Ms. Vittetoe
Bonjour! Welcome to Ms. Dori Vittetoe's webpage for French 1A, French 1B, and Exploring World Cultures. I moved to Colorado from Missouri 14 years ago, and I'm so excited to be here. I have my Master's degree in French from Middlebury College in VT, and I spent a year in Le Mans, France, teaching English to French high school students. I've also visited other French-speaking places, such as Quebec, Belgium, Switzerland, Monaco, Benin, and Niger. I've traveled to other places, such as Guatemala, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Italy, Scotland, and England. I try to draw on my own language and travel experiences when teaching my French and my World Cultures classes.
In my French classes, I teach using a method called TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) or Comprehensible Input. The method is based on the way children learn language: not by learning its rules, but by hearing it again and again so that it sounds right. In class we replicate this by focusing on listening and reading to acquire vocabulary and sentence structure, and then as students progress further in the program, we focus more on speaking and writing. The result is some wacky and bizarre stories, both written and oral, that help students develop a feel for what sounds right.
In my World Cultures classes, we focus on learning about how people around the world live. We learn about customs, food, tourism, and other topics, and then we try to imagine what it would be like to visit and/or live in other places. We also are joining an online community to collaborate and share with students from other places in the world.
Since we have very little homework in French and Cultures classes, please check Infinite Campus for upcoming assessments.