Getting year 8 to speak French using cootie catchers.

I have a lovely (or should that be "lively"?) year 8 class.

They're the kind of class you really wouldn't want to teach last thing on a Friday.

Just for the record, I get them last thing on a Friday.

And Tuesday.

Getting them to speak is sometimes very difficult.

Getting them to stay in their seats is always difficult.

So today we made cootie catchers, fortune tellers, snapdragons, chatterboxes, etc

For the uninitiated they look like this:

We took a few minutes to make them and we made them with a French twist.

• On the outside we wrote 4 colours in French.
•  Then, in the middle section, we wrote the numbers from 1 to 8 in French.
• And on the inside we wrote 8 questions. We've been learning about school subjects so all of their questions started with "Tu aimes" and a school subject and the answer given had to include an adjective. For example: Tu aimes les maths ? J'aime les maths, c'est facile. 

These students love "kinaesthetic learning" so playing with their "cootie catchers" made them forget that they were actually doing some serious work. 

Ofsted would have loved it!

I fooled them into answering questions in full sentences and giving opinions.

I can't show you any examples of their work because they all wanted to take them home.

But, so you're not too disappointed, I made an animated gif of mine as I made it.

Enjoy!

PS. I blogged about making animated gifs here ages ago.