Le passé composé

[Jarod HM]

The passé composé is always a challenge for students in beginning and intermediate class. I want to know how you craft activities and lessons to help students understand and use the passé composé. Are there any tech tools that you have found useful?

[Elaine Burg]

Hi Jarod,
I use a group activity known as the dice game. I group kids in teams of 3-4, give each team a white board and marker and they roll the dice and create passé composé sentences. (If you want specifics on the dice game, let me know) This activity helps them remember how to form it, to use a helping verb and a past participle, etc. It is great because I hear the students pointing out what is wrong and helping each other before they create their "final answer".
As for tech tools, I am spending this summer deciding which tools are best for particular grammar or vocab. units.

[Brittany Selden]

Hey there,

This is a tough question for me to answer because I have only been teaching for one year. I do want to give my ideas (as new and imperfect as they may be) because I know I always want feedback no matter where it comes from.

With my kids we started with a review of avoir (and I drilled until I couldn't stand to do it anymore). Then I gave out a cheat sheet and we did basic written and oral activities from the workbook and book to give the kids an idea on the structure.

Go to French 2 page and click on Passe Compose Cheat Sheet in the French 2 Documents
http://mysite.cherokee.k12.ga.us/personal/brittany_selden/site/page....

Then, I read a french children's book with the class called Mei Ling's Hiccups - I found it at my local library. I put the text on the screen through a document camera, and page by page I had the kids identify the verbs and the tense. 99% of the verbs are in the p.c., so it was great for them to see the helping verb and the past participle time and time again. They liked it because it had some fun verbs like sauter. I really think this drilled home for them that there are two pieces necessary for the formation of the p.c. I also did some vocab work in this children's book - I can send you more details if you'd like (once we get back to school and i can access my files).

From there we started our dialog about the difference between the passe compose and the imparfait (even though we didn't learn the formation of the imparfait for another few weeks). I had them draw a comic strip with 10 verbs in the p.c. and I used a comic strip program online for that.

We also did several oral activities. One of their favorites was when I would show the class several pictures on the overhead. One student would have to chose a picture (but not say which one to the class) and then say a sentence about what he/she did there (using the p.c.). For example - a picture of a beach, a nightclub, a restaurant and a library are shown on the screen. It is student 1's turn, so she says aloud to the class "J'ai lu avec mes amis." The class then guessed which location would fit that statement. Its basic, but the kids liked it :)

As a culminating activity (at the end of French 2 when both imparfait and p.c. had been covered) I had the kids make an animoto video of there past and present life. they had to bring in images and then write sentences with the correct verb tense. That program is VERY easy to use, free and the kids go crazy for it. Here is a sample of one of my student's work:

http://animoto.com/play/tlXnzsSB3f33k1RwndmIKA