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What a great way to perform the learning outcomes for Grade 11 French:  find a true French recipe from the Francophone world via Twitter and make it for the class.  Preparing French food together helped build community, reviewed our French food vocabulary, and created authentic research opportunities.  We would like to thank the people on Twitter who responded to our tweets, looking for recipes.  We were not only sent good recipes, but links to specific food regions in France as well, building our understanding of the culture.  The students now have an even deeper appreciation of French cuisine and culture.

One student filmed the others speaking in French about the cuisine and he will be posting it to our blog via YouTube.  We will also send the YouTube link to our tweet-pals (@chapman6s) in Ontario.

http://kidblog.org/Francais1112/

Bon Appétit!

Questionnaire

Today in the French 11/12 class, I handed out a questionnaire to get my students’ thoughts about tweeting and blogging.  They could respond in either French or English.  The questionnaire included:

1.  What is one aspect about Twitter that you are enjoying?

2.  How could Twitter be used at school in any subject to help with your learning?

3.  What is one aspect about blogging that you are enjoying?

4.  How could blogging be used at school in any subject to help with your learning?

5.  What were your frustrations so far with tweeting and blogging?

Student Responses

I like when my teacher “asks questions and we answer” on Twitter.

I enjoy “making stories in French” on Twitter.

“If you miss a day of school, you could see your assignment on Twitter, then do it from home.”

Twitter is “fast, easy, and fun.”

“Using Twitter makes it not seem like work.”  It’s “just like your normal social life.”

“Nous pratiquons écrire le français ou les autres langues.”

Nous parlons “avec les autres étudiants dans Canada.”

We can “communicate with others for assistance.”

We “are able to connect and communicate with other French classes and practice conversational French.”

We “learn new things from other classes in different parts of the world.”

Blogging helps us to see “others’ ideas.”

Blogging “gives you an idea of how others are learning.”

“J’ apprends la nouvelle technologie.”

“I don’t like blogging because it requires you to write more.  Twitter is more fast paced and easier to pick up and go.”

“J’oublie de mettre ‘#’ on Twitter.”

Conclusion

It is clear from these responses that the students are finding tweeting and blogging relevant to their lives and learning.  In just a couple of months we have been able to set up a learning community online and have been able to use our French in an authentic and meaningful way.  They are enjoying, with minimal frustration, these learning opportunities while using technology.

 Complementary Tools

To begin, I realize that tweeting and blogging can be complementary practices in the language classroom.  Either can be used to gain viewers to the others’ platform. It was through Twitter that I was able to get readers and comments on my class blog and it was with blogging that I was able to discuss resources that I found on Twitter.  Recently, I have used both to create review opportunities for my students.

Grade 11s

Part of the grade 11s’ French food unit includes describing ethnic cuisine and past dining experiences.  Both Twitter and our blog were used as tools to practice reading and writing such descriptions in French.  Students used Twitter to discuss food and even conduct research for finding French recipes. By doing so, the students practiced writing using the imparfait verb tense and creating adjectives from familiar cooking verbs.  Blogging proved useful as well, as they read a post about a dining experience at a local restaurant.  When they didn’t understand parts of the post, I referred them to our reading strategies poster, next to the Smart Board.  I was able to reiterate at that point that these reading strategies can be used across the curriculum, when they don’t comprehend something in a reading passage.

Tweeting

We love Twitter.  In a survey of my class this week, 18 out of a class of 20 said they preferred tweeting to blogging.  Perhaps it’s because last week, we had tons of fun as we added daily tweets to a story that we started about an alien.  The story began with two words, L’extraterrestre… and from there it grew into quite a comical adventure.  On Thursday, the students were battling back and forth in French on Twitter making the alien die, only to be resurrected by some ingenious means.  In fact, they would have kept it up all class, if I hadn’t interjected to get them working on review for a test this week.  In addition to our story, we have been answering questions that we are receiving from an elementary immersion class in Ontario.  This has been very useful as these students are sending us questions with language structures that we are learning.  For example, the interrogative word “laquelle” was used in a question about our favorite colors and another was the future tense verb form which grade 11s are currently learning and the 12s are reviewing.  Here’s a question we received: “Si tu peux inviter quelqu’un fameux à dîner qui sera t-il/elle?”   What famous person will you invite to dinner? This will tie in well when we learn the conditional form as well.  This question was motivating to the students and they eagerly tweeted off their response in French.  I love it, because I am able to provide feedback immediately as the tweets are sent out using Hootsuite on my Smart Board.  One issue, we are having, is the French accents are accessed differently on all the devices we are using.  The class computer uses ALT+ numbers, my Mac uses a French keyboard, and some of the mobile devices that students are bringing require them to hold down the letter until the proper character is displayed.  This is leading to some students not putting in the accents.  Does anyone have any suggestions for solving this issue?  This week we are sending out tweets that review vocabulary and language structures that will be on Thursday’s test.  Follow our hashtag #phssF and send us a Tweet.

Blogging

For the two students who prefer blogging to tweeting, they appreciate the reflection and the pace of blogging.  It doesn’t have to be done so instantaneously as Twitter.  They prefer to write down what they want to say and then have me check it and once it is revised, they want to add a post to the blog.  They also like to read the comments that we have received so far and to take a couple of days to figure out a response.   These two students in general tend to be more reflective and quiet.

It is interesting to see the differences in students’ reactions to tweeting and blogging.  In my opinion, each of these technologies favors particular human characteristics.  If I had to describe the characteristics I’ve noticed among my students while using these mediums, they would have to be:

Tweeting :  active, speedy, laconic, and lighthearted

Blogging: reflective, patient, thorough

Last week, I used Twitter to tweet out our blog URL and to invite people to comment. Using Twitter, for this purpose, worked magic.  We went from 0-14 comments in two days.  We also had people retweeting our blog information and we have one teacher (@willgourley) inviting us to continue a Twitter chat in French with his immersion class (@Chapman6s).

This week, I thought we could tweet out a creative story to which we all add one line at a time.  We will see where this goes.  The students are enjoying seeing their posts tweeted out and mentioned in class, as I begin each day by checking into our Twitter stream, #phssF.

Thanks to the power of Twitter, our blogging became way more exciting last week.  We had people reading and posting comments from Edmonton, Toronto, Victoria, and Melbourne, Australia.  A few of my students jumped at the opportunity to communicate with the teacher in Australia.  It is great to see the students enthusiastic about using their French to connect with others outside the class.

Last week, I had posted my frustrations with blogging, as no one was commenting on my students’ work.  Well, Donna sent me a reply and recommended that maybe I connect with a French blog from a school in Victoria, so I did just that.  I was impressed with what I saw: an engaged group of French students talking about their passions.  I read it, responded and told them about our blog.  A couple of days later, we received a comment on our blog from them.  My students were elated to see the 1 comment notice.  This is making me realize that it is important to read and post comments on other blogs to build relationships and in turn visitors to our own blog.  Otherwise, it feels like we are posting to a bulletin board in nowhere land.  Donna also recommended that I tweet and email out my class’ blog link.  I will do that this week and see what happens.

The Twitter movement at my school is growing.  Thanks to Jillian Walkus’ advice, I set up a meeting with the Kwak’wala teacher at our school and shared with her what I was doing with my French class and Twitter.  She liked the idea and is going to be following suit.  She is creating a stream of Tweets in the Kwak’wala language.  She had one concern about certain letters and how to write them on Twitter.  I hear that it is possible with an App on the iPhone.  Does anyone have any suggestions for this?   In my own classroom, my students look forward to our daily tweets.  The first thing they mention as they enter class is “wonder what we’ll be tweeting about today?”  When I began this activity, I was sending out random questions in French, getting to know my students, but this week I focused the questions and discussions around language elements that we were learning.  For instance, we were looking at descriptions of places with prepositional phrases.  I set the context as our school and classroom.  So using the French they were learning, they wrote descriptions about our school and our classroom both on Twitter and our blog.  Check it out by  following #phssF or looking at our blog.