French Home and School Reading Program

Our class has decided to incorporate a French Home and School Reading Program.  The program described below will run independently of the parent volunteer reading program.  The F.H.S.R.P will have several goals.  These goals are:

• To develop French reading comprehension.

• To develop a love of reading.

• To practice French pronunciation and fluidity.

• To extend and build French vocabulary.

How it will work: 

• At the beginning of each week students will select a book from either the easy, medium or challenging category.  I will oversee the selection process and I will guide students to the appropriate category.

• Students will read the book for 15 minutes during the day at school and 15 minutes at home. 

• If students finish the book before the end of the week they will be allowed to trade in their book for a new one.

• If students do not finish at the end of the week they may keep their book for the following week or exchange it.

• The logbook and reading book will be kept in a ziploc bag that the student will keep in their backpacks.  Students should always have a French book they are in the process of reading. 

• During the home reading portion of the program the student will read aloud to a parent, older sibling or someone else.   Afterward the parent will fill in and sign the logbook and note any difficulties, questions or comments students may have.

• During the school reading portion of the program the students will read silently from 12:25 to 12:40.  During this time I will listen to a different student read everyday and I will correct their pronunciation and work with them to improve their reading. 

• Students will select 5 words per week from their reading to add to their dictionnaire personel.

Le dictionnaire personnel

Every week students will select 5-10 words from their reading to add to their dictionnaire personnel.  They will write the words in their notebooks along with a definition, type of word (noun, adj, verbe, etc) and a sentence. 

The Books

I went through all of the French books in our class and I levelled them.  I have placed books in 3 different categories.  Challenging, medium and easy.  Many different genres of literature are represented in the books students have access to.  There are: 

• magazines

• novels

• story books

• reference books

• comic strips

Book Descriptions

Image Doc

Image Doc is a French magazine published for elementary students.  These are mostly non-fiction reading materials.  They contain stories, articles, photos and comic strips on science, history, biology and many other topics of interest to elementary students.  This series is challenging, however with the proper guidance and motivation strong readers should be able to make it through most of the magazine.

Novels

Our classroom contains a variety of French novels for all abilities.

Story Books

The story books in our classroom library tend to be in the easy to medium category.  Most of these books could be read in one day.  They usually contain pictures and less text than reference books.  We have books from Robert Munsch, Shel Silverstein and a variety of French and English authors.

Reference Books

Our classroom library also contains a number of reference texts.  From information books on one or two topics to picture encyclopaedias.  This category is represented across all 3 levels of books.  Students do not necessarily have to read these books from cover to cover but could select the pages and topics of interest to them.  It is important however to actually read the texts and not just look at the pictures.

Comic Strips

We have a few comic strips available in our classroom.  Most of these are easy to read with lots of drawings and interesting stories.  The Image Doc series also has many comic strips in them.