Randa Abla Cherfan

Every year we organise a cultural ski trip for CM2 - Cours Moyen 2eme année (grade 5) students in Villard-de-Lans, a commune in the Rhone-Alpes region in France. During these trips learners not only learn about ski and other snow activities (that are nonexistent in our region), but also about life skills, independence, team building skills along with historical, cultural visits and language literacy. Students learn about and get to taste the traditional food of the area. From an ESL perspective, students learn new vocabulary related to travel, ski and snow activities (snowshoeing, sledding, alpine skiing, snowboarding etc.), they learn how to write letters and emails to their loved ones in English.

The importance of these trips lies in the learning acquired outside text books and classroom walls. Students learn by experience rather than by following textbooks. This I believe, is the most effective learning approach. It engages students and offers them the opportunity to put their learnings to practice in real life situations.

Click here for some resources I usually use during these trips to support their ESL learning.

We did interdisciplinary trips with the CE2 - cours élémentaire 2eme année (grade 3) homeroom teachers to Montignac commune, in the Dordogne, Southwest of France. These were mainly historical trips to learn about the paleolithic period and discover the life of the Cro-Magnons and the cave art. Among our visits, we visited the Lascaux caves, the students replicated wall paintings. We did speleology and learned about the caves' lives. They learned about the tools used during the paleolithic times and even made their own oil lamps.

They also learned about the middle age period and the Hundred years' war that happened between France and England.

In addition to that we organized a meeting with students' from a local school. Learners met and exchanged about the cultural differences and then wrote letters to each other.

Click here for some resources I used during these trips to support their ESL learning.

In this project, my 6eme (grade 6) students learned the history of a Japanese Kamishibai. They then drafted and illustrated their own Kamishibai (paper theater) stories integrating at least 2 languages in them: the base language was English and another language of their choice to teach words in that language (Arabic, Spanish, French or German). Few key repetitive words are told in the story in a different language from the main language. They then built their own butais and visited younger classes for storytelling the Japanese way. During storytelling listeners would learn the "foreign words" and their meaning from the story.

The main objective of the activity is to promote the multilingual diversity in the current classrooms and use it as an instructional tool then perceive it as an obstacle to learning. Kamishibais are wonderful tool for learners to read, write and express themselves artistically, all while opening them to other languages. Check Ka-mi-la-la for more details on this project.

This is a project that I did with my CM1 - CM1- Cours Moyen 1ere année (Grade 4) students, during the online learning period. We were learning about describing people. Making sentences and short paragraphes to talk about their appearance, personality and interests. Students had to describe one of their classmates in a coherent paragraph, and post the paragraph as well as the photo (optional) on padlet. This was an excellent way for them to get to learn more about one another in the absence of face to face schooling. The also created their own digital "kids in my class" page.

Moreover, this project gave them the opportunity to interact with each other online by commenting on the posts, all while being monitored for language profanity.

This activity was done with my CM2 - Cours Moyen 2eme année (grade 5) students, right after we returned to face to face schooling. Since our annual school trip was cancelled due to COVID travel restrictions. We did a virtual trip to London and learned about the culture and various important landmarks. The students learned how to write a postcard message and then were asked to design a postcard with the landmark of their choice and write a message to their loved ones, pretending they were visiting the chosen place.

This activity was a fun way for them to learn how to write emails/letters and postcard messages whilst learning about a different culture.

In normal times, we would do this activity in class. We would be learning about countable and uncountable through cooking and food ingredients. We also introduce cooking action verbs like chop, dice, slice, mash, crush etc. The kids would do a presentation on a traditional dish of their choice (typically one from their home country). They would present the ingredients needed, how to cook, how to serve and origin of the dish. We would later on have a tasting session (of course while accounting for all possible allergies). However, since this was not possible during online schooling. I resorted to doing with them a digital cookbook. They would each present their recipes, serving method and origin of their dish on padlet. Other students were supposed to try the recipes at home and add their comments on the preparation, taste etc.

With my CE1 - cours élémentaire 1ere année (grade 2) students, we learned about adverbs of frequency and how to apply them in our healthy and keeping clean habits. Students wrote their healthy habits sentences using: always, usually, often, sometimes and illustrated them.

With two of my colleagues, we launched the multilingual drama club. Acting is a perfect way to teach literacy, culture, values, team spirit in one fun activity.

We adapte play scripts to our needs, integrated various cultures, mythologies, and different languages in them to promote cultural and linguistic diversity. It was one of the most gratifying experiences, to incorporate Greek mythology, language literacy, values etc. all in one fun activity. Although there were some difficult moments for the students, but they were all committed to make it succeed and pulled out a great end of year play about Greek mythology, in both French and English languages.