April session review

Our Barrie CEFR region is a  group of dedicated FSL educators that are passionate about creating the best educational experience for students. This year we focused on the 4 components of the CEFR and reflected on where our instruction was at that moment. Many ideas and resources were shared with educators from across the region. The following is a growing list of resources discussed in our groups.

Audio lingua

Provides over 600 french audio clips that can be organized based on CEFR level, gender and age of the speakers. You can even copy the link and share it with your students. Here’s an example

"https://www.audio-lingua.eu/spip.php?page=mp3&id_article=5217&color=00aaea

Acapela Box

Cut and paste any text and have it read back to you. The speed can even be adjusted to change the pace.

http://gabfle.blogspot.ca/

This blog has numerous recordings of interviews with students ranging  from levels A1-B2. It includes questions, quizzes and transcripts of the interviews as well.

http://elcondefr.blogspot.ca/

This blog from Belgium has a variety of Graphic texts in French.

Blabberize

A fun tool for adding audio to images. Just upload an image and add a mouth to make it appear like someone is speaking.

If you have any other great FSL resources that reflect the CEFR, please share in the comment box.

2002 called. They want their blog back!

The best ideas were always first shared as bad ideas.

Colleagues, if you are reading this on April 12, 2017, welcome to the final meet up for the year of the Barrie CEFR team. Enjoy the learning today! I am the bearded man off to the side of the room managing blog and twitter updates for this session. If I do not get the chance to speak much, I would like to take this opportunity to plug our blog.

When blogs started off, they were places where individuals could post, discuss and often argue about big ideas. As blogs took off as fora for new and interesting ideas, they proliferated on the internet, and eventually evolved into many different shapes and sizes. The line blurred between what differentiates a website and a blog.

The #CEFRBarrie blog is, in spirit, a classic blog. Of course, we can, and should, use it as a platform to share our resources and ideas with colleagues as we learn about the CEFR, but I think it is even better for the sharing of BIG ideas and to track our learning and mindsets in the BarrieCEFR group! It is a place where we can post our thoughts, whether philosophical musings about L2 pedagogy or blunt opinions on curriculum. As with any forum, the idea is that we can get feedback from other professionals to refine our own thinking beyond our face to face meetings.

Going forward, fellow #BarrieCEFR teacher/learners, use this blog to share your thoughts and ideas, and don't be concerned about your idea being incomplete or "not ready yet". Our principal goal should be to collaborate and make our thinking, and our students' learning better by consequence of our participation in this conversation.

Bonne journée!

P.S. use this hashtag to share your learning today on twitter! #cefrbarrie