Salut! Long time, no blog, it would seem. As a little update, my role in our school board's SIS project ended in June and now I'm back, teaching français! I happened to notice that an old blog post on French resources for the Carnaval de Québec that I published back in 2013 is getting more hits than usual. Makes sense, given that we are right in the middle of Carnaval season, bien sûr! It's definitely time to give it a little refresher, n'est-ce pas? View this post on Instagram A post shared by Diana Mancuso ? (@torontomom)       This year, our school had our own festivit ..read more

How is it already August? I know I haven't been out of the classroom for that long but I kind of forget what I need to do to prep for Back to School. Working on the SIS Project was a welcome change, that's for sure. I loved learning all about Aspen and training and supporting staff boardwide but I sure did miss teaching French. This year, I will be teaching junior and intermediate Core French as well as some  French Immersion subjects such as Phys. Ed. and Visual Arts. Can't wait to move back into my old office! In the meantime, I have been working on giving my French Digital Calendar a ..read more

Another summer is almost over, which means many of my teacher friends are preparing for a new school year. I, on the other hand, have been busy working all summer on the SIS training team for my school board, a temporary role which will end in June. Last week, I finally managed to find some time to update my French Digital Calendar for the upcoming 2022-2023 school and added a few extra touches. Here is what it includes: weather board (with images and word cards) calendar with weeks beginning on Sunday (now from September through to August!) calendar with weeks beginning on Monday manipulati ..read more

This week, my students will put on their programming hats and have a little fun coding in Scratch. They will be selecting a character from a story we have read, such as Les lunettes de Lucette and Alain et Denis font du camping, and completing the Characterization mini unit in CS First. (Unfortunately, this mini unit is currently only available in English and Spanish but we will eventually move on to the longer Storytelling unit which is disponible en français! At the very least, students can change the language in Scratch to French.) The task will be slightly different from that w ..read more

  The other day, out of sheer luck, I happened across a post in one of the many French teacher Facebook groups to which I belong, where a teacher shared her incredibly extensive YouTube playlist of "Pauses actives en classe". I felt like I had hit the jackpot! Of the videos I have perused, there were a few that became instant favourites and they just so happened to be from the Jeunes en santé YouTube channel. These videos are absolutely fantastic because, not only do they have the instructions for each of the steps in French, but many of their videos use French songs.  Google Sl ..read more

Calling all Sing fans! You can now watch your favourite characters in Illumination’s sequel Sing 2 from the comfort of your own home! Available on Digital now, the animated film features the ever-optimistic Koala, Buster Moon, voiced by Matthew McConaughey, and his cast who stage a dazzling show in the entertainment capital of the world, Redshore City. This comedy about the emotional healing power of music includes all-new characters: the world’s most reclusive rock star, Clay Calloway (Bono), Rosita (Reese Witherspoon), Ash (Scarlett Johansson), Johnny (Taron Egerton), Meena (Tori Kelly) a ..read more

Remember when we first pivoted to online learning back in 2020? I know. I'd rather soon forget, too. If I look at the silver lining, I would say that people, both students and staff alike, are tech-savvier than ever. I remember one of the greatest challenges, though, was trying to help students figure out how to use their devices when some had Windows 10 laptops, Chromebooks, or iPads. Figuring out how to type in French using accents was particularly difficult, since I use my own MacBook and type instinctively using what are known as "dead keys". Chrome extensions were are a solution for some ..read more

A while back, I started working on a Scratch project with the intent of creating a fun way for my students to practice the French alphabet while also honing my block coding skills. I found myself stuck on the game portion and never got around to figuring it out until just recently. What I love most about this project is that I was able to use my Bitmoji as a sprite and added different poses as costumes. It was also a lot of fun adding silly sound effects, too! If you want to try adding your Bitmoji to your Scratch projects, I would suggest adding the Bitmoji Chrome extension and search for ..read more

  When using Google Slides for manipulative activities, I prefer to maximize screen space whenever possible to focus attention on the content of my slides. However, presentation mode does not allow you to move or manipulate the objects on the slide. Previously, I would hide the speaker notes and my Chrome bookmarks bar to make eliminate some of the unnecessary clutter. But now, Google has added the ability to hide the "filmstrip", which are the thumbnails of your slides that appear to the left, as well as enter full screen mode which allows you to still edit your slides. Here is a quick ..read more

  Happy New Year! It has been quite a while since I have posted here on the blog so I thought I'd kick off the year with a fun little activity sheet on drawing emotions (en français!) which I created while playing around in Canva. By the way, did you know that Canva for Education is free for K-12 teachers? Not only do you get access to tonnes of amazing templates and resources but you get Pro features which allow you to: access millions of premium images use premium fonts, graphics, videos and animations remove the background from an image in a click upload school logos and fonts add Bi ..read more