SO MANY MEMES

Three years ago when I began teaching at Souderton, I caught a student making a fantastic picture using Photoshop. I insisted that he send it to me, and a movement was born.

Each year, I choose a "class animal". Unfortunately, I don't have the actual animal in class, but we make memes and it is fun. It all started when Sean make the first meme with a sloth in it.  Here is one of his masterpieces, Napoleon Bonasloth:

Note the claw at the top of the painting. Brilliant.

And so, the official class animal of Mme Cushmore's 2013-2014 school year was the sloth, or "le paresseux" en français. 

Other memes were made, all equally compelling in their own way. Even I got in on the action.

I saw this frog and it reminded me of my students when they have a question.

I seriously look like this much of the time.

Some of my students were inspired to make memes based on events that took place in class.

I'm a fan of Stromae, what can I say.

My second year at Souderton was special. It was the year of the narwhal. What is a narwhal, you may ask? Why, it's the unicorn of the sea!

Cody made this amazing meme of Stromae on a narwhal in space. It really doesn't get much better than this.

Evan is very gifted. Note that the narwhal's tusk is a baguette. WHAAAAT

Evan really put his heart and soul into this, and his dedication has not gone unnoticed.

(It's a French III joke. You probably wouldn't understand.)

Some of the kids made memes just based on random things and events, like my birthday or just because!

Birthday meme!

Most excellent meme with an inspirational quote, a sloth, and Stromae. That is not my arm; it is Janae's arm, if memory serves me correctly.

Last year, when I taught French IV for the first time at Souderton, I had my students set their phones to French and then had them record themselves speaking French. It was difficult, to say the least.

Pretty sure Kyle and Tim made these. I love them dearly.

This year the class animal is the mighty wombat. Wombats are fat, furry, cuddly little animals that live in Australia. They poop cubes. They are quite remarkable.

Matthias and Aidan really hit it out of the park with the initial wombat memes of the year.

Matthias' contribution. He had me pose for this. It turned out amazingly well and should be in a museum.

I love Aidan's as well. I'm riding side-saddle on a galloping wombat!

New semester, new memes. My freshman French IIs are kicking butt and taking names!

Wumbledore by Zoe. I'll forgive the use of Comic Sans this one time.

Wombolean Batapart by Courtney. As she said in her own words, "He is the harbinger of memes, justice and cubed excretion. I'm not sure whether I'm sorry for this or extremely proud. A bit of both."

Be proud, Courtney. Be proud.

WomBatman by Zoe. Yes.

Peter as a wombat when he sees poor French grammar. I feel you, Peter.

By Zoe. One might ask, why the raisins? My students know I hate two kinds of food: mushrooms and raisins.

Again with the Comic Sans. I must put a stop to this. I'll let it go for now.

La Marseillaise. Brilliant. Amazing. Sensational.

Brooke put ALL the things together and made this chef d'oeuvre. Impressive, non?

I hope you've enjoyed this unbelievable creativity. I know I have. I hope to share more with you in the future. Profitez-en bien, mes amis!

Parler en français!

Salut, mes enfants!  Speaking in French can be difficult - here are some things to consider before you begin to speak French.

• If I have given you a specific set of questions, read over them but also read them out loud to yourself or to a friend. 
• Ask yourself, do I really understand this question? Can I respond to it in French?  It is one thing to understand something you read. It is another to be able to produce an answer in French.
• It is fine to write down answers to the questions, but practice reading/saying them out loud as well. There is a huge difference between reading and communicating.

Remember, as a child learning your first language you heard that language for at least 18 months before you had to speak.  Comprehension always comes before production - it is always easier to understand what you read and hear versus being able to reproduce language and answer questions. You may know what you want to say in your head, but that doesn't mean you will be able to say it!  

What's the point of all of this?  PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. Practice speaking French in the mirror. Read out loud to yourself, a friend, your pet, or a family member. Speak French with your classmates. Don't be afraid to make mistakes - we ALL make mistakes.

If you need any help at all, don't hesitate to ask me. I'm here to help you with any questions you may have.

Merci et bonne chance!  J'ai confiance en vous!

Brigitte Bardot is totally rooting for you.

Fun little videos!

Bonjour mes enfants!  One of my students, Courtney, sent me a link to this awesome Tumblr called Kéké.  The author is Kévin Gemin and he makes some super cute animations in different languages, many in English and French!  You can find his YouTube channel here.  I'm going to post some of his things below. Enjoy!

Learning with Birds!

French CanCan!

Profitez-en bien!

« Entre les murs »

Mes enfants de Français II! Voilà les thèmes que l'on peut considérer pendant que l'on écrit son poste de blogue sur « Entre les murs » !

• Respect
• Discipline
• Double standards
• Outside school life v. inside school life
• French v. not French
• Escalation of arguments --> violence
• Is it always teachers v. students? 

Main characters:

• François Marin - prof et auteur
• Souleymane (Mali)
• Carl (Caribbean)
• Wei (China)
• Boubacar
• Chérif (Turkey)
• Esmeralda (Tunisia)
• Louise 
• Khoumba
• Henriette
• Arthur

You need to write a blog post at least three paragraphs long, minimum five sentences in each paragraph. You can write it in English or French. If you write it in French, it counts as two blog posts.

DO NOT USE GOOGLE TRANSLATE OR ANY OTHER TRANSLATOR; DICTIONARY/WORD REFERENCE ONLY

Bon week-end mes enfants!

Here's Henri Matisse with some of his cats.

Ulysse: webserie en français

Bonjour tout le monde! Une de mes étudiants m'a montré le clip suivant. Je le trouve très interéssant. Il fait partie d'un webserie qui s'appelle Ulysse. Il me rappelle de Divergent et Hunger Games parce qu'il s'agit de la guerre et la société dystopique. Regardez-le vous-même et profitez-en bien!

Valentine's Day

Bonjour mes enfants!  I have to admit, I'm not a huge fan of Valentine's Day. However, I've found some valentines that I think are simply terrific.  Enjoy!

Who doesn't love some Marie-Antoinette humor, even if she didn't really say that?

Naturally, Descartes would have said this in Latin: « Amo ergo sum. »  But we'll take this anyway.

Existential love. It's just absurd.

Heheh.

I want to party with these people. Unfortunately, they're all dead.

Happy Valentine's Day!

French II - Google Classroom

Bonjour mes enfants! We are going to attempt to use Google Classroom for this classroom. Here is the code for French II:

recrzu

Go to Google Classroom, click on "Join a Class", put in the code, and voilà! You are now part of our French II class.  You will receive notifications whenever I post something.

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask me. On y va!

Google Classroom - French IV

Mes enfants! Nous allons essayer d'employer Google Classroom pour notre cours. Voilà le code qu'il faut saisir pour vous rejoindre au cours de Français IV:

9dyzoid

Allez à Google Classroom sur votre ordinateur et puis cliquez sur "Join a Class". Tapez le code et voilà! Vous recevrez des notifications quand je poste quelque chose sur le site.

Posez-moi des questions si vous en auriez!

#JeSuisCirconflex

The French academic world is in an uproar amid reports that l'Académie Française want to change the spelling of some words and wants to remove the circonflex (circumflex, or ^) from some words.

Here is a report in English from the BBC. It has a helpful video.

Here is a report in French from TF1. It also has a video, and it lists the 10 words whose spelling will change.

It appears the changes will officially take place later this year when French children return to school in the fall (la rentrée).  What do you think?  Is it good or bad?  Are we pandering to the lowest common denominator, or are we making a difficult language easier to learn?  Let me know what you think!

De jolis mots français!

Salut mes enfants et mes amis! My student Srinidhi found this awesome link to a Buzzfeed article about pretty French words. Check it out! Both the images and the words are lovely.

Un nouveau semestre!

Bonjour mes enfants! It's second semester, and I'm teaching French II and French IV! WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A GREAT TIME. IT'S GOING TO BE LIT.

This sloth is super excited about second semester. Trust me, I know sloths.

If you have an iPhone, you can change the language of your phone to French! You can also change the keyboard to French as well. Here's how:

Go to Settings

Go to General

Scroll down to Keyboard

Add the Français (QWERTY) keyboard

Go back to General

Click on Language and Region

Click on iPhone Language

Choose Français

(Hint: don't set your phone to Mandarin or Hebrew or Hindi unless you actually speak those languages; you'll never get it back to English and then you'll cry.)

And there you go! If you set your language to French, some of your apps will change to French, like Google Maps. (The lady who gives you directions will speak French.) If you change the keyboard to French, it will autocorrect your typing in French. 

Enjoy, explore, and learn new things!

Albert Camus would totally set his keyboard and phone to French.