The cultural component of the Grade 6 Ontario curriculum focuses on intercultural awareness of French-speaking communities in eastern, western and northern Canada. As such, I have recently introduced my students to the Festival du Voyageur. I tried to find some online resources and came across the Language and Culture weebly, initially developed by a team of Core French elementary school teachers. It references several links of cultural relevance for grades 4 through 8 and includes a unit on the festival. After having shown a video on les voyageurs, some of my students showed an interest in the song "C'est l'aviron /  M'en revenant de la jolie Rochelle" which les voyageurs sung throughout the video. I thought this was a perfect time to break out les cuillères and teach them how to play the spoons. They slowly began to take an interest in the song lyrics and so I decided to create a cloze activity based on the lyrics. I showed them two videos (see below) I had found on YouTube that included a more traditional version of the song and one that was more modern. The latter is actually a video from Kids CBC and features Patty, Sid, and Saumon de Champlain (this video has been removed from YouTube since this post was first published). I was worried my grade 6 students would find it too childish but in fact, they found it more amusing because the characters re-enact the lyrics and it also includes captions in English. 

I created the cloze activity seen above and wanted to share it since my students really enjoyed it. To download a copy, just click on the thumbnail above to access it via Google Drive. (Hover your cursor over the YouTube player and click on the YouTube logo to watch it on YouTube.com where you can add it to your playlist.) Here is a video I found on YouTube, which you may want to add to your own personal playlist for ease of reference.

Last year, for our grade 8 trip, we went to Montreal and had a great time learning about the culture and visiting historic sites. One of our stops included a visit to Notre Dame Basilica, located in the historic district of Old Montreal and dating back to 1824. It features a glorious set of Casavant organs and a beautifully ornamented pulpit. Designated a National Historic Site of Canada, the basilica was the site of Celine Dion's wedding as well as the provincial state funeral for former Montreal Canadiens superstar Maurice "Rocket" Richard.