Happy Winter Break!

We may have had a two hour delay, but all the finals will be done.  I'm signing out with a picture of the winning cake from our yule log competition - it is a tropical theme, and clearly a lot of time and effort went into it!

Bûche de Noël competition!

Happy French Music Friday!  Every Friday, students get the opportunity to listen to French music during the passing period.  Today, some of our artists include Québecois singers Marie-Pierre Arthur and the group Avec pas d'casque. 

Students in French 1 are making online comics based on real or imaginary families today; we will be able to make a small booklet of everyone's comics.

We will also be having an optional cake-baking competition just before finals week.  French and French-speaking people frequently have yule log cakes at Christmas and winter celebrations; Zionsville students get to enter a cake in our competition for extra credit points.  This requires a little planning ahead; sometimes Bûche de Noël cakes can take a while to make!  Cakes can be traditional or non-traditional, and any winter holiday is open game for the theme!

Le hérisson

With Thanksgiving break just around the corner and French 1, 2 and 3 having just recently taken quizzes, we are taking today and tomorrow to watch a beautiful French film called Le hérisson, The Hedgehog.  It is based on a popular novel (available in a quite good English translation) called The Elegance of the Hedgehog. 

The film is difficult to describe because it is happy, sad, funny, and more.  The style is very French, and it seemed appropriate also because the novel Anna Karenina plays such an important role in it, and you may be aware that a brand new film adaptation of Anna Karenina has also recently been released.

Here is the bande-annonce for the film, complete with English subtitles:

Bienvenue!

Welcome to my blog!  I have created this blog hoping to provide a way for students of French at Zionsville to interact with each other, find new resources, and see what's going on in the Francophone (French-speaking) world.  It is also a way for parents to see what is happening in the classroom.

This year, we have a brand new correspondent - a Peace Corp volunteer named Emily in Burkina Faso; she works in education and is helping to teach English in a high school.  Students will be learning about life in this country where French is sometimes used as a lingua franca.  Today French 1 and 2 got a look at the streets of the capital city of Ouagadougou via the following video:

We will be doing more extended research as time goes on, and hope to be able to communicate with Emily and her class via webcam and email.  In January we may also be gaining a correspondent in Morocco!