-prepared PowerPoint images and words.

The stories are in themselves not terribly interesting, but do offer clear examples of meaningful French, with in-built repetition, suitable for post-beginner students.

How could you use these?

Well, I could see a case for occasional classroom use to support your current topic. You might play the clip on full once, then replay the clip on short sections, asking your own questions along the way. You could employ your full repertoire of question types - true/false, yes/no, either/or, open ended etc. You could then ask the same questions and get pupils to write down single word or full sentence answers. The aim would be to develop listening skill, oral proficiency, sound-spelling relationships and vocabulary knowledge (words and chunks). You might also do a dictation task if the class is up to it.

In addition, at the end of the teaching sequence, you could replay the video without sound and get your class (hands up or in pairs) to recreate the story.

So, although the videos are not in my view particularly stimulating they could make a useful addition to your usual lesson content. They might also give you ideas for your own oral accounts supported by drawing, either "live" or pre-prepared.


Comments

  1. phillypcp19 March 2021 at 02:17

    Alice is a phenomenal teacher. I'm so grateful to have found her. I highly recommend her site, aliceayel.com

    ReplyDelete

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