Passion4French
Aurora Gray's Professional Inquiry Project

How can we help elementary students become passionate about French language and culture to increase their love of the French Immersion program?

“To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world.” 

– Chinese Proverb

Inspiration behind Passion4French

I have always loved everything about France. The language, the culture, the architecture. Growing up in the Immersion program, I was always so sad to see that my peers were losing interest in our French classes as it was what I always looked forward to. Going through my practicums, students were not motivated to speak French and often had a very negative attitude towards the French language as a whole. I wanted to share my love for French with students so that we can have more of a positive attitude towards being in French at the elementary level. The lack of positivity inspired me to show students some current French music and to show my Kindergarten kids some French art and French food. 

This is a shoutout to Alain, my PS2 teacher mentor. His love for French music and his ability to get his grade 2 students excited about listening to a French song was SO inspiring.  His weekly "Chanson de la semaine" not only  helped students listening comprehension skills, it helped students realize that French music is super cool! Seeing students up out of their seats to dance and sing the French lyrics helped my love for French increase even more. I thought to myself, how can we get more students THIS excited for French music? 

Thanks Alain for inspiring me to bring French fun to my PS3. 

What my project was all about

Below is a description of how I explored my Inquiry Question.

Grades 1-5

Chanson de la semaine

Every week, I went to six different elementary classrooms to introduce the students to a new French song. Click on the Chanson de la semaine page for more information. 

Kindergarten

J'aime français jeudi 

This was a weekly lesson/activity that I did with my Kindergarten kids. Whether we were tasting French food, listening to French music, or creating art influenced by French artists, we looked at different parts of French culture every week. Click on the Jaime français jeudi page for more details. 

Teacher Feedback

Below are some of the comments from the teachers that allowed me into their classroom.

"I never stayed in the room, but my kids were always very excited about it. What I liked was that it was helping their oral French (which is an academic casualty of the pandemic) and they were excited about it."

"I enjoyed listening to some more modern French music. This is something that I have wanted to do for a while, but I struggled to find "appropriate" music."

"As I quietly walked around while students listen and wrote on their whiteboards, I was actually impressed to notice the various phonological abilities of students to pick up sounds and/or words. For instance, the students who currently have difficulty reading could only pick up basic letter sounds (such as <<a>> or <<é>>) while those who distinguishes sounds and read more easily could actually pick up words and some were even able to recognize part of a sentence."