Two Truths and a Lie

Hi all,

With permission, Sabrina, a French teacher and very skilled CI teacher agreed to let me post her back to school activity here that helps us get students right back into the language in a way that is comprehensible and compelling.  Just change the French to Latin, of course!

I want to share what I’ve been doing on the second day of class with all my kids and it’s worked out quite well to get them back into the swing of language and give them multiple reps.

Yesterday I asked them:

1) to write (in English for my beginners and French or English for my higher levels, please note I give them the choice) 2 truths and a lie about what they did during break.
2) I collected all papers and one by one asked them to come and sit in the King/Queen chair (I no longer have desks in my class, just chairs).
3) to read aloud their 3 statements in French (I modified it slightly if needed).
4. I read each of their sentences out loud in French. If a word seemed unfamiliar I used Point and Pause to clarify. Sometimes I wrote their entire sentence to make sure we all agreed on what was being said.
5) I asked the kids to decide which one was the lie showing me with their fingers. Was it sentence #1, 2 or 3?
5) I turned back to my King/Queen and asked them: Did you really go to Las Vegas during break, did you really do bungee jumping etc….?

On the board I had prewritten vocabulary (including my high frequency verbs as I predicted they would come up). Prewritten vocabulary was mensonge (lie), vérité (truth), est allé(e) went, a fait (did), a vu (saw), a joué ( played), a mangé (ate), a reçu (received, got). Then if something came up on their papers that was interesting I just added it onto the board with translation. An example of that would be a student who wrote that he drove a 67 Dodge Challenger so I went and wrote “a conduit” (drove). I also asked the kids on the chair details about what they got, or saw or did to get more reps.

Today we continued with the activity for 35 minutes, then I took their papers and gave them a quiz and 95 % got 9 out of 9.

They were engaged because it was about them (personalization piece) and it was compelling and understood because they had all the support they needed (visual, gestures and repetitions).”