Welcome, new 6th grade students!  This week, all 6th grade students who have been taking Spanish are now switching to French.  Do you have any words of advice for them?

THe time is already near when students in 6th grade will be switching languages.  So, whatever they have done in one language will now be pretty much repeated in the other language.  Then in January, everyone in 6th grade has a chance to decide if they want to take French or Spanish for the rest of their time in middle school.

Many of my 6th grade students have already declared “I’m taking French!”  or “I’m definitely taking Spanish” though they haven’t taken Spanish yet.   Let’s wait until you’ve had a full experience in Spanish before you decide for sure.

For my 7th and 8th grade students, and those of you who aren’t my students but love French, what are some of the reasons you take French?

Last night, I had the pleasure of meeting Madame DuBois, a French woman who will be here for the year to teach French at DY high school.  She is doing a teacher exchange with Madame Boyle.  Madame Boyle will be at Madame DuBois’ school in France, teaching English!  They are both excited about this exchange and so am I, for two reasons.  First, I am THRILLED to have a French person here for the year to speak French with, to show what Cape COd is all about and to have my students who are now at the high school get to have French classes with her!  My second reason for being so thrilled is that in April, I plan to visit Madame Boyle in France!  How cool will that be?!?

The Québec trip is already over!  We had a great 4 days in the city of Québec learning about the history and life of people in the province of Québec.  We had a great time with our guide Nathalie and we ate some great French and Québec food.  Some of us might have also eaten at McDonald’s in Québec but that’s another story.  So, if you were on the trip, what was your favorite part?

We had the pleasure of hosting 6 students from France for the morning on Tuesday.  They are here with a group of 30 other students from Marseille, visiting the high school and staying with families of students who take French at the high school.  They visited with 4 of my classes and had a chance to speak English to my students.  Some of my students took advantage of trying to speak French with them.  I had a great time speaking French for most of the morning!

That’s right!  Disneyland Paris is located just outside of Paris.  Have you ever been there?  Have you been to the one in Florida?  How about in California?  Visit http://www.disneylandparis.com/ for more information!  What do you think about a Disney World in Europe?  Do you think everything is in French?  Spanish?  Italian?  How does it all work?

Why did you start learning a language? What was the first language you learned? Is it hard for you to learn another language? How many can you speak?

How many years have you been speaking French? Do you feel like you can communicate well enough to travel to a French speaking place without a dictionary or anyone to help?

Ok, I know what the challenge for this week is. We are supposed to introduce ourselves to our potential co-bloggers.  I have info about myself on the ABOUT page.  We heard from a class in Montreal today and I see a new dot on Germany!  Feel free to introduce yourselves here.  Talk about what you love about French and why you go to this blog. Please be careful about what you tell us.  No full names, phone numbers, addresses, or anything inappropriate here.

Have you watched a TV show or a movie recently where there was French spoken?  Have you read any books where there were some French words in them?  Share!