French teaching practice inspection

rose23

Hi all,

Im getting my first teaching practice inspection next week. It will be with a 5th year Ordinary level French class. The next topic in the unit plan is introducing Informal Letter writing..

Do any language teachers have any ideas on how I will go about this? Studen activity that I will include?
Im finding it quite hard as I wont be teaching certain words or a grammar point as such but instead its hard to clarify what exactly I will be teaching the students..

The students in this class are very weak so I need to keep it simple..

Any suggestions would be great!

delta_bravo

Talk with your cooperating teacher, they should be well experienced.

mazken

I'd start on drawing on their own knowledge i.e. what they remember from Junior Cert. Focus back in on layout etc. Brainstorm / Mind mapping techniques. Just a suggestion from where to start! Best of luck

freckly

After you do the brainstorm you could give them a jumbled up letter to rearrange? Give each pair the same letter on coloured cards and get them to rearrange it on the desk. Walk around, have a look and then call it out as a listening text (you could pre-record this) and get students to check their answers were right. For an inspection you should try to keep it as interactive as possible. Then you have introduced pair work, listening, speaking and writing if you get the students to start their own letter before the end of class. Bonne chance!

freire

Well I think it's important to remember that they'll need to have some points to communicate. That'd be a good jumping off point, they need some sort of context and structure really. Who are they writing to, what're they to tell them, that kind of thing.

An informal letter for weaker students at that stage, 5th year, at introductory level, is basically putting basic conversational skills into writing.

Hello, how are you, I'm well, my dog is sick, I bought a new jacket, it's red leather, I went out with my mates last weekend, I'm going to Spain for Christmas, what are you doing for the hols, the weather is poor, school is boring.

There are all sorts of grammar and vocab points in there. Get these refreshed and out of the way before the inspection so they're prepped and primed for whatever CLT 'active learning' you're planning on doing to impress the hoop holder.

FerrisBueller

rose23 wrote: »

Hi all,

Im getting my first teaching practice inspection next week. It will be with a 5th year Ordinary level French class. The next topic in the unit plan is introducing Informal Letter writing..

Do any language teachers have any ideas on how I will go about this? Studen activity that I will include?
Im finding it quite hard as I wont be teaching certain words or a grammar point as such but instead its hard to clarify what exactly I will be teaching the students..

The students in this class are very weak so I need to keep it simple..

Any suggestions would be great!

Hi! Hope TP is going well, I'm on TP at the moment too so I feel your pain!
Keep it very simple. First of all since it's 5th Year Ord.Level do an introduction level. Contextualise it at the beginning, ask pupils their name, age, etc. Then bring in the structure of it, get the pupils to write an introductory paragraph maybe in pairs? Then to round it up ask pupils the structure and what to put in it.
I'm going to be honest with you though, could you not do a revision class instead of moving on? Letter writing is an absolute bítch to show off your teaching skills, especially if you have to use the TL, etc. Maybe go over moi-meme and for homework get them to write that so it'll prepare them for the letter or something? If you're going to use 100% TL (which is what they want) it'd be tough when you're trying to write a letter. Best of luck!