In our school board, we begin Core French studies in Grade 1. The program we use is called Dimoitou, which I had never heard of prior to moving to Toronto. There are so many things I like about the program, namely the variety of songs and poems that are based on the characters and themes of the month. For February, the themes focus on Valentine's Day but also illnesses. Thus, it introduces the students to expressions with avoir to indicate pain, such as "J'ai mal à la tête." (I have a headache.)

Using images from one of the worksheets, I decided to create a blackline master for a little booklet entitled, "On est malade." Not only do the students enjoy colouring in their favourite characters but they take pride in being able to read most of the words. They can easily read the characters' names since they spend a month becoming familiar with each character, and the sentences are fairly repetitive with the most challenging words being the parts of the body which are different on each page (dos, nez, oreille, tête, yeux, bouche).

The students are already familiar with most of the words since we have spent a number of classes learning the French version of Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

Other songs I use to help teach the parts of the body in French include "Bonjour Monsieur" by Matt Maxwell. You can hear the song and follow along with the lyrics in this YouTube video by Sylvia Duckworth - Bonjour Monsieur, Matt Maxwell. One of my all-time favourite songs on this theme is "Dansez, Dansez" by an other popular Canadian children's artist Étienne. If you haven't heard about Étienne, you should. Even Justin Bieber knows his songs!

In my grade 4 class, we are at the point of compiling the final task in the unit "Souvenirs de ma famille." Students will create a family album which will include key elements such as a cover page, dedication, a diagramme of their extended family and a poem entitled, "J'aime ma famille." Most of the students have completed their poem with an illustration and are now working on the cover page. 

The teacher manual includes a one-page dedication but I wanted to cut back on photocopying and reduce paper consumption. The copywright date also begins with 19 which is a tad outdated. So I decided to make my own in a smaller size in order to fit two on a single letter-size page.

As part of our grade 4 unit Logos-animaux, my students create their own version of the story Droles de chats. I like to call it a poem. It is an opportunity for them to use the adjectives we have studied in the unit and use the correct form based on the gender of the animal they have selected. They will also need to use the correct form of the possessive adjectives mon and ma.

After the students have written a rough draft in their writing books, they use a blackline master or template that I have created in Microsoft Word to write out their good copy and illustrate their animal. I have embedded the file below which you may download and use in your own FSL classroom.