I changed the participation rubric today. The kids thanked me for the simpler format.
I've started with an activity that I call "photo du jour". I started it for my juniors as a way to get their brains going in French at stupid o'clock am, without getting in their face about it. Here's the photo I used today:
buddhist-monk-pray-tattoo_12070_600x450.jpg
I ask the kids to identify their objective for the day, then freewrite about a photo. Some students are working on perfecting a single sentence. Others are listing word after word. Everyone is buried in a dictionary. No one is talking. I can hear pens and pencils, pages flipping.
After about five or ten minutes, I ask students to go up to the board and write key words. I say "volontaires?" and hold out a marker with the top off. I can see the visible relief in my students' eyes when they are able to understand my simple, one-word directions. I'm also willing to make a complete arse of myself in front of them via dance moves, pantomime, sound effects, anything to help then comprehend.
Today we came up with:
culture, custom, ceremony, head, tattoo, kneeling, painful, needle, buddhism, chinese, sweatsuit, orange, jewels, ouch, wounded, and were-wolf. The were-wolf is from my abstract-random thinker, and I'm satisfied that he now has added to his list of favorite words, which also includes "banana".
the kids wrote the words, then ended up drawing little pictures to explain their vocabulary. Some of it I acted out, such as painful, and others we had to use cultural references to explain, such as "Le film de Michael J. Fox où il change en Loup-Garou."
I think I'm going to start asking students to email me the photos to use for Photo du Jour. This will save me endless time surfing for a "cool photo that will resonate with teens" and solve that problem altogether.
They really seemed to like this kind of warmup, and it will be an excellent vocabulary builder. I think I just might keep it for all classes... regardless of what time they actually become conscious.
